SMALL SCALE, LARGE EXPERIENCE
Hearing top musical acts in an intimate setting adds layers of pleasure that arenas or large concert halls simply can’t match. While teenagers and college kids flock to huge venues, in part for the spectacle of it, their elders want something a little less frantic and deafening, with minimal pyrotechnics but maximum musicianship.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID
Plato would have recognized Brian Hicks straightaway as a “gadfly,” the philosopher’s term for someone who provokes the power structure and lampoons foolishness.
CONNECTING ARTISTS AND PATRONS
Mystery, and mastery, are the linchpins of Charleston Supported Art (CSA), a program founded in 2013 by seven women intimately involved in the area arts community. Their goals: to stem an outflow of contemporary artists from the Charleston area and introduce a wider audience to their work.
A LIVELY ENSEMBLE
It’s a cliché born of a dozen movies. Formally dressed dinner guests, having finished a sumptuous repast, settle into a drawing room with their brandies and liqueurs to enjoy the evening’s entertainment: live classical chamber music. Within minutes, eyelids heavy, they are nodding off. This popular image distorts the reality of a musical form that can be vibrant and invigorating. “It scares people away in some cases. They’re not sure how they are supposed to act or what they are going to hear,” says Sandra Nikolajevs, president and artistic director of Chamber Music Charleston (chambermusiccharleston.com), now in its ninth season.
DOROTHEA BENTON FRANK: THE NOVELIST AT EASE
On a sun-splashed day in her new Sullivan’s Island home, Dorothea Benton Frank nibbles on a piece of cake from the Peninsula Grill, sips a cool glass of ice tea and muses on the fates that have brought her, the Bard of the Beach, to this pass, a New York Times best-selling author whose 16th novel, All the Single Ladies, debuts this summer.
MUSIC SPEAK
Do you know an allemande from an arpeggio? A bagatelle from a badinerie? Does the difference between a fugue and an étude elude you?
AN ALCHEMY OF ARTS
Accomplished teaching is an art in itself, and that art is in illuminating a path to discovery. It is the drawing out, as Ashley Montagu wrote, not the pumping in.
CHARLESTON’S POETRY REVIVAL
In an era often indifferent to poetry, the Lowcountry is enjoying an energetic revival of the form, one rivaling the celebrated Charleston Renaissance of the 1920s.
THREE DECADES OF DISTINCTION
When Jason Nichols took the helm of the Charleston Concert Association (CCA) in 1984, his headquarters was a small rental house on Stoll’s Alley with an upturned door for a desk. It was also his home, mainly distinguished by an eccentric ticketing device.
ALL FOR THE SHOW
Call it the never-a-dull-moment school of entertainment. Effervescing with energy, Brad and Jennifer Moranz come to it as naturally as footlights to greasepaint, as Gilbert to Sullivan.
