Whether on stage or on the page, Gina Cornejo has always brought a focus and fluidity to her identity. For now, she uses the pronouns she/her and they/them. "This is me in my own transition of, not only in this time of coming into my own voice within my work, but coming to my own very gentle identifying as queer, identifying as a queer female, even Latina," Cornejo said. "I'm very much coming to terms with all these identifiers. I just want to keep it open and available."

BPR Arts and Performance

Storyteller Gina Cornejo strives to draw sweat, from herself and her audience

"Searching For Jimmy Page" isn't merely the title of Christy Hallberg's debut novel. It was an obsession that once compelled Hallberg to hatch a wild plan to meet the Led Zeppelin guitarist. In 2005, Hallberg learned that Page and Brian May of Queen were to judge a guitar competition in London. Hallberg flew there and worked her way backstage at the Hammersmith Palais, armed with an envelope that included a personal letter, a photo she hoped he would autograph and part of the book she had started as her Master's Degree writing thesis. "All I could do was chase him and I stopped him at the top of the stairway and just screamed the only thing that came to mind: 'Jimmy, I came all the way from America just to meet you,'" she recalled. "It's not my most dignified moment, but there you go." Over the subsequent years, Hallberg crafted that quest into the spine of what became her book. Her central character takes the same flight to the same competition in "Searching For Jimmy Page."

While 'Searching for Jimmy Page,' on foot and on paper, Christy Hallberg grew into an author

Live music venues in and around Asheville are back to hosting shows, but it's anything but business as usual. Amid evolving Covid-19 restrictions, venues have adopted their own safety protocols on top of local requirements and those required by the artists, affecting audiences, backstage crew and event staff. Still, behind the scenes, venue managers are sweating it out. "Our biggest lesson learned here is being mask police with 2,000 people in a big, open crowd is really, really hard," said Chris Corl, general manager of Harrah's Cherokee Center. He was among a half-dozen venue managers and directors in a recent online town hall hosted by the Asheville Area Arts Council. Forum speakers reported a range of concerning realities. Among them, many touring artists are postponing or canceling appearances. About a quarter of people who purchased tickets in advance are asking for refunds and another 25 to 30 percent simply aren't showing up, further cutting into food and drink sales.

As live music heats up, local venues are chilled by Covid-related challenges

A little after noon Sunday in Asheville's Pack Square, the first sounds indicating a turning point for the Asheville Symphony Orchestra came from Alicia Chapman, an oboe player testing out a series of reeds for optimal outdoor performance. "There is a pilot light, a flame that's inside when I play music," Chapman said. "I was a little afraid, 'oh my gosh, it's dimming,' but when you have a chance to actually, like today, be around your colleagues and your loved friends and make music together, that pilot light just flames up again and you realize 'ahh, there I am.'"

Asheville Symphony Ignores Clouds Overhead, And Ahead, For Celebratory Comeback Concert

In one sense, Christopher Paul Stelling is always ready to tour. He drives a Ford Transit van with a lofted bed in the back, and bins of albums, shirts and buttons beneath, along with a makeshift lounge behind the front seats. "I got that with 25,000 miles on it, it's got 155,000, I got it in 2017 and I didn't tour last year," he said. "You kinda use vehicles like Kleenex." On this day, he's pulled the van into the parking lot of Summit Coffee in the River Arts District and walked to a nearby picnic table to talk about the path to his newest record, "Forgiving it All." Stelling launches the album Sept. 25 at the Grey Eagle in Asheville.

Christopher Paul Stelling Turns To The Quiet Of Isolation To Make His Introspective New Album

Tom Godleski's newest play sounds far different than when he first brought it to Asheville's Magnetic Theatre . "He presented me with a very rough script. It was not written in a play format at all," recalled Artistic Director Katie Jones. "But he had a pretty decent story and then some beautiful songs." "They said 'We are going to do your play, but it's not ready,' and I was like 'what?'" Godleski said. "I thought it was okay. I was satisfied with it and I was happy with it." "I cannot tell you how many plays I read that have great dialog and nothing happens," Jones said. "But in this, it was like, something's happening. We just need to help him hone in on the characters' voices and the dialog." The finished play, as it will premiere on Magnetic's stage, is a bluegrass musical called "The Sparrow and the Whippoorwill," and it tells the entwined stories of a war veteran and a nurse who cares for him. It premieres Sept. 10 and runs through Sept. 25 at the Magnetic.

Buncombe Turnpike's Tom Godleski, As Playwright, Learns To Write For Theater

Taurus Lenoir remembers journaling as a 10-year-old. As an adult rapper, she rarely writes anything down before she hears a beat. Lenoir said the music inspires her words. "My sister encouraged freestyling off instrumentals, not even writing a song, just freestyling on that beat, going off the top of your head. So we would just do that for fun," Lenoir recalled. "She knew what she wanted to do. Me, I was just flowing with the wind. I don't think she was like 'Pursue this rap career,' but I think she was just like 'You got talent right here.'" Lenoir goes by the stage name Suruat --it's her first name spelled backwards--and she works in a form of rap music called trap. That often combines minimalist beats with graphic lyrics. She's performing her music as part of a comedy lineup Sept. 2 at the Orange Peel and over Labor Day weekend as part of the Goombay Festival in downtown Asheville. Lenoir grew up in Asheville's Hillcrest Apartments, where she says she was picked on by other kids. She

Under Stage Name Suruat, Asheville Rapper Taurus Lenoir Hopes To Flip Cultural Script

Oxalis is a weed-like ground cover that can quickly take over a lawn. Travis Lowe saw "Oxalis" as an apt metaphor and appropriate title for his latest stage play, about one woman's experience with bipolar disorder. "It can have pretty flowers and it's very hard to kill," Lowe said. "So it can look like it's completely dead for long periods of time and then seemingly come back to life." "Oxalis" is premiering through Different Strokes Performing Arts Collective and it's Lowe's fifth play produced locally. Performances of "Oxalis" are Sept. 2-5 at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts.

With New Work, Asheville Playwright Motivated To Counter Tropes Of Bipolar Disorder

Brittany Jackson and two friends launched a film festival five years ago to showcase work they made, along with short films and music videos from friends. Today, the Cat Fly Film Festival largely serves the same purpose, though that group of friends has widened, thanks in part to the festival. "When we first had the idea, we were like, 'We're gonna screen to empty rooms,' like this is gonna be the band that nobody comes to their show for," Jackson said with a laugh. "But everybody turned out and loved it, and so we were like, 'Well, we've probably gotta do it again, right?'"

Asheville's Cat Fly Film Fest Caters To Short Works On Small Budgets

Even when he dropped out of high school at 16, hopped trains and hitchhiked his way out of Southern Indiana, the man known to friends and fans today as Cactus believed he was on a mission. " I didn't run away, I ran to," Cactus said. "I always knew there was more out there and I wanted to find it as quickly as possible." Cactus is the founding ringmaster of Secret Agent 23 Skidoo , an amorphous, horn-based funk hip-hop band with music written for families with young kids. Skidoo won a Grammy Award in 2016 for Best Children's Album. The band just released its second album in collaboration with the Asheville Symphony. And Cactus has a new audiobook, his first, designed for young people, to teach personal and cultural storytelling through songcraft. Secret Agent 23 Skidoo performs on the second night of the LEAF Downtown Festival in Asheville, Aug. 28.

Seeing World Through Child's Eyes Inspired Skidoo To Make Music For All Ears

Indigo De Souza could be a spokeswoman for the DIY ethos. Of the more than dozen tattoos along her legs, arms and hands, several came from her own hand. "I stick and poke a lot of them, just with a needle and ink. I did this one, this one and this one," she said, pointing around her legs. "Like this one is a drawing I did when I was little. And this is an image of the church, this church." This church-turned-residence, in Madison County, is where De Souza has lived since January. Friends come over to chill in the wide-open former worship hall downstairs. Crammed into a small, quiet space upstairs, there are guitars, keyboards and a couple of weather-beaten drums. This is where De Souza's DIY musical expressions begin taking shape.

'Duality Of My Brain' Guides Asheville's Indigo De Souza To Coat Downbeat Lyrics With Upbeat Music

Twenty-eight years ago, Glenis Redmond was a clinical counselor for the state of South Carolina and the mother of twin toddler girls when she learned her excruciating condition had a name, Fibromyalgia. After absorbing the ramifications of her diagnosis, she recalls thinking of a prescient line of verse from the poet Lucille Clifton. "'Everyday something has tried to kill me and it's failed,' and it was an awakening of sorts," Redmond recalled. "That poem made me think, 'Well, if you're going to be sick, if you're going to not feel well, what's going to make you want to get up in the morning?'" Redmond had come from a family of storytellers, and she first wrote and performed poetry as an outlet of personal expression. "I was worried about getting whatever toxins--mentally, emotionally, psychologically, culturally--I was bent on getting that out of my psyche, out of the vessel of who I am," she said. Before long, she evolved into one of the country's eminent voices connecting contemporary

Poet Glenis Redmond Fights Through Pain, Both Personal And Historical

Terry Roberts is like many who are certain they have a novel somewhere inside them. He'd go to work every day and carve time in the early mornings or quiet of twilight to writing he now regards as dreadful. "It was dreadful in the sense that I was struggling to find a voice, to teach myself how to write fiction," Roberts said. "And while I think I had a lot of imagination, I didn't have any training and I didn't quite know yet how to tell a story." He continued writing into his mid-40s before beginning what became his debut novel. He was 55 when a publisher printed that book and now, at 65, Roberts' fourth novel is out, titled "My Mistress' Eyes Are Raven Black." Roberts reads selections from the book Aug. 18 at Malaprop's Books in Asheville and Sept. 14 at the Hot Springs Library .

hubhopper

BPR Arts and Performance

hubhopper