MUSIC ASO replaces Hamlisch With composer-conductor Marvin Hamlisch ill and unable to travel, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has switched its 8 p.m. March 16-17 pops series concerts to “Bond and Beyond.” Principal pops conductor Michael Krajewski will lead the ASO, featuring guest vocalist Debbie Gravitte, in a program of James Bond themes (including “From Russia with Love” and “Goldfinger”) and songs from ...

By Howard Pousner hpousner@ajc.com Atlanta artist Radcliffe Bailey, whose High Museum of Art exhibit “Memory as Medicine” was one of the city’s visual arts highlights last year, will be honored by the Atlanta Hawks as part of the team’s Black History Month salute on Wednesday night.  The still-touring exhibit included a 108-inch-tall baseball bat sculpture, and Bailey, who played spo ...

VISUAL ARTS WWII Japanese-American art at Breman Museum In Japanese, gaman means to bear the seemingly unbearable with dignity and patience. Those qualities are readily evident in the Breman Jewish Heritage & Holocaust Museum exhibition opening Sunday, “The Art of Gaman: Arts & Crafts from Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946.” The exhibit showcases more than 100 objects crafted by Japa ...

VISUAL ART Art of graffiti at Callanwolde starting Friday Graffiti forms one of those dividing lines in contemporary American life, much like presidential elections. Some people view it as nothing more than vandalism, while others see it as street art. For evidence of the latter, just witness the number of coffee-table books focused on the topic and the growing number of graffiti artists, as well as those i ...

DANCE Gwinnett Ballet names new leader Gwinnett Ballet Theatre has announced Wade Walthall, whose resume includes stints as a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Holland, National Ballet of Spain and Pacific Northwest Ballet, as artistic director. Walthall also been a featured guest artist with numerous national and international companies, touring with Rudolph Nureyev and Alexander Gudanov and per ...

VISUAL ART 695 Number of artists the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia has shown over a decade of presenting exhibitions (97 total), a milestone being marked Thursday. MOCA GA’s permanent collection has grown from 250 to 791 pieces during that decade. HOWARD POUSNER Nominees sought The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center is making a public call out for its 2012 Nexus Award, recognizing individuals who ...

Short films compress a century of cinematic know-how into a few minutes by Curt Holman In the late 19th century, early movie audiences watched short films while hunched over machines called Kinetoscopes. More than a century later, people still view short films in much the same way, just hunched over their computer screens instead.… [ Read more ] [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ] ...

The Breman Jewish Heritage & Holocaust Museum has a new leader, Aaron Berger, whose experience includes running the the Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art and the Albany Museum of Art. For the last six years, the Atlantan has worked as a consultant with museums nationally in the areas of fund-raising and management. Berger replaces Jane Leavey, the Midtown museum’s founding executive director, who retired in ...

THEATER Theatre du Reve’s ‘Balloon’ flies again After a sold-out run a year ago, Atlanta’s French drama troupe Theatre du Reve is bringing back “The Red Balloon,” the story of a young boy and a magical balloon with a mind of its own, based on the beloved 1956 French film. The adaption that opens Friday at Back Stage Theatre at 7 Stages has been tweaked to focus more on th ...

Book Review Fiction “A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty” By Joshilyn Jackson Grand Central Publishing 336 pages, $27.99 Meet the author 7 p.m. Thursday, Janaury 26, 2012. Launch party. Free, but RSVP required. FoxTale Book Shoppe, 105 E. Main St., Woodstock. 770-516-9989, www.foxtalebookshoppe.com. By Gina Webb Forty-five-year-old Ginny Slocumb and her 30-year-old daughter, Liza, remember exactly what it ...

It’s a favorite winter sport: second-guessing the Oscar nominations, especially the best picture nominees, as soon as they are announced. Though there were nine best picture nominees unveiled this week, there’s been no shortage of talk about which titles were undeserving and which ones got stiffed. We happened upon one smart Atlanta list of the 10 best movies — no surprise, since it was a ...

By Howard Pousner hpousner@ajc.com Emory University’s Cinematheque launches a series of 35mm screenings, “Painting with Light: 13 Masterpieces of the Art of Cinematography (1928-2002),” at 7:30 Wednesday. First up is a showing of the 1928 silent film “The Crowd” featuring a live performance by pianist and silent film accompanist Donald Sosin. The free screenings continue Wednesdays (except ...

By Howard Pousner hpousner@ajc.com The High Museum of Art will mount a major exhibit in February by Brian Donnelly, a New York artist who goes by the name KAWS. But KAWS’ graffiti and pop culture-inspired art-making already has caught the eye of some prominent High patrons. At the High’s third annual Collectors Evening, a $500-a-plate benefit at the W Atlanta Midtown on Friday night aimed at add ...

By Howard Pousner hpousner@ajc.com Idea Capital, an Atlanta independent arts funding group with the mission of supporting “Atlanta visionaries” who produce “innovative, risk-taking works unlikely to be funded by more traditional revenue streams,” has announced seven grants totaling more than $8,000. This year’s award recipients are Blake Beckham and Malina Rodriguez, Jeff Demetriou, Karen Shacha ...

By Howard Pousner hpousner@ajc.com The lobbyists will look a little different than usual on Tuesday as Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Robert Spano and Sugarland’s Kristian Bush are among those participating in the first Georgia Music Day at the Capitol. As Tuesday is officially proclaimed Georgia Music Day by the Senate and House, musicians representing diverse genres and music business lea ...