Baltimore Center Stage to Welcome Artists And Thought Leaders For Special Spring One Night Only Events

Baltimore Center Stage has announced a series of events that highlight the region's hottest talent and thought leaders throughout the Spring 2023 season. These Baltimore Butterfly Sessions and Sound Check concerts are intimate events which bring music, poetry, performing arts, and thought-provoking keynote addresses together to catalyze conversation and build awareness around today's most pressing issues.

"BCS aims to create a space for civic dialogue and fellowship with these events, which are firmly rooted in our local community," said Annalisa Dias, BCS's Director of Artistic Partnerships and Innovation. "We are so thrilled to partner with such incredible artists, musicians, and thinkers for our Baltimore Butterfly Sessions and Sound Check concerts, and we can't wait to welcome the community to enjoy the music, poetry, and conversation during these one-night only events."

Baltimore Butterfly Session: The Future of the Chesapeake

In partnership with Native American Lifelines and Backyard Basecamp

March 20, 2023, 5:00 PM-8:00 PM

Baltimore Center Stage's Deering Lobby

Free

For this special multigenerational Spring Equinox event in partnership with Native American Lifelines and Backyard Basecamp, we will gather to mark the turning of the seasons and reflect on our responsibilities to the land and waterways of the Chesapeake Bay. This Indigenous & Black-led evening will feature a potluck, crafts, seed giveaways, music, puppets, and more.

From 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM, Native American Lifelines and Backyard Basecamp will lead various activities, including puppet making, watercolor painting, and seed and plant gifting. Community members are invited to a potluck-style dinner with mint and sassafras tea starting at 6:00 PM.

At the Baltimore Butterfly Session, Keynote Speaker Tara Maudrie, an enrolled member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, will lead an interactive discussion about community food priorities with support from Atiya Wells and Jordan Bethea of Backyard Basecam. The musical guest will be Eze Jackson, an emcee, producer, and community organizer who recently founded the record label/collective EPIC FAM, a Baltimore-based entertainment and media company, unifying a collective of the City's best arts & culture creatives and multi-genre musical artists.

This session will also feature a crankie, a visual puppet art form that uses a scroll to tell stories, entitled Where the Water Goes, illustrated by Laura Stinson and operated by Nino McQuown and Cecilia Cackley. This free celebration of waterways and food ways on Spring Equinox is perfect for families, friends, and neighbors.

Sound Check: Ray Winder

March 31, 2023, 8:30PM

Baltimore Center Stage's Deering Lobby

$10; Free for BCS Members

Ray Winder will bring her dreamy cinematic tunes for one night only to the BCS Sound Check stage. Winder, a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer, is a creative force in Baltimore's music scene. Winder, who is from Baltimore, is a saxophonist, flutist and vocalist in multiple genres of music. She studied saxophone at the Baltimore School for the Arts, Tanglewood Institute, and the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University where she was awarded the Noble Levi Jolley, Sr. Jazz studies scholarship. She regularly performs with musicians in Baltimore, DC, NYC, and is in the process of recording her debut album "Vignettes". She is dedicated to the education of young people and musicians and works closely with students to mentor and create more opportunity for the youth to become involved in the music scene in Baltimore

Sound Check: Scott Patterson

April 14, 2023, 8:30PM

Baltimore Center Stage's Deering Lobby

$10; Free for BCS Members

Baltimore's multi-award-winning artist Scott Patterson will fill the Deering Lobby with his lux musical stylings. Guests will enjoy a blend of classical, soul, and rock, simultaneously futuristic and retro compositions. Patterson is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Afro House, a Baltimore-based organization committed to creating disruptive music culture. This work is done through live performances, such as the Afro House Concert Series, theatrical productions featuring Afro House's Astronaut Symphony, film, and collaborations with other organizations and artists. Since 2012 Patterson has toured with Camille A. Brown and Dancers. He is a contributing composer of the Bessie Award winning Mr. TOL E. RAncE and Brown's critically acclaimed work, BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play and ink. His compositions have been performed at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Belfast Festival at Queen's, White Bird, The Joyce Theater, and Debartolo Performing Arts Center.

Sound Check: Michelle J. Rodriguez

April 21, 2023, 8:30PM

Baltimore Center Stage's Deering Lobby

$10; Free for BCS Members

Lyrist, composer and musician Michelle J. Rodriguez will bring riveting original music from her joyful new musical Presencia to the Deering Lobby for one night only. Rodriguez writes and performs in the worlds of music and theater, exploring kids-of-immigrants stories, divinity, queerness, intuition, joy-as-resistance, healing and spaces in-between. Her music project MICHA was a finalist for NPR's 2018 Tiny Desk Contest with her song "Nena Nena Nena." Rodriguez is commissioned by Portland Center Stage, Baltimore Center Stage and Black Cap Productions. She received a 2022 grant from NYC Women's Fund for Media, Music and Theater, and is a Van Lier Fellow at Ars Nova in their Makers Lab.

Baltimore Butterfly Session: The Future of Labor

May 1, 2023, 7:00PM

Baltimore Center Stage's Deering Lobby

FREE

This May Day Baltimore Butterfly Session will explore the future of labor. As keynote for the evening, Bakari Jones, the EMPOWER Program Manager at Impact Hub, will help audiences imagine what's next for workers in Baltimore and beyond. The event will feature guests from Radical Evolution, a multiethnic producing collective committed to creating artistic events that seek to understand the complexities of the mixed-identity existence in the 21st Century, who'll share excerpts from Songs About Trains, their new theatrical project about immigration, labor, and Manifest Destiny. There will also be a special poetry feature by Baltimore's own national poetry slam champion Kenneth Something of the Black Arts District.