Wypr: The Signal Podcast

After a long career as a visual artist, Baltimore painter Jean-Pierre Weill has written his first book.  It’s a children’s book – for adults – and it’s an elegantly simple crystallization of our grownup search for happiness through a maze of doubts and longings.  Actually, to say that Weill has ‘written’ this book is to credit him with only half the work he’s put into it.  Each page of the one hundred and eighty four pages in this story is supplemented with the author’s original artwork, done in watercolor and pen & ink.  Here’s Jean-Pierre Weill reading from his children’s-book-for-adults, The Well of Being.

This holiday season, local artists might want to add to their holiday wish-lists a “Ruby.”  Over the next year, The Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance will be awarding a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in Rubys Grants to qualified applicants seeking to fund new creative projects.  GBCA Grants Program Manager Sonja Cendak visits with The Signal’s Aaron Henkin to talk about how the program works.

Madison Smartt Bell is best known as a novelist, but he has always written short fiction as well. Releasing a collection of seemingly unrelated short stories is no easy feat in the evolving world of publishing, but Bell has found a rather unique approach. He joins producer Lisa Morgan to talk about his new book, "Zig Zag Wanderer," which brings together two decades of short stories set in the US, Haiti, and beyond.

This past Thursday night, festive crowds gathered on the cobblestones at Mount Vernon Place to celebrate the annual lighting of Baltimore’s Washington Monument.  The statue of George Washington looked regal as ever, perched atop his marble column amidst the colored lights and fireworks, but the venerable structure has suffered nearly two hundred years of wear and tear.  The truth is, it could use a makeover, and, as Aaron Henkin reports, it’s about to get one. For more info on the restoration project, check out the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy

December 6th through the 8th, Baltimore’s Theatre Project will host a visiting production that asks us to re-evaluate our stereotypes about Muslim women.  Unveiled is a one-woman play, written by (and starring) Rohina Malik.  The playwright and actress spoke with The Signal’s Aaron Henkin by phone from her home in Chicago.

Celebrated Baltimore novelist Sujata Massey recently took the spotlight at a Stoop Storytelling event titled, “It’s a Mystery:  Stories about the unanswered questions that haunt our city, our families, and ourselves.”  Massey loves to write a good mystery, but as you’ll hear, it’s not so fun when a real-life mystery lurks right inside your own home.

Have you ever taken a drawing class, the kind where you draw a live model?  Most of those models just do the work on the side, here and there, to make a few extra bucks.  But there are some lucky ones who have agents, managers who treat them like superstars and tend to their every need.  Producer Aaron Henkin takes us inside one of the most exclusive modeling agencies around, The Drawing Zoo.

Singer/songwriter Kristen Toedtman currently splits her time between Baltimore and Los Angeles.  Out on the West Coast, she keeps busy as a session singer and a choir leader.  But she frequently heads back East to perform with the local super-group she helped to found, The Baltimore Afrobeat Society.  Toedtman is in town to record part of an upcoming double EP, and she drops in for a visit with producer Aaron Henkin.

Heather Rounds’ novel, There, follows a young American journalist working in the northern Kurdish zone of Iraq as the region slowly regains its footing after years of war and upheaval. Not structured like a traditional novel, "There" is more a series of stories, impressions, and memories laced together from snatches of conversations, chance encounters, and pages of notes and journal entries. The fragments lend a surreal quality to the story; the rules of time and space are suspended, as in dreams. Heather Rounds joins producer Lisa Morgan to talk about “There.” 

After a long career as a naval architect, Wilbert McKinley, Jr., is starting over.  This time, he’s building an entire fleet by himself – out of Legos.  Commodore McKinley’s educational Teach Fleet is the story of a man who finally discovers what he’s meant to do.  He becomes a visionary artist and a mentor.  As it happens, he’s enjoying a second childhood along the way. Producer Aaron Henkin brings us the story.

The banjo has been on a long, strange musical trip since its first appearance in America.  The instrument was first fashioned by enslaved Africans during Colonial times, a musical descendent of their native kora.  From there, the banjo rang out through the hills and hollers of Appalachia, a mournful accompaniment to mountain balladeers.  Meanwhile, the strumming of the plectrum banjo found its way onto early jazz recordings.  Then along came the fast-picking Bluegrass style of Bill Monroe.  Recently, the banjo has been enjoying a warm embrace in the world of contemporary rock music, from Modest Mouse to Mumford & Sons.  Now, local singer / songwriter Jacob Panic is stretching the banjo’s boundaries one step further, and he visits with Signal producer Aaron Henkin… Check out Jacob Panic at: www.facebook.com/jacobpanicmusic and www.jacobpanic.bandcamp.com

The New Black is a powerful documentary that explores the complex issue of gay rights within the African American community. From church pews and conference rooms to street corners and kitchen tables, the film reveals the evolution of this divisive issue, and how outside forces influenced voters on both sides leading up to the historic vote for ballot Question 6 in Maryland in 2012, a referendum that legalized same-sex marriage in the state.  Director Yoruba Richen spoke to producer Lisa Morgan about “The New Black.”

A trip to the pharmacy is, let’s be honest, kind of a drag.  You wait in line.  You give your name.  You watch them rifle through the bags. If you’re lucky, they have your prescription ready.  You pay, and you’re done.  On a good day, you might get a half-smile and a muttered, ‘hello,’ from your pharmacist.  It wasn’t always this way.  Before the modern-day pharmacy, there was the bygone era of the apothecary.  And before pharmacists were relegated to their roles as rubber-stampers of doctor-prescribed medicines, there were herbalists who used their encyclopedic botanical knowledge to create and dispense hand-crafted remedies.  Well, what’s old is new again.  The Signal’s Aaron Henkin has the story…   Upcoming community education events with Oherbals herbalist Olivia Fite:   KITCHEN MEDICINE A one-hour class on how to use food as medicine & medicine as food Saturday, November 9th MESH Baltimore Skill Share event 1-4pm Christ Lutheran Church 701 S. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21230   KITCHEN MEDIC

The Tuvan throat-singing ensemble Alash is currently touring the US and on its way to Baltimore for a concert at Towson University’s Stephens Hall Theatre.  Aaron Henkin talks with the band’s interpreter, Sean Quirk, about the human voice’s ability to act as a sonic prism…

Signal contributor Jeff Trueman recently had a surprising and rewarding experience sharing his love of classical music with a couple of wide-eyed, adolescent kids at a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert. The event inspired him to reach out to conductor Marin Alsop with a request for an interview. As you’ll hear, Jeff is an irrepressibly curious (and rather unpredictable) interviewer, and Maestra Alsop handled his wide-ranging questions with characteristic grace and humor….

Many of us have heard of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but did you know that Baltimore has a fringe festival, too?  Charm City Fringe is a new theater festival that aims to highlight and expand the thriving “fringe” arts community in Baltimore. By creating a venue in which a variety of artists and theater companies can come together, the hope is that some cross-pollination will occur, leading to new ideas and expanding audiences. Festival co-founders Zachary Michel and Michael Brush join the Signal’s Lisa Morgan in studio with a preview of Charm City Fringe… 

“It’s what you didn’t learn in high school history.”  That’s how Bernard Kinsey describes the world-class collection that he and his wife, Shirley Kinsey, have amassed over the years. The Kinsey Collection is a world-class showcase of African American art and artifacts spanning more than 400 hundred years, it’s been showing at museums around the country to critical acclaim, and it opens November 2nd at Baltimore’s Reginald F Lewis Museum.  On the eve of the Baltimore opening, The Signal’s Aaron Henkin got a preview and spoke with founders Bernard and Shirley Kinsey…

Back in 2004, on Halloween, we invited a talented local performer to join us for a special reading of Poe’s most famous poem.  Every Halloween since, we’ve made a tradition of unleashing this diabolical archival recording, and this week we’re happy to summon it forth from the crypt once again.  Ladies and gentlemen:  Tony Tsendeas reading “The Raven.”

www.stoopstorytelling.com)" width="189" height="300" style="float: right;">Here’s a story from the “Haunted” Stoop event about a Baltimore police officer’s first official night on the job.  Officer Edward Doyle-Gillespie stepped to the microphone and told this tale…

www.stoopstorytelling.com)" width="263" height="300" style="float: right;">Kate Pratt is a transplant coordinator and a certified eye bank technician.  She shared this recollection in front of a live audience at a Stoop event titled, “Haunted:  Stories of ghosts, regrets, and things from the past that won’t stay in the past.”  Here’s Kate Pratt…