Night at the Byham

Tonight I went to see Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet at the Byham Theatre (the company does not reside Pittsburgh, but I’ll let it go.) There were numerous heart moments, so I shall consolidate:

1) The doorman with the neat moustache and facial hair greeted me. He rocks it.
2) I think I sat next to someone whom I knew in middle school. (If you are reading this, Person, forgive me for not saying anything. It’s just like, been a while.)
3) The performance was inspiring, and Pittsburghers asked really great questions at the ‘talk back’ session with Mr. King afterwards.
4) Downtown was hoppin’ after the show! The Pirates game had let out at the same time, there was a delightful throng of college kids with the cheap seats and old money crowding the streets.
5) Later in the evening, I attended a friend’s birthday (downtown*, of course) and saw more faces I haven’t seen in over 2 years, and made some wonderful new acquaintances. Who needs Friendster when you have Pittsburgh?**
6) I drove home listening to some wicked drum’n’bass on the late night public radio tip. (I forgot to mention in my WYEP that the music gets much more interesting after midnight.)

* Downtown: the new Lawrenceville. Or the new Garfield. I don’t know, I can’t keep it straight.

** That said, I Heart PGH has a Friendster profile – you know you wanna get up in the action. Myspace and all that jazz coming soon.

Arts Greenhouse

The Arts Greenhouse is an interdisciplinary project organized by the Center for Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon’s College of Fine Arts. They recruit, train and actually record young musical and performing artists. Their 2005-2006 season is just starting, in fact, their first workshop starts this Saturday. Members of the community act as staff in the educational workshops. Students learn about recording their music, including production and marketing skills.

If you know anyone who is interested in developing their hip hop or spoken word skills, call Kat Agres at 412.268.5279. The workshops will be held at ID Labs (5272 Butler Street) in Lawrenceville.

WYEP – 91.3 FM

Thanks to WYEP, I can’t listen to commercial radio anymore. And that’s a good thing. The station is listener supported, and they play a mellow, interesting mix of new and old music. I have to admit that sometimes the station gets a little too folksy for my tastes, but they also take requests. When a friend from out of town visited me, he was amazed to hear Johnny Cash played up right against the Pet Shop Boys. Bands I have heard about through ‘YEP through the years include Tegan & Sara, Raul Malo, Ray LaMontagne, Jump Little Children, Andrew Bird, Shivaree, Citizen Cope, the list goes on and on …

The station has a rockin’ website at:
http://www.wyep.org/

It contains great information on the CD Live! series and other community programs. (For example, they are building a new Community Broadcast Center.) Check out their concert calendar here:
http://www.wyep.org/con%5Fcal/

One other thing I like about the website is that you can actually see all of their playlists in case you didn’t catch the name of that weird blues tune you heard at 6am :
http://www.wyep.org/music_programs/index.asp

So forgo loud car commercials and abrasive commercial DJs forever … tune in to 91.3 and makes your ears happy.

PS – They canceled their membership campaign this fall, so this is a great time to start listening.

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An online community where you can link to other friends and see who is friends with who, an online version of 6 degrees of separation.