The Bloomington Music Expo—part record and music-memorabilia show, part art and music festival— will be held Saturday, February 8, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Monroe Convention Center. The event, now in its second year, came from the mind of Mike McAfee, executive director of Visit Bloomington.
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Budding playwrights have an opportunity to see their work come to life as Bloomington Playwrights Project (BPP) hosts its 36th Annual MiniPlay Festival, open to students in first through eighth grade.
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The documentary film Henry Glassie: Field Work opens with a series of vignettes of Brazilian sculptors creating traditional sacred art. Not until 30 minutes into the film does Glassie, an internationally renowned folklorist and Indiana University professor emeritus, make an appearance.
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As a mechanical engineering graduate of Purdue University and president of local mechanical contracting and service firm Harrell-Fish Inc., Steve Dawson might seem an unlikely artist.
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Local drummer Luke Narey has long been a fan of alternative metal band 10 Years. “I would blast their music while driving to and from [Edgewood] high school, but never would have imagined I’d have a chance to be part of the band one day,” Narey says.
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It’s been 50 years since the Woodstock Music & Art Fair brought 400,000 people together on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York. A new book from IU Press, Pilgrims of Woodstock, celebrates the festival’s anniversary by gathering previously unpublished photographs along with the reminiscences of audience members.
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Printing issue No. 1 ominously on April Fools’ Day 1979, The Ryder is the sole survivor of a half-dozen or so free alternative publications circulating in Bloomington at the time.
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Joel Kohen has been passionate about the Bloomington music scene since his days as an undergraduate at Indiana University, but he went from enthusiast to proprietor when he and his wife, Deana, bought the Port Hole Inn in January 2017.
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Although Salaam has been together a quarter of a century, founder Dena El Saffar says that only recently has the Middle Eastern quartet hit upon a certain balance that had been quietly simmering for nearly a decade. With patience, practice, and the space to make intuitive music, she says the group feels it has achieved the ideal blend of cultural sounds.
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David and Martha Moore say they do not have time for stuffy, pretentious art spaces. Once, while in Seattle, they visited an art gallery with a plastic model of a massive, red T. rex on display. David recalls his disappointment seeing a “Don’t Touch” sign juxtaposed with several children running around the model, dying to play with it. “Plastic dinosaurs are meant to be played with,” he says. “How do you not touch a huge, plastic dinosaur?”
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Once again, Bloomington-based singer-songwriter Krista Detor will be staying close to home for the holidays, performing an annual show to benefit a local nonprofit organization. “It’s my way of giving back to the community and, at this point, it feels like a tradition, although it’s always a little bit different,” says the internationally acclaimed performer.
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This holiday season, Cardinal Stage will bring the story of the 1899 newsboy strike to life when it presents Disney’s Newsies December 12–29 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.
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When local nonprofit bookstore Boxcar Books closed in 2017, the Monroe County Public Library (MCPL) was the recipient of more than 300 zines, increasing its collection to nearly 600 of the small-circulation magazines that are typically self-published and frequently photocopied.
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After being closed for renovations since May 2017, the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University will reopen on November 7. David Brenneman, museum director, says planning for new spaces and re-conceived galleries has been a main focus of the renovation.
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Multimedia artist David Ebbinghouse has created sculptures, drawings, and paintings; graffiti; installation, performance, and situation art; silkscreen and mono prints; apparel; and jewelry.
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In Race and Football in America, Dawn Knight traces the impact that the late Indiana University football hero George Taliaferro had on her and many others, as well as on the game of football and the civil rights movement.
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Growing up, opera singer Amanda Biggs traveled with her family of Pentecostal praise and worship church musicians. When they weren’t on the road, parents, grandparents, and children lived in a one-bedroom trailer in Bridgeport, Illinois. “Food insecurity, money insecurity—we ate government cheese and peanut butter,” Biggs, 41, recalls.
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After their film Rolling won one of four Best Picture awards and a Best Performance award at Indiana University’s local Campus Movie Fest 2018, Riley Dismore, 22, and Katherine Crump, 23, headed to the big leagues, taking their 5-minute film to the Cannes Film Festival in France.
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Lotus World Music & Arts Festival is back in Bloomington September 26 to 29 with fan favorites Movits! and Väsen. Other returning acts include Finnish quartet Kardemimmit, hurdy-gurdy player Guilhem Desq, and Canadian folk group Le Vent du Nord.
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This September, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be accompanied by the music of Felix Mendelssohn as the Monroe County Civic Theater (MCCT) celebrates 30 years of Shakespeare in the Park.
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