Flight club

Local aerialists and rockers team up for a production An unlikely collaboration was forged in January, when Bromelia Aerial Dance Collective performed at the Mothlight as part of the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival. According to local movement artist Anna Bartlett, “One of our dancers was injured, and our friend Valerie Phillips saved the day by […]

Smart Bets: Deer Tick

There’s something refreshingly honest about the way singer-songwriter John McCauley of Deer Tick delivers his unapologetic lyrics. His brazen vocals are backed by upbeat instrumentals. In an interview on NPR’s “World Café,” McCauley said that a lot of personal turmoil provided inspiration for the band’s fifth album, Negativity, released in 2013.  The Providence, Rhode Island-based […]

Power of the Press

Letterpress printing thriving in Asheville   The letterpress may be more than 5 centuries old, but in Asheville, this antique printing method is downright thriving. Still, it wasn’t always this way. Lance Wille, the founder of Hand-Cranked Letterpress Co., has watched the proliferation of letterpress artists here over the last decade. Wille started printing music […]

Smart Bets: Pan Harmonia

Chamber music company Pan Harmonia has “a reputation for giving our audiences a riveting experience. There is an immediacy, a visceral, zing-to-your-heart feeling that a live acoustic performance brings like nothing else,” according to a press release. Co-directors harpsichordist Barbara Weiss and flutist Kate Steinbeck have brought together all-star players for the intimate season finale […]

Smart Bets: Asheville electro-music festival

Although Moogfest took a decidedly technological turn (“geeky,” according to The New York Times) with this year’s festival reinvention, the Asheville electro-music festival has been immersed in that territory since its beginning. The two-day event brings experimental electronic musicians from around the world. Performers include Paul Vnuk Jr. (tribal ambient), locals Stereospread (dreamy electropop) and […]

Smart Bets: Paskie Pascua

Journalist and poet Paskie Pascua served as member of the media liaison staff for the late president Corazon Aquino’s “good government” commission in early ’90s and was a media specialist in coastal villages and farming barrios in his home country, the Philippines. But in Asheville, he is best-known as the publisher and editor of community […]

Five o’clock world

Fridays are worthy of celebration in any week. The daily grind gives way to the wide-open window of the weekend and, in warm-weather months, downtown Asheville’s streets take on a festive atmosphere of buskers, shoppers and diners claiming patio seating. So Downtown After 5 — held the third Friday of each month, May-Sept. — capitalizes on what’s already a party-in-the-making.

Excited about new radio voice

This mountain town will soon have a new voice on the radio waves: AshevilleFM. Broadcasting as WSFM-LP at 103.3 FM from the roof of the Indigo Hotel, this all-volunteer radio station will feature locally-produced news, music, and community affairs programming, as well as national programs like Democracy Now! The folks at AshevilleFM have been producing […]