Bela Fleck and Toumani Diabate on stage at the festival

World music Grammy winner Bela Fleck brings his banjo to collaborate with Marcus Roberts’ jazz trio. Sarod master Amjad Ali Khan comes from India to join tabla player Zakir Hussain and dancer Vijaylakshmi to share music and dance of the Indian subcontinent. Fiery classical violinist Catherine Leonard comes from Ireland to join Italian virtuoso Lorenza Borrani to explore Beethoven violin sonatas. Award winning folk and country songwriter Tim O’Brien brings his creative style to share the stage with innovative bluegrassers The Infamous Stringdusters. Master of New Orleans rhythm and blues Allen Toussaint will be there. The Flatlanders come from Texas. Guitarist John Piazzarelli and singer Jessica Molaskey add their original interpretations of the music of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. They — and dozens more musicians from classical, jazz, world, and Americana music — are headed to Savannah from 24 March through 9 April, for the Savannah Music Festival.

Great as that selection is on its own, it is no random gathering, either. As a port city, Savannah has been a crossroads and a meeting place for cultures, and hence, for music, since its founding in the eighteenth century. Each year, festival organizers consider strands of music that reflect the city’s diverse history and lively present day atmosphere, too. They extend the music through education programs and residencies in area schools, as well, and through what has become over the years a world renown competition for high school jazz bands, which includes a performance along Savannah’s river front. In another tip of the hat to the city’s past, many of the concerts take place in historic venues, among them the Telfair Academy and Christ Church.

The Savannah Music Festival online site has details of the seventeen day long schedule of day and evening concerts, talks, and other events, and if you can’t make it to Savannah, or aren’t able to take in all the shows you’d like while you are there, highlights of some events will be offered on line as well.

[Flickr photo by Bruce Tuten]

“Are you sure? But the screen is over there…”

He giggled with bemusement and pointed at the block labeled “Screen” on the movie theater’s computerized seating chart, then at the seats we’d just chosen for the 5:10pm showing of The King’s Speech. We figured these were the best spots available: about 9 or 10 rows up from the front and almost square in the middle. A sweet spot in one of the multiplex’s smaller theaters. Nobody else in the row. Nearly every seat was taken just a few rows behind us, save for a few straggling empties on the ends.

But our SF World Cinema ticket clerk, a skinny Thai teen with oil-black hair stylized into the type of hairspray-coated fluff that’s popular with guys under 25 in Bangkok, thought we were nuts, or maybe just hopelessly confused. Surely we weren’t foolish enough to sit that close to the screen, not with a handful of side-by-side seats still available in otherwise jam-packed rows towards the back of the theater.

He couldn’t bear to see us voluntarily damn ourselves to the dank bowels of Theater 9 hell–where we’d crane our necks and squint upwards at undiscernible blobs of color splashing across the screen–and clicked the two seats he felt were the sensible option: second-to-last row, middle, two of only five or six seats open in the row, all rows in front of us completely full. They were, in the eyes of this and presumably most Thais, the cozy option.

We declined his seating-chart life raft, returned the bemused smile, and against his better judgement he confirmed the seats and handed us our tickets. About 30 minutes and what felt like 10 bad movie previews later, we all rose for the traditional tribute to King Bhumibol and I turned around to survey the theater: almost every seat was taken… except, we were two of only five people in our row, and there was nobody in front of us.

The seats were perfect, but the Thai movie-going public clearly did not agree.

While attending the annual “Geek Spring Break” tech conference that is South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) in Austin, Texas, I sat in on a presentation about interactive storytelling using mobile devices.  For the rest of the conference, whenever someone asked me to name the most interesting concept I’d seen at SXSWi, I mentioned this panel.

It’s sort of an audio tour plus flash mob plus live theater plus….well, AVAdventure is hard to describe, but I can see possibilities for setting up productions that could really engage travelers, especially the eternally bored and cynical ones.

Everyone in a participating group downloads audio files to their mobile devices – iPods, phones, etc. – and everyone presses “Play” at the same time, then follows the “script,” which includes live actors appearing at certain times in the narrative.

At SXSWi, presenters Adam Stackhouse and Kelley Quinn described their most recent project: an adventure about American history run simultaneously in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia plus the National Mall in Washington, DC and a third set of participants online.  Several storylines were woven through the production (I cannot imagine the planning this must take) and certain things had to happen at certain times at all three locations.

The AVAdventures crew is currently working with Colonial Williamsburg on another project, and I think this is a perfect fit for the ongoing effort to paint history in rich, vibrant colors for visitors at living history museums.

Here is an attempt to describe what they do (direct link on YouTube) in the video below….and imagine all of that happening with some Ben Franklin-ish reenactors in breeches. Boggles the mind, but I’d love to try it.

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A small country on the northwestern edge of Europe: perhaps it is a bit surprising that its emigrant sons and daughters have felt such strong connection back to Ireland that there are strands of Irish culture in places from Australia to Alaska, Irish pubs in Santiago and in Hong Kong, people singing Irish music in Texas and in Finland.

If your thoughts may be turning toward Ireland in this Saint Patrick’s week, here are several stories to go along:

The city of Derry has had its Troubles, and its reasons to celebrate
Derry: healing through the arts
A concert on the Falls Road, where many aspects of Irish music and Irish history are part of the conversation An Evening in Belfast
Ireland’s far northwest has a sound all its own The Music of Donegal
Irish music you may not have heard

the photograph is of Siobhán Armstrong, who is playing a harp which is a replica of the medieval Trinity College harp, Ireland’s national emblem.
photograph made with permission of the artist, and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.