Midday

Today, a look at two museums in Baltimore with current exhibits that put a spotlight on individuals who are linked by their love of working with fabric, and the horrors of the Holocaust. Rebecca Hoffberger is the founder, director and principal curator of the American Visionary Art Museum. The AVAM exhibition “Esther and The Dream of One Loving Human Family” features the embroidery and fabric coll...

Steve Ross joins me now. The New York Times has called him the “Crown Prince of New York Cabaret. He is known for his interpretations of the Great American Song Book, particularly the work of Noel Coward, George Gershwin and Cole Porter. He has performed around the world, and tonight he’ll be at the piano at Germano’s Piattini here in Baltimore. Tonight’s show, ----An American in Paris,” features...

Today, a conversation about climate change -- and about what may have been our best opportunity to address climate change -- an opportunity that came and went decades ago. Tom's guest is Nathaniel Rich, the author of the new book “Losing Earth: A Recent History.” The book is an alarming critique of the decade between 1979 and 1989, when all the pieces seemed to be in place to reduce carbon emissio...

It's Thursday, and time again for our weekly visit with theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck and another of her reviews of the regional stage. Today, she tells us about Pantheon, the latest eclectic production from Happenstance Theater that's getting its world premiere at Baltimore's Theatre Project. In its new musical, the award-winning Happenstance quintet romps through a series of narratives that ble...

Today, it’s Midday on Money. With this season’s tax filing deadline fast approaching -- that’s by midnight this coming Monday, April 15, for you last-minute filers! – most Americans by now have encountered some of the biggest changes to the US tax code in more than three decades. Whether we wind up paying more taxes this year or less, planning for the future and increasing our financial literacy a...

The 439th Maryland General Assembly is in the history books. Legislators conducted business during the long final day of the session yesterday while mourning the loss of Speaker of the House Mike Busch, who succumbed to pneumonia on Sunday afternoon. Today, Tom unpacks which bills passed and which failed to prevail in the General Assembly. This year's legislature introduced 2,497 bills over the la...

On today' show, Delegate Maggie Macintosh joins us with reaction to the passing of Maryland House Speaker, Michael Busch who died yesterday, one day before the 2019 General Assembly Session comes to a close. Later, as the leadership in Annapolis changes, what’s ahead for Baltimore City? This morning, the City Council unanimously called on Mayor Catherine Pugh to resign immediately. Pugh is the lat...

To begin today's Midday on Music program, a conversation about the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the largest arts organization in the state of Maryland, and one of only 17 full-time orchestras in the United States. That means that the players of the BSO are hired for the full year, with the vacation and health benefits typical with most full-time jobs. Many orchestras around the country, including...

In Part I of today's Midday on Music program, we talked about some of the financial challenges the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is experiencing. In Part II of our program today, we're going to consider the unique challenges facing Baltimore's opera community. As expensive as it is to assemble and rehearse a world class symphony orchestra, it’s even more expensive to stage a grand opera. Not only d...

Part III of Midday on Music opens with a brief snippet from a comic opera by Derrick Wang, a work that the composer -- who is also a constitutional law scholar -- says was inspired by the friendship between two iconic figures in American history: Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the late Antonin Scalia, who passed away in 2016. Wang's opera is called Scalia/Ginsburg, and it will rece...

Today, on the April edition of Midday at the Movies, Tom puts the spotlight on director Jordan Peele's new horror-suspense flick, Us. Joining him in the studio are movie mavens Jed Dietz, the founding director of the Maryland Film Festival and Parkway Theater, and Elissa Blount Moorhead, a Baltimore filmmaker and creative partner at TGEN Film Studios. They discuss the cinematic structures and soci...

It's Thursday, and time for our regular studio sojourn with theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins us every week with her reviews of the Maryland regional stage. Today, she tells us of Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's new production of Henry IV Part II, one of the Bard's major historical plays, and the repertory companion to Henry IV, Part I, which the Company performed in tandem with Part II o...

It’s been two days since Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh announced that she would be taking an indefinite leave of absence due to her “deteriorating health,---- according to a statement. She is recovering from pneumonia, and taking a leave of absence on the advice of her physicians. There are several elected officials advising her to resign altogether. City Council President Jack Young is now servi...

Once again, Baltimore is rocked by a scandal at the highest level of government. Mayor Catherine Pugh has begun an indefinite leave of absence, citing the need to recover from pneumonia, amid calls for her to resign permanently from officials in Baltimore and in Annapolis. New revelations about business dealings with the University of Maryland Medical System, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross Blue Shi...

Two weeks ago, a controversial article appeared in the New York Times Magazine called “The Tragedy of Baltimore: How an American City Falls Apart.” It was written by longtime Baltimore resident and award winning journalist Alec MacGillis. The article painted a grim picture of our city and what we’ve been through in the years since the violence and uprising that followed the death of Freddie Gray i...

The music that opens this segment is a 16th century song called The Flowers of the Forest. It was written in memory of the thousands of Scottish soldiers who died in battle in 1513. To this day, this song is played when English or Canadian soldiers are killed in places like Afghanistan. This recording is the title cut on the latest CD from Ensemble Galilei, an early-music chamber group. It is also...

On today's News Wrap, President Trump says he’s exonerated, and off the hook. Democrats in Congress don’t quite agree. Investigations on numerous fronts continue. The President has also moved to completely dismantle Obama Care by joining a legal action that would eliminate the law, and with it, some of its most popular provisions, like coverage for pre-existing conditions. Senate Majority Leader M...

Tom's guest today is the new Poet Laureate of Maryland, Grace Cavalieri. It would be selling her talents short if we only called her a “poet.” She has indeed published more than 20 books of poetry. But she has also written more two dozen plays, some of which have premiered here in Baltimore, and she’s penned text and lyrics for opera, TV and film productions as well. Grace Cavalieri is also well-k...

It's Thursday, and Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck join us with another of her weekly reviews of the Maryland regional stage. This week, she spotlights Small House, No Secrets, the new musical at Fells Point Corner Theatre, produced as part of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. Small House, No Secrets is a collaboration between the celebrated singer-songwriter SONiA Rutstein (aka SONiA disa...

Today, a conversation about gerrymandering and the future of voting districts. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in two gerrymandering cases – one from Maryland, the other from North Carolina. Here in Maryland, a group of Republican voters contend that the state’s 6th Congressional District was unfairly redrawn in 2011 to favor Democrats. Gerrymandering, or the practice of manipula...

Last week, amid news reports of self-dealing by members of the board of directors of The University of Maryland Medical System (known as UMMS), the CEO of the system, Robert Chrencik, was placed on a leave of absence while the board hired an outside firm to conduct an audit of the System’s contracting practices and its conflicts-of-interest policies. Several board members have resigned, including...

On today's News Wrap: the Mayor of Baltimore seems to think that witch hunts aren’t limited to the Trump administration. As developments in the ever-evolving saga of the University of Maryland Medical System continue to unfurl, Mayor Catherine Pugh is in the eye of the storm amid allegations of conflict of interest and self-dealing by her, and nearly a third of the UMMS board. Baltimore Sun report...

Now, time for some Old Time Music...that's the name for a family of traditional Appalachian folk music styles that will be featured at a brand new festival this weekend. The father-and-son musical duo, Ken and Brad Kolodner, have organized the first-ever Baltimore Old Time Music Festival this weekend at the Creative Alliance in East Baltimore. Starting tonight and running through tomorrow night, t...

It's Thursday, and Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom in the studio for another of her weekly reviews of the regional stage. Today, she spotlights Dinner with Friends, the 1999 Off-Broadway hit about friendship and marriage that won playwright Donald Magulies the 2000 Pultizer Prize for Drama. A new production of this popular play is now on stage at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre. Direc...

In last Sunday’s New York Time’s Magazine, Pro Publica reporter Alec MacGillis chronicles the strained relations between the police and impoverished communities since the 2015 uprising. The story paints a grim picture of our hometown. The cover is emblazoned with a title that is depressing and sobering: How an American City Falls Apart: The Tragedy of BaltimoreIs our city falling apart? Did the 4...