Connecting with the Arts – December 2020
Welcome back to the Arts Council of Anne Arundel County’s monthly blog series, “Connecting with the Arts”, where we are featuring news and updates happening with art organizations in Anne Arundel County. Tune in the last Friday of each month to connect and learn more about the art organizations that are making an impact in our community.
2020 came with a lot of unexpected challenges but despite these uncertainties, the arts community was here for us to provide comfort and connection in a time when these felt harder to hold on to. So as we look forward to a New Year filled with hope and healing, we can be certain the arts will continue to be here for us with innovative and creative programs. In this month’s blog post, we reflect on this past year and mark our calendars for new programs in this upcoming year.
We start off the blog with an opportunity to own a piece of art history from Future History Now’s 2020 mural collection. Annapolis Symphony Orchestra looks back on their virtual music programs that reached audiences not only locally, but around the world. The Banneker-Douglass Museum is celebrating the seven principles of Kwanzaa through musical performances, games, crafts, and more! If you are looking to start something new, Encore Creativity for Older Adults virtual choral program is now open for registration. Londontowne Symphony Orchestra is back with their first concert live streaming in January! And let’s end the winter by grabbing a blanket and warming-up in the comfort of your own home with the enlightening Winter Lecture Series hosted by the Annapolis Maritime Museum & Park (AMM).
Connect and learn more about these organizations by clicking their logos below. We hope you enjoy!
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Own a piece of art history from Future History Now’s 2020 Mural Collection!
With your help, Future History Now was able to produce four monumental, community-based public art projects in 2020, despite very trying circumstances, engaging youth in underserved communities, and gaining global recognition for our community along the way. We are proud to have been highlighted this year in Google’s “Year in Search – 2020” film, a New York Times documentary, a Bruce Springsteen music video, and Time Magazine.
We are truly grateful to our staff, volunteers, donors, and supporters for helping us continue our mission of empowering youth through the positive forces of art. Please consider supporting FHN’s first-ever poster fundraiser to help us continue our mission in 2021. Choose one, two, or all three posters available for the complete FHN 2020 Mural Collection. Visit our website for details.
Without your support, our program would not exist.
website – www.FutureHistoryNow.org
Instagram – @futurehistorynow.art
Facebook – Future History Now
Twitter – @FHN_art
Annapolis Symphony Orchestra looks back on 2020
As the curtain lowers on 2020, we look back on a year in which every arts organization scrambled to find creative alternatives to survive. The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra began planning for virtual performances in March. By the beginning of our season, we launched Symphony+, a new streaming platform, and offered an All-Access Household Pass subscription plan. The first two performances exceeded our wildest dreams. When pandemic restrictions tightened in November, leading to the cancellation of our Holiday Concert, we offered “Holiday Harmony: 12 Musical Days of ASO,” a free daily mini-performance from solo artists and small groups, to keep our audience engaged in this difficult time.
Music is healing and needed now more than ever. In looking ahead to 2021, we will continue to make use of our Symphony+ streaming platform to reach audiences locally and around the world. If there is a silver lining to any of this, it has opened our eyes to the reality of a global audience. We have had people from all over the world watching the ASO. We look forward to the day when we can perform in front of an in-person audience, but until the pandemic abates we are thankful to have a quality virtual option. We thank you for your support and invite you to learn more about Symphony+ at SymphonyPlus.org
Banneker-Douglass Museum’s Annual Kwanzaa Celebration 2020
Banneker-Douglass Museum is celebrating the seven principles of Kwanzaa through musical performances, games, crafts, and more! The program for BDM’s recent virtual Kwanzaa Celebration included: a special percussive musical performance; Zawadi (gift making) session; a Kwanzaa feast cooking tutorial; a discussion on the importance of community and intergenerational engagement; a virtual lighting ceremony; and a “Buy Black” marketplace. You can view the entire Kwanzaa Celebration on YouTube or at bdmuseum.maryland.gov
Click here for a full media advisory.
Encore Creativity for Older Adults Offers Virtual Choral Program
Amid the pandemic, the nonprofit Encore Creativity for Older Adults, based in Maryland, offers a “reinvented” virtual choral program, Encore University. The program offers singing and a large selection of classes in voice technique, music theory, and music history, for adults 55+. A current singer describes it as similar to a college course.
Encore University’s on-line Spring 2021 Semester will begin on Monday, January 25th and run through Thursday, May 13th. The program will offer an exciting and engaging curriculum of educational classes and rehearsal sessions, as well as new offerings that include “Yoga for Singers”, “The History of Black Classical Composers” and “Rhythm Happy Hour.” The weekly chorale sessions will rehearse an exciting repertoire including, “There is Sweet Music” by Lightfoot, “Over the Rainbow” arranged by Audrey Snyder, “Pure Imagination” from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, “Caged Bird,” based on a Maya Angelou text, and more. ROCKS singers will have a blast rehearsing “Turn Turn Turn,” “River Deep, Mountain High,” “More Than a Feeling,” “Dedicated to the One I Love,” “Good Lovin’,” and “Listen to the Music.” Sentimental Journey Singers, a chorus designed for those with early Alzheimer’s or other memory impairment, will delight the singers and their care partners, singing “It Had to Be You,” “High Hopes,” “Mambo Italiano,” and “What a Wonderful World.”
In addition to the return of many of Encore’s esteemed conductors and instructors from the summer and fall semesters, Encore is thrilled to welcome three new faculty members: California composer and yoga instructor Jenni Brandon, conductor and music educator Nevilla Ottley and percussionist Tom Teasley.
The Spring Semester will culminate in a VIRTUAL CHOIR CONCERT on Thursday, May 13th!
Registration is open now!
Encore University—Winter/Spring Program Overview Classes Begin: Monday, January 25, 2021 Classes End: Thursday, May 13, 2021
All Live Classes Online on Zoom; Video versions made available weekly
Tuition: $215 per person through Dec 29; $235 after Dec 29
Registration Deadline: Friday, Jan. 15, 2021
Register at Encore’s Web Site: Encorecreativity.org or call 301-261-5747
The Spring course catalog can be viewed by clicking here.
On-line registration for the Spring 2021 Semester is open, click here.
The Londontowne Symphony Orchestra is back!
We will have our first concert on Friday, January 22, at 7:30 pm. It is still too early for a live audience, so we will be streaming the concert live over Facebook and YouTube from the Riva Trace Baptist Church in Davidsonville. Login instructions will be made available when they have been determined.
The concert will begin with Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major with William Bloomquist, piano, Paul Bagley, violin, Kristin Bakkegard, violin, Dorothy Couper, viola, and Diana Curtis, cello. With no intermission, the concert will conclude with Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C major for String Orchestra under the direction of Anna Binneweg, the Music Director/Conductor of the LSO.
Warm-up this winter in the comfort of your own home with the enlightening Winter Lecture Series hosted by the Annapolis Maritime Museum & Park (AMM) beginning Thursday, January 7, 2021. The popular educational and informative series of eight wintertime talks provides rich and stimulating topics from an esteemed group of scholars, photographers, and historians. Lecture topics represent a diverse and relevant range of topics, from the traditional wooden shipbuilding and battles on the Chesapeake Bay to spotlights on waterfowl, oyster ecosystems, and fisheries.
Lectures will be held virtually Thursday evenings at 7 p.m., January 7th through February 25th, 2021. Admission is $10 per lecture and FREE for First Mate-level AMM members and above. Join at the $100 level, and admission to all eight lectures is free, along with many other perks of membership.
Lectures will take place virtually on amaritime.org. Pre-registration will be required.
The 2021 Winter Lecture Series is presented by Bay View Homecare, Homestead Gardens, and Cadia Healthcare of Annapolis.
Complete Schedule:
January 7 | 7 p.m. The Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse: A Chesapeake Bay Icon at Annapolis
Presenter: David Gendell | Author, Sailor, and Co-founder of SpinSheet and PropTalk Magazines
January 14 | 7 p.m. Chesapeake Bay Waterfowl: Exploring and Solving Mysteries
Presenter: Dr. Matthew C. Perry | Scientist Emeritus, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
January 21 | 7 p.m. Traditional Wooden Shipbuilding on the Chesapeake Bay & the Maryland Dove
Presenter: Pete Lesher | Chief Curator at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum
January 28 | 7 p.m. Oysters and Ecosystems: How the Eastern Oyster Shapes the Chesapeake Bay
Presenter: Jesse Iliff | Riverkeeper of South, West, and Rhode Rivers
February 4 | 7 p.m. The Mallows Bay-Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary: The Ghost Fleet and Beyond
Presenter: Dr. Susan Langley | Maryland State Underwater Archaeologist
February 11 | 7 p.m. The Battle of the Chesapeake, 1781: Military Decider for the American Revolution
Presenter: Dr. Bill Cogar | Executive Director of Historic Naval Ships Association (HNSA), Author
February 18 | 7 p.m. Racing on the World Stage: The 2021 America’s Cup and Olympic Sailing
Presenter: Gary Jobson | World-renowned Sailor, Author, Columnist, and Commentator
February 25 | 7 p.m. Changing Fisheries of the Chesapeake Bay: Radical Changes in Recent Years
Presenter: Lenny Rudow | Angler in Chief at Rudow’s FishTalk Magazine, Author, and Editor
For presenter biographies and topic details, please visit amaritime.org.
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