It’s a night at the symphony and a night at the theater, says Dominic Aquilino, assistant director of Asheville Lyric Opera’s upcoming production of Carousel. He means it’s like an evening out at both venues at the same time, because this version of the classic musical includes 30 musicians on stage, led by Asheville Symphony […]

For a rock ‘n’ roller, Kurt Vile is a pretty perfect name. Like Johnny Rotten or Captain Beefheart before him, the rising indie rock star has a moniker that suggests an edgy aloofness toward social norms, a willingness to disgust the disapproving in order to achieve his artistic goals. But unlike those forebears, Vile’s stage […]

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what constitutes a permanent collection, according to Nancy Holmes. For Holmes, the long-time exhibition organizer at Tryon’s Upstairs Artspace, a true art collection has integrity and scope, rather than aimlessly rambling across a living room wall. Or put another way, it needs to have point. “It’s different than just […]

The exhibit for The Art of John Lennon, coming to Asheville this weekend, avows to continue the Lennon legacy of peace and love through his prints. That’s a mighty task. How much could a traveling exhibit at Aloft Hotel help better the whole world? And could a single person viewing the art of a rock […]

“We had an idea of how we wanted it to sound,” says Cliff Worsham, half of local electronic project RBTS WIN. He’s talking about the band’s new album, Palm Sunday, which just released this week (though it’s been in process for most of a year). The collection of songs was envisioned by Worsham and collaborator […]

There’s a definite rise in the number of soul music groups, and not just in the back-in-the-day-revival, televised for a PBS fundraiser special bands. You know: The Drifters, The Miracles, The Bar-Kays. It’s hard to turn on pop radio today without catching a Mayer Hawthorne or Fitz and the Tantrums song. But the real contemporary […]