As I leafed through the the Spoleto brochure some months back, I knew I had to see The Carolina Chocolate Drops when they came to town.

Last night, I saw them at the Cistern and they did not disappoint. 

The talented trio–Rhiannon Giddens, Justin Robinson, and Dom Flemons–bill themselves as an “African-American String Band,” and although they are often most closely associated with bluegrass, their songs ran the gamut from traditional Piedmont Stringband, to jazz and blues, and even a little hip-hop that doesn’t fall into neat, tidy categories. From Corn Bread and Butterbeans to Salty Dog to Hit Him Up Style, it’s all American music that’s to be enjoyed in a community setting.

My favorites were a gorgeous a capella song Giddens sang in Gaelic as well as the dancing.  They kept things informal and engaging, and I enjoyed the stories behind the music nearly as much as the songs themselves. 

All in all, it was a toe-tapping, knee-slapping, hand-clapping, get-up-and-dancing delight of a performance on on a pleasant evening. 

Yesterday evening, I headed down to the Holiday Inn at Folly Beach for the 5th Annual Felder Film Festival. I had stumbled upon this event last year, and it turned out to be one of my favorites, so it was one of the of the first things to get on my Piccolo schedule this year.

According to the creators, the festival’s mission is the following:

…to help train, develop, and promote South Carolinian motion picture directors, producers, writers, and actors, and to create a forum for them to compete in the national market.

The film shorts, most clocked in at 12 minutes or less, ranged from the deeply moving The Last One Standing to the comedic Cupcake, The Killer Kitten.

My favorites were Fear A Following, a treatise on paranoia, and Lost and Found, a thoughtful work on how guilt can block us. The retro exhibition film, Living Dolls, was creepy fun and reminiscient of the 70s TV thriller Night Gallery.

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Sundown Poetry Series–Paul Allen

Yesterday evening,  I attended an excellent Sundown Poetry Series reading by Paul Allen. His poems from his new collection, Ground Forces, were on target in describing the human condition as well as quite hilarious.  The new venue for the event, the City Gallery, provided a lovely backdrop of the series as well as air conditioning.

Allen also played guitar, and sang.  The line the stayed with me the most is, “In my mind, bi-polar is a bear with an interesting sex life.”

What a unique way to think of illness.

Ten Trees

After the reading, I went to check out the Ten Trees Exhibit and documentary by Sam Fleischner that was is in the back on the gallery. 

The exhibit is a theatre made of ten trees worth plywood, and the accompanying film, which was made in South Carolina–one of the largest producers of plywood–was shown in the structure. 

The film shows the entire process of the plywood manufacture from cutting the trees to finished product, on a truck, awaiting delivery.

The movie is very much like an episode of How It’s Made, except it doesn’t have narration or music.  The only sounds are the sounds of the production of the sheets (even with workers taking breaks and looking bored).

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In the tradition of Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead, Paula Vogel’s Desdemona, A Play About a Handkerchief, at the Chapel Theatre, explores a Shakespearean play from a different point of view. In Desdemona, the story of Othello is brought to life by the conversations of the women–Othello’s wife Desdemona, her maid, and Iago’s wife Emily, and Bianca, the local seamstress and courtesan.

The conversations between the women about class, men, marriage, and, of course, the handkerchief, are fast, furious, and funny as well as not safe for work. They would certainly be able to hold their own with the ladies from Sex in the City any time–especially while discussing Desdemona’s shocking clandestine activities.

It’s a delightful and provocative 90 minutes that, in spite of the women’s schemes and dreams, will lead to its tragic conclusion.

Yes, it is all the world to me

Thar dear old city by the sea!

There I was born, there i would die–

My dust with kindred dust must lie ,

In the dear old city by the sea.

–from Charleston by William Gilmore Simms

Yesterday morning, I went on the Charleston Poetry Walk given by The Poetry Society of South Carolina.

The walk started at Washington Square, were we learned about the life and works of Henry Timrod and Paul Hamilton Hayne. From there, we walked to 10 more locations from Waterfront Park to Tommy Condon’s to listen to Poetry Society members discuss poets with South Carolina connections from Josephine Pickney to Edgar Allen Poe (who was stationed at Ft. Moultrie, and may have gotten some of his inspiration for Annabel Lee from his time here.)

The poems of Elizabeth Verner Hamilton stood out to me the most. I need to read more of her works.

I even got into the act when I was asked to read a Gullah work by Dubose Heyward and managed not to embarrass myself.

It was a wonderful (if somewhat hot) day for exercise and education.

Last night, I caught Newman/Brahms featuring The Spoleto Festival Orchestra and the Grammy nominated Imani Winds (pictured right) at the Gaillard Auditorium.

The first work, David Newman’s Concerto for Winds was a modern and interesting showcase for the talented quintet.  I especially enjoyed the jazzy/cool clarinet movement.  Newman himself was on hand to witness the performance.

The group will perform today at 5 pm at the College of Charleston, and they are worth watching.

Next was the Brahms first Symphony, beautifully played by the orchestra under the direction of Spoleto Festival USA Music Director Emmanuel Villaume to rousing applause.

It was another wonderful night of music.

The Piccolo Spoleto Spolight Concert Series is my favorite Spoleto event. Over the years, I have throughly enjoyed the brilliant music and performers, and if time and schedule permitted, I would attend each concert.

This year’s series of concerts have moved from its primary location at the City Gallery to the New Tabernacle Fourth Baptist Church on Elizabeth Street. While the City Gallery provided a beautiful backdrop to the concerts, it was was too small. The church –featured in the photo on the right– is a larger, more comfortable and just as stunning.

The music fest program, titled Seasons by violinist Lee-Chin Chow, cellist Natalia Khoma, and pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky, featured works from Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Astor Piazzolla, and finished up with one by Vynnystsky.

All the music was beautifully played, and the acoustics of the church made a difference, I especially liked the work by Piazzolla,Verano Porteno. It was in parts dark and moving, yet moving. Lost Tango by Vynnysky was great. His emotion and energy on the piano is fun to watch.

An Afternoon of Porgy and Bess

Today, I took in An Afternoon of Porgy and Bess. The program, which played to a capacity crowd, featured selections from the Heyward/Gershwin opera by soprano D’Jaris Whipper-Lewis and tenor/baritone Richard Blakeney. Robert Rosen provided a excellent overview of the history surrounding the work with his A Short History of George Gershwin in Charleston.

Both Whipper-Lewis and Blakeney, accompanied by Chamber Music Charleston thrilled with their beautiful renditions of Summertime, Oh, I Plenty O’ Nuttin, and It Ain’t Necessarily So. I found Whipper-Lewis’s Strawberry Woman especially beautiful.

If you can, do catch this gorgeous program of history and music time next around. It’s a lovely way to spend an hour.

Seeking A Landscape

Next, I headed to the Gibbs to see the exhibitLandscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art.

Dan’s post about race and art got me thinking about my own skittishness on the subject of slavery and plantation life. My maternal grandparents were sharecroppers in Marlboro County, SC, and my mother would tell my siblings and me how she picked and chopped cotton for $2.00 a day, how she hated it, and what she did to avoid it.

She also told us about how my grandfather picked 1000 lbs of cotton in one day, and how proud he was of that. I thought about how difficult that must have been and how determined he was to excel at something. For my grandparents, “smart” implied more industriousness than intelligence, and my grandfather was known as especially smart.

As I toured the exhibit which, had art ranging from the pastoral to the provocative, I thought a lot about my mother, grandparents and other sharecroppers and slaves who worked those fields with the hope of a better life.

I thought the exhibit well done and thoughtful. Some of the works, a photo of the charred remains of a lynched man and a photo of a slave woman stripped to the waist were a bit jarring, but it’s all part of a journey that our country is still traveling.

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More photos from yesterday’s Reggae Block Dance.

The headliner, Slice International kept the party going despite some early technical difficulties. It was my first block dance, and I enjoyed the music, dancing, and people spotting.

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