Young Audiences of Maryland will be celebrating its 65th Anniversary at our annual Taste the Arts X Gala and there are some great activities and fun surprises planned for the special occasion! Volunteering shifts will begin May 2-4 and continue all day on May 6th.

Although this is a gala, we look at it as more of a party and sometimes describe it as a "blue jeans to bow ties" event since we encourage guests to dress as they'd like.

Young Audiences of Maryland will be celebrating its 65th Anniversary at our annual Taste the Arts X Gala and there are some great activities and fun surprises planned for the special occasion! Volunteering shifts will begin May 2-4 and continue all day on May 6th.

Although this is a gala, we look at it as more of a party and sometimes describe it as a "blue jeans to bow ties" event since we encourage guests to dress as they'd like.

Executive Director, Queen Anne’s County Arts Council (QACAC)

Reporting to the Board of Directors the Executive Director (ED) will have overall strategic and

operational responsibility for the QACAC’s Centre for the Arts. The ED is responsible to expand

local revenue generating and fundraising activities; support and expand programs and

operations; maintain and expand web and media presence; and maintain and build

partnerships with local government and businesses.

The ideal ED candidate will:

Political science professor and federal budgeting expert Roy Meyers has been in the news recently discussing federal budget issues as the U.S. Senate has held hearings on reforming the budget process and an emergency spending bill to combat the Zika virus is being debated in Congress.

On April 13, Meyers testified before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee during a hearing on “Budgeting for Outcomes to Maximize Taxpayer Value.” The hearing was the second in a series focused on fixing the budget process and highlighted how outcome-based budgeting could improve congressional budget decisions.

On April 18, Brookings published a brief by Meyers titled “How to make budget process reform politically feasible.” In his paper, Meyers addressed what can be done to overcome barriers to budget reform that are still high.

“For advocates to overcome these barriers, they must describe how reforms will create results that politicians value. The reforms suggested in this report would increase the ability to establish strategic priorities and allocate resources towards those priorities, and that greater capacity would promote fiscal sustainability,” Meyers stated in the introduction.

In a USA Today article about the $1.9 billion emergency spending bill, Meyers commented on rhetoric surrounding the bill and how it is being perceived.

For complete coverage, see below.

April 13 hearing on Fixing Broken Budget Process (United States Senate Committee on the Budget) 
How to make budget process reform politically feasible (Brookings) 
Obama’s $1.9 billion Zika request: ‘Slush fund,’ or needed flexibility? (USA Today) 

Image: U.S. Capitol. Photo by Kevin Burkett, CC by-SA 2.0.

Award winning composer Susan Botti and poet Linda Gregerson will be on campus this week, presenting several events on April 27 and 28 that highlight their collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches in the arts. These will include a Meet the Composer talk and q&a with with Susan Botti;  Resonating Poetry, Words with Music with Botti and Gregerson discussing the collaborative process of creating a work together; and Twice Told Tales: Adapting Ancient Stories in Contemporary Arts, a talk by Linda Gregerson, currently UMBC writer-in-residence in the English department.

The culmination of their visit to UMBC will be Moon and Myth, a concert of contemporary vocal chamber music by Susan Botti. Renowned musicians Airi Yoshioka (violin), James Wilson (cello), and Carsten Schmidt (piano) will join Botti in her work Dido Refuses to Speak, featuring the poetry of Linda Gregerson. The world premiere of a new work for voice and violin, Mangetsu, commissioned by Yoshioka/UMBC will also be a highlight of the program.

Composer and soprano Susan Botti has an eclectic background which is reflected in her music. Her musical explorations have encompassed traditional, improvisational and non-classical composition and singing styles. Among Botti’s awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, and grants from Meet The Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Aaron Copland Fund, The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and the NY Foundation for the Arts. Her commissions include works for the New York Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra.

Linda Gregerson is the author of several collections of poetry and literary criticism. She is a Renaissance scholar, a classically trained actor, and a devotee of the sciences. Her awards include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the Consuelo Ford Award from the Poetry Society of America, three Pushcart Prizes, and the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine. She has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

These events are sponsored by the Vice President for Undergraduate Education; the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; the Dresher Center for the Humanities; CIRCA; and the Departments of Music, English, and Ancient Studies:

Wednesday, April 27th, 4:30 p.m.
Meet the Composer: Susan Botti
Music Department Conference Room (246 PAHB)

Thursday, April 28th, 10:00 a.m.
Resonating Poetry, Words with Music: Susan Botti and Linda Gregerson
The Music Box (151 PAHB)

Thursday, April 28th, 4:00 p.m.
Twice Told Tales: Adapting Ancient Stories in Contemporary Arts: Linda Gregerson
Dresher Center Conference Room (216 PAHB)

Thursday, April 28, 2016, 8:00 p.m.
Moon and Myth: Works by Susan Botti
Earl and Darielle Linehan Concert Hall

Images: Left, Susan Botti; Right, Linda Gregerson

A year after the Baltimore Uprising of 2015, UMBC’s Denise Meringolo and alumnus Joe Tropea recently joined WYPR’s “Midday” program to discuss their work to gather and preserve a diverse range of perspectives and experiences from the events of last year.

Meringolo, an associate professor of history and director of public history, and Joe Tropea ’06, history, ’08 M.A., historical studies, are collaborating on a project to archive materials from the Baltimore Uprising through a website that was launched last year. Since the project began, there have been thousands of submissions from community members.

“It’s really the work of public history to be working with communities, not just for them, and not just producing historical interpretations with the eye of having publics read them, but really working with people to develop interpretations that help them think about who they are, what’s going on around them, and how the tools of history can help them arrive at a deeper understanding and achieve their personal goals,” Meringolo explained during the segment.

Meringolo described how the website was launched quickly last year when her students wanted to be responsive to narratives that were being shared in the national news about the events surrounding Freddie Gray’s death. They wanted to find a way to represent the complexity of what was happening and to allow community members to control their own narratives and represent how they were feeling.

Joe Tropea, who is now digital projects coordinator at the Maryland Historical Society, heard about the website and collaborated with Meringolo on the project.

“We sensed the importance of what was going on. It was obvious to us that this was something people will study years from now, so we made a decision to get proactive about it,” Tropea shared.

Listen to the complete segment “Crowdsourcing History” on the WYPR website. Read more about the Preserve the Baltimore Uprising 2015 Archive Project.

Image: Denise Meringolo. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

What to Recycle: 

Aluminum cans, metals, paper, cardboard, glass, plastics.

Paper: In academic and administrative areas, paper is collected separately. 

What to Compost: 

DO NOT COMPOST: No liquids, grease cooking oil, plastic, Styrofoam, metal or glass. If you are not sure, do not throw the waste item into the compost bins. 

All food, food soiled paper, plants. 

Food 

• fruits & vegetables
• meat, poultry, seafood, shellfish, bones
• rice, beans, pasta, 
• bakery items, 
• cheese and 
• eggshells. 

Food soiled paper:

• includes waxed cardboard
• napkins & paper towels
• uncoated paper plates,
• tea bags
• coffee grounds/filters
• wooden crates
• pizza boxes

Plants: 

• floral trimmings
• tree trimmings
• leaves, grass, brush and weeds

The Collaborative Theatre Company, producers of last season’s sellout hit, The 39 Steps, announces a call for résumés for The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance. The Elephant Man will open the 28th Season at Fells Point Corner Theatre on September 2nd, 2016 and run through October 2, 2016.

We are looking for talented artists to fill the following design positions:

• Costume Designer
• Sound Designer
• Props Master

and the following technical positions: