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Things To Do in Savannah – February 2011

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When I started looking for things to do, festivals, events and celebrations for the month of February, I didn’t think about history or presidential birthdays – all I could think of was little red hearts, roses, chocolate, champagne and maybe even a romantic weekend getaway for two. At least, that’s how I imagine a perfect Valentine’s Day.
Click here to get ideas about what to do for Valentine’s day in Savannah.  Then, let’s continue with the rest of the month. After all, there is a lot more to February in Savannah, GA, than Valentine’s Day events.

Savannah Restaurant Week
Yes, we know – the event started already on January 28 and probably shouldn’t make it on the list for February, but who can resist a restaurant week? During this event you can visit participating restaurants and get a three course meal for $30. Maybe you can celebrate Valentine’s Day early since this year Valentine’s Day itself falls on a xxday anyway. Savannah Restaurant week continues until February 6, 2011. Check out our special Restaurant Week page for details and participating restaurants.

In addition to celebrating Valentine’s Day, the month of February is also a time of year when we celebrate history. In Georgia, we have the Georgia History Festival taking place February 1 – 11, 2011. This festival offers a variety of different activities and events for both young and old. You might remember this event as Georgia History Days.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Saturday Feb. 6, 2011 – Super Museum Sunday
On this day you can visit many of Georgia’s museums for free. Bring the whole family for a day out exploring our history.

Feb. 11, 2011 – Georgia Day Parade
School children participate in this parade led by Oglethorpe himself.

Check out our special Georgia History Festival page for all the details.

Also in February, Savannah Black Heritage Festival from February 1 – 13, 2011. The highlight of the event is Grand Festival Day, a day of top entertainment is held in the Savannah Civic Center’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Arena on Saturday, February 12, 2011.

For more details, visit our special page for Savannah Black Heritage Festival.

President’s Day weekend is going to be an action-packed weekend in Savannah, with two festivals at the same time. First up, the book festival.

Savannah Book Festival has a new date this year. The festival is scheduled for February 18 – 20, 2011, which is a new date for this festival. During this three-day event, you get the chance to mingle and rub elbows with authors and book lovers. Read more about the festival right here – Savannah Book Festival

One of the most popular events this month is the Irish Festival also taking place on February 18 – 20, 2011, which is said to be the largest Irish Festival in the South. Not bad! Four stages, irish dance, music, food and much more. Read more on our special page about the Savannah Irish Festival.

Savannah Music Festival Adds Acts to 2011 Schedule

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SAVANNAH MUSIC FESTIVAL ADDS ADDITIONAL ACTS TO 2011 SCHEDULE
More than 100 varied performances now make up Georgia’s largest musical arts event

The 2011 Savannah Music Festival (SMF) has added four more acts to its 2011 festival, which begins March 24th and runs through April 9th.
(Remember to take a look at Coastal Companion’s special page for the Savannah Music Festival for more info about the festival.)

Celebrated North Carolina folk-rockers The Avett Brothers, sacred steel virtuoso Robert Randolph and his Family Band, a rare one-man show with Citizen Cope, and the acclaimed Low Country rock ensemble Band of Horses will each play one SMF concert. Tickets for these four performances go on sale at 10 a.m. on Friday, January 28, at 216 E. Broughton Street, 912-525-5050 and online at www.savannahmusicfestival.org.

The Avett Brothers is a folk rock band from Concord, North Carolina. The band is made up of brothers Scott and Seth, who play the banjo and guitar respectively, and Bob Crawford on the stand-up bass. The Avett Brothers combine bluegrass, country, punk, pop melodies, folk, rock and roll, honky-tonk, and ragtime to produce a sound described by the San Francisco Chronicle as having the “heavy sadness of Townes Van Zandt, the light pop precision of Buddy Holly, the tuneful jangle of the Beatles, the raw energy of the Ramones.” March 30th at 9 p.m. at Johnny Mercer Theatre ($30, 38, 46, 75 gold)

Robert Randolph & the Family Band: Pedal steel player Robert Randolph is largely responsible for bringing the utterly unique sacred steel gospel tradition to a secular audience. Emerging as a prodigious instrumentalist from the House of God church, Randolph’s powerful performance style has since earned him countless appearances around the world such as the Grammy awards ceremony, a recording project with John Medeski and the Dickinson Brothers (from the North Mississippi All-Stars), and regular touring spots with Eric Clapton. April 1st at 9 p.m. at Trustees Theater ($18, 25, 32, 40)

Band of Horses is heralded for producing a sound that skillfully combines southern gothic with northwest indie rock. Theirs is a spacious, reverb-laden style of melodic pop that ducks the classification of psychedelic, providing accessible hooks and unique but straightforward rock and roll orchestration. The most recent release by Band of Horses, Intimate Arms, was their first collective songwriting effort. With the release of this new album they’ve graduated to regular tours overseas and a recent run as an opener for Seattle’s Pearl Jam. April 4th at 7:30 p.m. at Johnny Mercer Theatre ($25, 30, 35, 40 gold)

Citizen Cope is the pseudonym of Clarence Greenwood, keyboardist, guitarist, singer, DJ, and record producer. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Greenwood started his musical career as a DJ for the hip-hop act Basehead, a group that would have a significant impact on his style as a solo-musician. Citizen Cope blends many genres of music, such as folk, blues, hip-hop, rock, and R & B. This intimate SMF performance features Citizen Cope as a multi-instrumental one-man show. April 5th at 8 p.m. at Trustees Theater ($18, 22, 28)

Click here to read more about the upcoming Savannah Music Festival

Other interesting upcoming events in Savannah:

Savannah Irish Festival

St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah, GA

Interactive Musical Robot Featured at 2011 Pulse Art + Technology Festival

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GEORGIA TECH INTERACTIVE MUSICAL ROBOT WILL BE FEATURED AT 2011 PULSE ART & TECHNOLOGY FESTIVAL

SAVANNAH, GA. (January 20, 2011) – Georgia Tech Savannah is proud to be a sponsor of the 2011 PULSE: Art & Technology Festival created by the Telfair Museums and will host a series of lectures, performances and workshops during the nine-day event that starts today. Dr. Gil Weinberg, founder and director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, will conduct a lecture and performance at the Jepson Center on Friday, Jan. 21 at 6 p.m. The performance will feature an interactive marimba playing robot named Shimon that was recently featured in the nationally televised 2010 Georgia Tech PSA (see link below). Attendees will have the opportunity to interact and make music with Shimon after the performance.

Shimon is not an ordinary marimba-playing robot because it improvises and interacts with human musicians. Using melodic and harmonic perception and improvisation modules, Shimon creates musical responses in conjunction with social cues from its human counterparts. The result is not only novel and expressive human-robotic interaction, but also great new music.

Visualize a pianist playing a musical phrase followed by Shimon, who builds on this input with a new improvised sequence. A fellow guitar player can then enhance Shimon’s ideas, leading to new responses that could inspire humans to play in ways they have never played before. The robot’s head provides visual cues that represent social-musical elements, from beat detection through tonality, to attention and spatial interaction. Just imagine the head bob of a jazz drummer or a DJ spinning a hip hop record and you have a picture of Shimon’s personality.

Weinberg conceived the concept of robotic musicianship in 2006 with the development of Haile—the world’s first robotic musician capable of improvisation with human musicians. His research focuses on expanding musical expression, creativity and learning through innovative new technology including cell phones, toys and aquariums. Weinberg’s interactive systems have been presented in museums such as the Smithsonian Museum, Cooper-Hewitt Museum and Boston Children’s Museum. Weinberg received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and is currently an associate professor of Music and adjunct professor of Computer Science at Georgia Tech.

“The goal of the project was to create real-time musical collaborations between human and robotic musicians that would capitalize on the combination of their unique strengths,” said Weinberg.
To learn more about Shimon visit: www.gatech.edu/music/shimon.html
The Public Service Announcement can be viewed at: www.gatech.edu/music/psa.html.
Georgia Tech Savannah will be hosting a number of additional workshops as part of PULSE taking place Jan. 20 – 29. These include:

Introduction to openFrameworks by Zachary Lieberman, Friday, Jan. 21 from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. at Georgia Tech Savannah. Lieberman will provide a short introduction to openFrameworks a c++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation. Participants must be 16 year old or older. Previous coding experience is helpful.

Youth Workshop: Introduction to Scratch on Saturday, Jan. 22 from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. at Georgia Tech Savannah. Developed at the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create individual interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art and share creations on the web. As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively. Students between the ages of 9-18 are encouraged to attend.

Read more about 2011 Pulse Art + Technology Festival in Savannah, GA, on our special events page.

Book Sale in St. Augustine

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Have you ever been to a book sale? If you love reading, this is a great event to visit. Take the opportunity to stock up on books to read at this event organized by FOLSE, Friends of the Library Southeast. Bring the whole family!
This super booksale takes place at the Southeast Branch Library in St. Augustine, Florida, starting on Friday, January 21 from 10:00 to 5:00 and continuing on Saturday, January 22 from 10:00 to 3:00. All types of books including fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, history and political books as well as childrens books will be available. There will also be other items such as CDs, DVDs, and books on tape. Most items are priced at $1.00 or less. Not only can you get great books at a great price, it’s all for a good cause. All proceeds benefit the Southeast Library.

Friday, January 21, 2011 to Saturday, January 22, 2011
Friday, Jan. 21: 10:00 – 5:00, Saturday, Jan. 22: 10:00 – 3:00

Tickets are $10 for a combo ticket (both nights) and $7 for a single night ticket. For more information or tickets call 912-729-7463.

FOLSE Booksale – Southeast Branch Library
6670 U.S. 1 South, St. Augustine, Phone: 904-827-6925
Event Pricing: Free

La Boh̬me at the Historic Ritz Theatre РBrunswick, GA

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It is one of the most romantic stories of all time, a beautiful work of art that has captivated audiences and influenced literature, film, and the Broadway theater for more than 100 years, and now the Golden Isles community will be able to experience the immortal music of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème on the stage of the Historic Ritz Theatre in Downtown Brunswick – a fitting program for the newly refurbished building that was built as the Grand Opera House in 1899.

Golden Isles Arts and Humanities Association (GIAHA) presents the Atlanta Opera production in a special matinee on Sunday, January 23, 2011, at 3:00 p.m. The company has created an 80-minute English-language version for this performance that condenses the many-layered story without sacrificing any of the romantic main plot or the beloved arias so familiar to opera lovers and general audiences alike. The plot of La Bohème follows the love story between seamstress Mimi and poet Rodolfo, two young people struggling to survive in the bohemian world of the Paris art scene in the late 19th century.

La Bohème is the second most frequently produced opera in the U.S., right behind another Puccini work, Madama Butterfly. The story has been adapted into novels and films, and the music was featured prominently in the Academy Award-winning 1987 movie Moonstruck, starring Cher and Nicholas Cage. Composer Jonathan Larsen modernized the story, setting it in the lower Manhattan music and art milieu of the late 20th century in the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit Rent.

“This is a rare opportunity for local audiences to experience one of the great works of the world operatic stage right here at home,” notes GIAHA Executive Director Heather Heath. “Opera buffs, of course, have always delighted in this romantic tale, but those who are less familiar with opera also love this piece and instantly recognize many of its great arias. And people, particularly younger audiences, who know the musical Rent will want to see where that hit production found its timeless themes and characters.”

Because his type of opera (known as verismo) focused on everyday characters in familiar settings, Puccini has long been a favorite of general audiences and acknowledged as one of the main catalysts of American musical theater. Puccini meant for his operas to relate to the common people, and future musical theater writers took this idea a step further by inserting dialogue into their works.

The Atlanta Opera’s production, directed by Tamara Watson Harper, features four outstanding soloists from the company in the roles of Rodolfo, Mimi, Musetta, and Marcello, with a fifth performer serving as narrator of the story. There will be a free post-show meet-and-greet reception with the cast.

Founded in 1979, The Atlanta Opera is one of the finest regional companies in the nation, drawing audiences from the entire metropolitan Atlanta area as well as from throughout the Southeast. The company strives to expand the experience of its patrons with memorable and exciting performances reflecting the highest musical and theatrical standards, while supporting community and educational programs. The company also attracts the finest international, national, and regional singers, conductors, stage directors and designers.

Advance tickets to La Bohème for general audiences are $20 for adults and $15 seniors 65+. GIAHA members are offered additional discounts: $15 adults and $10 seniors in advance, with reserved seating privileges. On the day of the show, ticket prices are $25 for non-member adults, $20 for non-member seniors, $20 adult members and $15 senior members. In keeping with GIAHA’s policy of making the arts more accessible to the youth of our area, ticket prices for ages 18 and under are always $5, regardless of member status or time of purchase. Tickets may be purchased by phone with credit card or in person at the Ritz Theatre on Thursdays and Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. or www.goldenislesarts.org. For more information, please call 912-262-6934