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Atlanta Magazine Online features an interview with Mia Isaac, star of the Hulu series Black Cake. The show is an adaptation of a best-selling novel and follows the journey of a biracial woman from Jamaica to England and then California. Mia Isaac, who is from Atlanta, plays the lead role of Covey. She talks about the challenges and rewards of playing the character and the preparation she did for the role. The show is receiving rave reviews and is praised for its representation of diverse cultures. In other news, there have been book bans in Georgia schools, particularly those featuring LGBTQ+ or characters of color, sparking a larger debate about how America's story is told to children. While most formal challenges have been rejected, some books have been permanently banned in certain schools. This program is intended for a print-impaired audience and is brought to you by the Georgia Radio Reading Service, GARS. Welcome to Metro Arts for Friday, December 22nd. I am Kristen Moody for the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Metro Arts is brought to you by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. For our first article, we go to the Atlanta Magazine Online for Meet Atlanta's Own Mia Isaac, star of the hit Hulu series Black Cake. The 19-year-old chats with us about starting her career, the challenges of portraying Covey, and why the role meant so much to her by Rhonda Racha Penrith. The Color Purple isn't the only Oprah Winfrey-produced project receiving rave reviews right now. On Hulu, the Oprah-produced Black Cake is an epic eight-episode adaptation of the best-selling novel by Charmaine Wilkerson, packed with the perennial juiciness of murder, mystery, and family secrets unfolding from the grave. A sweeping saga centering the Caribbean diaspora, Black Cake, which ran every Wednesday from November 1st to December 6th, follows the journey of a biracial woman of Jamaican-Chinese heritage from girlhood to womanhood as she's forced to move from Jamaica to England and on to Wales before eventually settling in California. Black Cake introduces her as Eleanor Bennett just a short time before her death. In that moment, she is a widow with an estranged daughter, Benny, and a devoted son, Byron. Through audio recordings played after her death, her children learn that she was a deeply layered woman with a past they never imagined. Instead of growing up an orphan, they discover that their mother was born Coventina Covey Lynn Cook in Jamaica to a Jamaican mother who ran off when she was a child and a Chinese father who gambled her future of becoming a world-renowned swimmer away. As Covey, Atlanta's own Mia Isaac shines as she brings both insight and heart to the young woman who is the foundation to whom Eleanor Bennett would become. Atlanta Magazine caught up with the rising star via Zoom to learn about her Atlanta roots and star-turning role. This interview has been condensed for length and clarity. You are from Atlanta, correct? Which part? I am from Atlanta. I went to Springdale Park Elementary School, Inman Middle School, Grady High School, which is now Midtown High School. So, yeah, I'm definitely an Atlantan. When did you start acting and what role did Atlanta play? I started acting when I was 10. Atlanta is such a great place to start acting. I was just so interested in the film world and commercials and television and Disney Channel and all of that. I really wanted to be an actor from a young age. I think the first thing I did was a play called Madeline's Christmas at a local theater. I think it was the Horizon Theater, so I did that one Christmas and that kind of just sparked my love for acting. My first agent was Jay Purvis here in Atlanta, so I definitely have all of my acting roots in Atlanta. During the summer, you showed up on Project Greenlight, a reality show about creating a feature film as the star of its film, Grey Matter, now streaming on Max. How did Black Cake come about for you? Did the projects overlap? I actually auditioned for Black Cake while I was filming Project Greenlight. It was about five rounds of auditions over the course of like three months. I was doing each callback in between my shoots for Grey Matter. Grey Matter was completely night shoots, so I would do about 12 hours of filming in the night. I would wrap it like 7 a.m., go to sleep for like three hours, wake up at 11 a.m. and do a Zoom call. So I honestly wasn't even thinking about the audition process that much just because I was so busy and I was working so much. When I found out that I actually got the Black Cake role, I was on set and I was just in complete shock because it hadn't even crossed my mind that I could get that role. What was your reaction when you first learned of the role? When I first got the audition, the breakdown said it was to play a young girl who is half Chinese and half Jamaican, and that really resonated with me because I've never seen an audition breakdown like that. I felt really represented and I felt really seen. Then, when I went even further to learn more about the character herself, this strong young girl who is in many ways ahead of her time, she's unapologetic, she's unafraid to be herself, she's strong-spirited, she's strong-minded and strong-willed, and I just loved the character from the moment that I read the breakdown. And reading the book and getting to play her, it was just really rewarding. Do you mind sharing your heritage? I'm Chinese and Panamanian, so my dad is Caribbean. And when I read the book with my parents, my mom was able to resonate with the Chinese cultural aspects in the book, and my dad was able to resonate with the Caribbean cultural aspects. Obviously, there's a difference between Panamanians and Jamaicans, but culturally, there are a lot of similarities. My grandma made black cake when I was a kid. What kind of preparation went into playing Covey? I did work with a dialect coach, so it was a lot of preparation for the accent. I really wanted to do justice to Jamaican people and Caribbean people. I didn't want it to sound fake or inauthentic. I worked with a dialect coach on my own even when I was auditioning because I had to audition in the Jamaican accent, and I didn't know how to do that, so I took Zoom classes. Once I actually booked the role, they had a dialect coach that they provided, and she was great. We worked together over Zoom in the months leading up to the shooting, and then we met in person in Jamaica. On top of that, I was working with a stunt coordinator, a water stunt coordinator. We met in California and worked in the water. We swam in Santa Monica, and then when we met in Jamaica, he taught me how to surf. It was such an incredible experience. Was playing Covey challenging, rewarding, or both? It was really challenging. I booked the role of Covey when I was 17, and I played Covey from age 17 to about 23 to 24, and she has to go through a lot. As a person my age, not having had those life experiences, to kind of put myself emotionally through everything that she goes through was really difficult. Not only that, but it was my first time being the leader of a show, which is a lot of pressure. I feel like I went through a lot of imposter syndrome or feeling like I wasn't good enough or I wasn't worthy. I kind of had to remind myself that I was there for a reason and that people believed in me. I think that I grew up with Covey. When I first read the role and got the role, I was young, and I learned a lot through playing Covey. I feel like I've changed because of it. What was the hardest part? I think the hardest part for me was filming the pieces about motherhood and being pregnant and giving birth and losing a child. These are all feelings that I haven't had to experience or even think about in my life or in my world, so trying to grasp the feelings that Covey was dealing with was really difficult. It's not the kind of thing where I could draw from my own life experiences or substitute or pull from my real life. I really had to feel exactly what Covey was feeling, and it was hard mentally. It was hard emotionally. What kind of impact do you think Black Cake will have? It's going to have an impact that I think is going to affect generations. I have never seen a show like this before. My parents have never seen a show like this before, and my grandparents have never seen a show like this before. It's really cool to see our culture and our people represented, not only in the background of a show or a movie, but at the forefront and as the leads. All eight episodes of Black Cake are currently streaming on Hulu. That was Meet Atlanta's Own Mia Isaac, star of the hit Hulu series Black Cake by Rhonda Rachel Penrith. Next, what's the state of book bans in Georgia schools? Challenges to school library books aren't new, but in recent years, they've become a flashpoint in a larger battle over how we tell the story of America, particularly to children. Here's the latest on what's happening locally by Rachel Garbus. If someone were to write a book about the culture war currently raging across the United States, chances are someone else would try to ban it. Challenges to school library books aren't new, but in recent years, they've become a flashpoint in a larger battle over how we tell the story of America, particularly to children. PEN America, a hundred-year-old nonprofit organization that tracks data on free speech and literacy, found that nearly 1,600 unique book titles were permanently banned in public school libraries around the country during the last year. Most of the banned titles feature LGBTQ plus characters or characters of color or include themes of racism or sexual assault. In many states, new laws banning sensitive or explicitly sexual material in public schools have led to an increase in challenged books. So far, Georgia's seen fewer book bans than some other states like Florida and Texas, but we've seen plenty of controversy over who reads what. Here's the latest in the fight over books in Georgia schools. In Georgia, most formal book challenges have ultimately been rejected, but some removals may go unreported. While activists have challenged hundreds of books in Georgia, our reporting found that most efforts did not result in permanent bans. A survey of Georgia counties completed in October 2023 found seven titles permanently banned from specific middle and high schools. Other books were eventually returned to shelves, according to PEN America. The permanent bans included two books in Cobb County schools and Marietta City schools, one in Forsyth County, two in Coahuila County high schools, and two in Coahuila middle schools. Some counties, including Coahuila, Forsyth, and Floyd, have added Parental Consent Requirements or M for Mature stickers to certain titles. Then in December, the number of banned books in Georgia ballooned when the Marietta City School Board voted overwhelmingly to remove 23 books from its high school libraries. The list includes some popular targets of book ban advocates, such as A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah Moss and Tricks by Ellen Hopkins. But the school board also voted to ban bestsellers like The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chomsky. The true number of books removed from Georgia school libraries is likely higher, however, because school districts aren't actually required to report bans. The American Library Association, ALA, estimates that 82 to 97 percent of challenges go unreported, and it's impossible to know how many school administrators and teachers have quietly pulled books from shelves even without complaints. The reported challenges don't include that kind of softer censorship, says Nan Brown, a Metro Atlanta middle school librarian and an advocacy coordinator with the Georgia Library Media Association. Like when a principal says, this book doesn't need to be here, it needs to disappear. Those removals, they aren't visible. One thing we do know, book bans are unpopular. A recent ALA poll found that 67 percent of voters oppose removing books from school libraries. Georgia's new law makes it easier for parents to challenge books, but harder for outside groups. One reason Georgia has seen fewer book bans than other states is that SB 226, the 2022 state law that governs book challenges, requires that complaints be filed by parents of students in the respective school, limiting challenges from national organizations. From the fall of 2021 to the summer of 2022, most of our challenges came from a group called No Left Turn in Education, says Dean Jackson, a spokesperson for the Coahuila County school system. None of them had kids in our schools, so those challenges were ultimately dropped. To get around Georgia's policy, some outside organizations have recruited parents. In Forsyth County, book challenges were initiated by several school parents who were members of Mama Bears, an organization launched in North Carolina that promotes such protests. In March 2022, a Cherokee County parent sent school administrators a list of hundreds of titles she wanted prohibited in her child's school, a significant portion of which were reportedly copy-pasted from a list originally issued by the Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative activist organization known for challenging educational policies around issues such as vaccine mandates, bathroom choice, and global warming. Critics say the language in Georgia's new education law is too vague. Georgia's new book challenge law specifies who can request a book ban, but it provides little clarity on what gets a book ban. The legislation, which tasks principals with deciding whether to remove a book rather than teachers and librarians who have historically resolved complaints from parents on their own, says material that is harmful to minors can be nixed from shelves. The law defines as harmful material that, taken as a whole, is sexual content appealing to prurient interests without literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors. But there's no further guidance on how principals should decide whether a book meets that definition, making the progress and process largely subjective. Critics say that taking as a whole stipulation is key when judging a book's merit, and note that book challengers often lift explicit paragraphs out of context and have taken to reading them out loud at school board hearings for dramatic effect. There is similar confusion around a related new state law, the so-called divisive concepts legislation, which bans discussion of certain ideas about race and racism in K-12 public schools, including that the United States of America is fundamentally racist. Unlike the book challenge law, HB1084 allows for penalties, including termination, for teachers who violate the prohibitions and gives administrators and school boards wide latitude in enforcing those penalties. In August, Cobb County School Board made national headlines when they voted to fire fifth grade teacher Katie Rinderle for reading a book about gender identity to her students. She is appealing the decision and may sue for unlawful termination. Rinderle, a ten-year teaching veteran, purchased My Shadow is Purple, a children's picture book by Scott Stewart, at a scholastic book fair held at Dew West Elementary, where she taught fifth grade. I thought it was a beautiful book that promoted inclusivity and was very affirming for students, she says. She read it to the class on a Wednesday after her students selected it from several options using a Post-it note vote. The next Monday, the principal placed her on administrative leave for violating Cobb County's controversial issues policy, adapted from the state's divisive concepts law. Though a panel of three retired educators recommended against her termination, Cobb County School Board overruled their decision in a 4-3 vote, firing Rinderle on August 17th. She is believed to be the first teacher to lose her job under Georgia's new rules. Rinderle, who is appealing her firing to the State Board of Education, says Cobb provided no guidance on what constitutes a controversial issue. The policy prohibits employees from espousing or indoctrinating a student with such individuals' personal beliefs concerning divisive concepts. Rinderle says that during a pre-planning meeting, she and her colleagues were shown a PowerPoint presentation that included the language of the new law. But that's really the extent of any discussion or training that we had at the school, she says. Rinderle and her attorney, Craig Goodmark, are considering suing Cobb County, and more litigation over Georgia's education laws may be forthcoming. Goodmark is working with the Southern Poverty Law Center on a lawsuit against the divisive concepts law. Civil Liberties Attorney, Jerry Weber, has also announced plans to sue the state. Placing students at the center of their education is something we should all be fighting for, Rinderle says, making sure we are empowering students to think critically, helping them understand their complexities in the world. That's what we do. Books recently banned in Georgia, Cobb County, Marietta City Schools, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, Flamer by Mike Curito, Marietta City Schools, Thirteen Reasons Why by Josh Asher, City of Thieves by David Benioff, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chomsky, This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson, I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, Crank by Ellen Hopkins, Identical by Ellen Hopkins, Tricks by Ellen Hopkins, Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany Jackson, All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson, Beyond Magenta by Susan Coaklin, A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorn and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings in Ruin by Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas, The Infinite Moment of Us by Lauren Miracle, Juliet Takes a Breath by Gara Raveba, The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, Lucky by Alex C. Bold, More Happy Than Not by Ada Silvera, Grasshopper Jungle, A History by Andrew Smith, Blankets by Craig Thompson, Forsyth County, All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson, Coweta County, The Handmaid's Tale, a graphic novel by Margaret Atwood, Looking for Alaska by John Green, Tricks by Ellen Hopkins, A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas. That was What's the State of Book Bans in Georgia Schools by Rachel Garbus. Next we move to the Burnaway publication for Tooling Glamour, Rappers, Fashion and Perception by Sydney Pettis. During the 2017 BET Awards, the trio Migos won the Best Rap Group while presenting their most iconic and soon-to-be-notorious looks yet. Best known for the 2016 hit single Bad & Boujee, which maintained its place at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts in the following year, the rap group embodied newfound success and luxury. Their wealth was exhibited in floral pattern buttoned-up shirts and tight leather pants, all selected by their stylist Zoe Costello, paired with spaced-out designer belts and custom chains, rings, and watches created by their longtime jeweler Elliot Eliante. Quavo Offset in the late takeoff presented a dramatized and glamorized black masculinity that leaned into both a traditionally femme and slightly androgynous style, despite their public persona, that paradoxically hinged on the ultra-masculine, often including misogynistic and homophobic lyricism and speech. Glamour, which comes from the Scottish word grammar, is historically and etymologically used to describe a form of illusion, charm, and mystery. As employed by pop artists and drag queens like RuPaul, Cher, and Madonna, glamour wields power and representation, allowing figures to project and perform their ideal opulent persona. While these glamorized projections of self are often campy, dramatic, and inescapable from view, importantly, glamour is purposefully not true to life. Black male public figures utilize glamour as a form of camouflage or illusion with the intention of deceiving the consuming public. This ostentatious trend among black male rappers allows them to tool or weaponize their dress, presenting a form of black masculinity that becomes illusory. This implementation enables the performer to transgress class and gender lines. The magical tool of glamour grants the individual the ability to pose as the unreal, subverting stereotypes, conventions, and expectations. Further, in the case of the black male rapper, dress provides an act of resistance to camouflage black masculinity, offers relief from the omnipresent and overbearing white gaze. Camouflage is a tool of disguise and deceit which allows one the capacity to mirror and or match their surroundings, yet dazzle camouflage obscures. Created by painter Norman Wilkinson, dazzle camouflage was utilized in World War I on British and American warships. The ships were painted in a black and white or red and white pattern to create an optical illusion to confuse or throw off their opposers. Rather than blend in, the intention was to make the ship difficult to target. Razzle dazzle weaponizes an intricate patterning to create deception, clouding judgment around the subject. Taking into consideration the style and dress of Migos in relation to the tradition of dazzle camouflage, their luxurious presentation of self becomes a way to deceive. Taking inspiration from a long line of black performers, the group implements a form of peacocking. Building on the mating practice of the tropical bird, peacocking is colloquially described the phenomenon and practice of men using flashy clothing and accessories to attract a mate. At the 2018 Grammys, the group took inspiration from black pop icon Michael Jackson. Each member wore a custom-made gold and black sequined jacket in the traditional military band style designed by Welsh fashion designer Julian McDonald, echoing one of Jackson's most well-known looks. Famously, the king of pop also employed glamour and dazzle. The same year they attended the Met Gala wearing pink, orange, red, and black sequined Versace suits, also designed by McDonald. This peacocking, the opulent and dazzling or dripped out choices in jewelry and clothing, made the rappers unmissable. Shrouded in luxury, though camouflaging themselves, their personas were on public view. Even the term drip is noteworthy. Drip, prominent throughout the song lyrics, originated from Atlanta trap music artists describing the highly adorned, careful curation of an ensemble, referring directly to the oversaturation of the flashy, glittery, and expensive. The intertwined relationship between self-fashioning and blackness in the public eye, especially regarding black musicians, has a history rooted in the unavoidable white gaze. As early as the 1970s, black R&B, funk, and disco entertainers dressed in sequined, brightly colored, tightly fitting clothing. The early decades of hip-hop, however, took an alternative approach. Up until the late 1990s, sportswear and workwear were trending among rappers, with their display of luxury and wealth visible through custom-made jewelry and designer shoes. Following sportswear and workwear trends, rappers found inspiration in the mafia lifestyle, an aesthetic embodied through films like The Godfather, 1972, and Scarface, 1983. In the era of gangster and mafioso rap, the organized crime lifestyle was romanticized and glorified luxury achieved through monetary success. Artists like The Notorious B.I.G. embodied this trend with his infamous black suits designed by the New York-based clothing company 5001 Flavors, complete with a hat and cane, along with his own rap group, Junior Mafia. With gangster rap, self-fashioning took a turn, seen through artists like Snoop Dogg, who upheld a pimp persona, wearing bright suits with matching canes, hats, and furs, finished with a straightened, shoulder-length hairdo. His pimp fashion draws on the organized crime figurehead persona, placing value on a presentation of self that appears successful both in power and money, while also playing with gender. Recently, rapper Trinidad James continues the stylistic legacy of Snoop Dogg and Slick Rick through his hair and nails, which he shares on social media. When hip-hop music broke into broader, meaning white, popular culture in the 1990s, heightened popularity came with heightened surveillance. Black male rappers were demonized and called dangerous by mainstream media outlets. In retaliation of these public perceptions, rappers began to use campy dress as a refusal of respectability. Black music is constantly faced with policing and surveillance, especially rap, and as a result, rappers turned toward a femme, glamorized style to visibly alter their perception. By playing with gender, rappers were able to set themselves apart from lyricism deemed violent and hypersexual. Today, Black masculinity continues to be demonized and criminalized in the public eye. Subsequently, Black male rappers express themselves through an alternative Black aesthetic that is deceptive and alluring, setting themselves apart from imposed violence, harm, and judgment. Instead, consumers become enamored with brightly colored, patterned dress, and lavish adornment. While acknowledging, though not denying, a societally constructed Blackness, these performers' public speech, persona, and lyricism are cloaked. Migos and other contemporary rappers continue to address the hustler and trapper lifestyle, glorify organized crime aesthetics, and depict a formidable character that is awarded high luxury. The same Black male rappers maintain their notoriety as problematic public figures who are hypermasculine and employ misogynistic, homophobic rhetoric. Yet, they create a barrier separating and distorting their visual perception and character. Throughout rap history, stylized dress was informed by a desire to display success. Now, dress is a tool for subversion. Migos embodies this phenomenon, creating an intervention and fabrication of the Black male rapper through a performance of Blackness that is skillfully obscured by the luxurious, glamorous, dazzling. That was Tooling Glamour, Rappers, Fashion, and Perception by Sidney Pettis. Next, we move to the Arts ATL publication for What to See, Do, and Hear, T.I. the Nutcracker, Beatrix Potter, Rudolph, and More by the Arts ATL staff. Theater. The Center for Puppetry Arts is staging its adaptation of the 1964 Rankin-Bass iconic TV special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, through December 31st. An exhibition at the World of Puppetry Museum featuring holiday-themed puppets from TV specials is included with every performance. Tickets are $30. Synchronicity Theater has extended its run of The Little Prince through December 30th. The children's musical is based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 story about a pilot who crashes in the Sahara and meets a boy from outer space. In her review, Arts ATL writer Rachel Garbus says the production stays surprisingly loyal to the original plot, retaining most of the characters the small hero meets on his travels through the galaxy and translates complex emotion while fulfilling its obligation to joy for young audiences. Tickets start at $31. Holiday Improv shows Invasion Christmas Carol on stage at Dad's Garage and Yallmark Christmas on stage at Horizon Theater continue through December 30th. Arts ATL editor-at-large Benjamin Carr recently sat down with actor Avery Sharp and writer-director Topher Payne to engage in a discussion about why improv breaks tradition in a good way in holiday productions. Tickets start at $30 for Yallmark Christmas and $46 for Invasion Christmas Carol. Dance. Most of the local Nutcracker Ballet performances are over for this year, but the grandest of them all, Yuri Posakov's state-of-the-art production for Atlanta Ballet continues at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center through December 26th. Arts ATL senior editor Jillian Ann Renaud described it as magical in her recent review. There are four different casts for the ballet, which means not all the upcoming performances will feature the dancers mentioned in the review, but they are all beautifully trained and the sets are gorgeous. Tickets start at $53. Music. T.I. will join forces with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra at Symphony Hall to revisit his breakthrough album, Trap Music, on December 28th and December 29th at 8 p.m. The concert marks the 20th anniversary of the album, which features such iconic tracks as 24, Be Easy, Rubber Band Man, and Let's Get Away. T.I. will perform songs from the album, as well as other classic tunes from his career. Tickets start at $250. The venerable Mother's Finest, famously from Funk Rock Georgia, remains one of the most dynamic live acts in the business 50 years into the group's career. One of the first black bands with a hard-hitting soundtrack, T.I. will perform the first black band with a hard rock sound. Mother's Finest was likely a few years ahead of its time and helped forge the path for later groups such as Living Color. Mother's Finest is anchored by original members Gary Moses Moe Moore on guitar, Jerry Wizard Shea on bass, Glenn Doc Murdoch on vocals, and especially vocalist Joyce Baby Jean Kennedy, who remains a With hits that range from Baby Love to Thank You for the Love, Mother's Finest knows how to scorch a stage. The group performed at Eddie's Attic December 30th, with shows at 7.15 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. Tickets are $46.17. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, joined by jazz vocalist Tammy McCann, and under the baton of associate conductor William R. Langley, will perform Christmas classics ranging from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker to Rudolph the Rezdo's Reindeer to Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas at Symphony Hall December 23rd, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. McCann is a former roulette and Ray Charles band and artist in residence at the Music Institute of Chicago. Tickets start at $29. Art and Design. In the City of Light, Paris 1850 to 1920 at the High Museum of Art closes on December 31st. ArtsATL critic Catherine Fox wrote that the exhibit chronicles the vibrancy of everyday Paris, the city streets and sassy nightlife, and closed her review with this, fair warning you won't see these again for a while, light sensitive works on paper are required to take a six-year rest after hanging in the galleries. Another High Museum exhibit that won't be around much longer is Beatrix Potter Drawn to Nature. It closes on Sunday January 7th. Potter's delicate nature drawings are a delight far more than a successful children's author. Potter became a farmer and landowner in what is now the Lake District in England. The Alliance Theater's original production Into the Burrow, a Peter Rabbit tale, a companion piece to the exhibit, closes on December 23rd. That was What to See, Do, and Hear T.I. the Nutcracker, Beatrix Potter, Rudolph, and more by the ArtsATL staff. Next up, Everyday Heroes, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's Azira G. Hill by ArtsATL staff. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's talent development program established in 1993 to identify and nurture talented African-American and Latino music students began with a simple question from Azira G. Hill. She asked why there was so little participation among children of color in the ASO's Youth Symphony Orchestra. She was told most Black children don't know how to audition. Her response was simple, why not teach them? There were so many changes going on and we thought the symphony should just change as well, Hill said. Yole Levi was the conductor at the time and it took us three years to convince the orchestra to change with the times. In the years since, the talent development program has been a game changer. Each year, the 25 students who are accepted receive weekly private lessons from members of the ASO, funding for music camps and opportunities to perform live. Graduates have gone on to the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music. They have performed in the Oval Office for President Barack Obama and one, Joshua Williams, has reached his dream job, performing with the ASO this season. It's hard to sum up in just a few words what Azira Hill has done for us, but I think changing the course of history is probably a good start, says Jennifer Barlamond, the ASO's Executive Director. Hill, who just celebrated her hundredth birthday, grew up in Cuba in a house filled with music. My mother was a great influence, she said. She taught me that there was nothing impossible, that I could do and achieve anything I put my mind to. You're pretty, she'd say, but you're not just occupying space here. You are here for a purpose and you must find your purpose. She migrated to the States at age 15 to attend high school. She came to Atlanta in 1955 to attend nursing school at Grady Hospital. She went to church on her first Sunday in Atlanta and met the man she would marry, Jesse Hill, who would become a prominent businessman and civil rights figure, and the first Black chairman of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. After attaining U.S. citizenship in 1960, Hill became active in the community. She served on boards at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, St. Joseph's Mercy Care, the Center for Puppetry Arts, and the Southeastern Flower Show. And her lifelong love of music led her to volunteer at the ASO, where she co-chaired the Atlanta Symphony Associates Action Committee for audience development in the Black community. Through that effort and Hill's persistence, the Talent Development Program was founded. Initially, members of the orchestra were reluctant to forfeit free time to mentor students. When they asked why they should have to do something no other orchestras were required to do, Hill replied, because this is Atlanta, and Atlanta is different. It is the right thing to do. By the fifth year, members of the orchestra had bought into the program. One musician even collected money for his mentee to attend a summer conservatory camp. The ASO also established the Azira G. Hill Scholarship Fund to provide financial assistance for students to attend national summer music programs. One graduate, Stanford Tomfas, went on to found Play On Philly, says the program, and Azira Hill changed his life. Everybody who goes through the program ends up with a deep sense of responsibility to give back, donate money, teach workshops and master classes, and give advice to younger students, he said. I hope Mrs. Hill realizes that the hundreds of kids we touch in Philadelphia alone are the beneficiaries of her positive example, and that none of us would be where we are if it was not for her. That was Everyday Heroes, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's Azira G. Hill, by Arts ATL staff. Next up, review. Joseph Paragine delivers beauty in Vanitas paintings for the Anthropocene, by Donna Mintz. With low, anchored cloud at Marshallwood Gallery through January 13th, Joseph Paragine delivers Vanitas paintings for the Anthropocene, and like those luscious And like those lushly painted 17th century Dutch still life that remind us of the transience of life and its earthly pleasures, his world is full of beauty and portent. But while the Dutch employed tumescent fruit on the verge of turning, snuffed but still smoking candles, fragile soap bubbles, clocks, and the human skull to convey their message of the inevitability of death, memento mori, remember you too must die, Paragine softens the same blow with subversively vibrant images of the beauty of life here on earth. He seduces with comfort and the familiarity of images you think you know, and a sense that all is well with the world, but all is not as it seems. It is a message that lands with a thud of realization made even louder and more distressing by the contrast between the two. That spotted baby fawn safely curled in cartoon green grass actually is cowering. Those pink eyed bunnies gambling across a field of pastel flowers, what are they running from? Paragine takes his title from a poem of the same name by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. Low anchored cloud, drifting meadow of the air, where bloom the daisied banks and violets. The fog or mist of Thoreau's low cloud obscures and protects the flora and the fauna of the forest, but Paragine's is a more metaphorical representation of all we don't see. The exhibition comprises two related but distinct bodies of work, Spring Hoax and the ongoing series After the Hunt. As installed here, Spring Hoax, a collection of paintings that Paragine began in 2020 during the first spring of COVID-19, comprises a grid of 36 small 20 by 16 acrylics on canvas. Ferns, lilies, birds and bees dance with day of the dead brightness across the surfaces, while within every one of them, a skull lurks in some more evidently than others, but ever present in each. Something wicked this way comes, just as it did that spring. One can almost feel a near nostalgia for that once upon a time bewilderment we felt then at the outset of what became the COVID-19 pandemic. Remember how the earth seemed to reclaim its pristine beauty as it knitted itself together in the wake of our retreat? Spring ascended. Crystalline blue skies prevailed. Birdsong rang out in the new void of our sequestration. Were the stars ever really this close? We noticed things, but as in these paintings, something was amiss. And I mean that in a good way. Something was afoot, if only a low anchored miasma that we did not yet fully understand. This is where the nostalgia comes in. Now we do understand, and we understand so much more about everything now than we did then. And it's even worse than we thought. After the Hunt seems to pose the question in its series title, After the Hunt, Then What? This is especially so in one eponymous painting that features a dead hair nailed to a tree branch by its back right leg. It hangs upside down, simultaneously obscene and tender. A low anchored mist obscures the background, but the foreground is full of abiding flowers which look on as if asking that very question, now what? With few exceptions, humans are present only by the evidence of their actions. In one of these, slipping slowly through the sky, we see only the gustonesque, splayed-toed souls of a pair of cartoonish bare feet, seemingly, at least to me, pushing up daisies, along with the real daisies and other flowers that crowd the riverbank beside a slow-moving gray stream. Moths circumnavigate a spotlight moon. Pearl River, one of the strongest in the show, calls upon fond, pregarian tropes. Cuddly animals in things-are-not-as-they-seem storybook illustration settings. But here he takes them into trippy, psychedelic territory. Reflections in the water are ziggy, splash drops are elongated as if slowed down in time. Even the bunny looks stoned. Pair this with ceramic fawn across the gallery. This earliest work in the show, 2019, is sumptuously rendered, albeit unsettling though, and mostly black and white. The gleaming figure looks away, seemingly unaware of our presence, attending to something she sees but we cannot. She is ceramic after all, so she is seeing nothing, but because she is Peregrinian, we forget that salient fact. Peregrine brings a Throvian eye to his observation of nature and disarms with the beautifully painted but charming backdoor delivery of his message. So low anchored cloud left me thinking also of Thoreau's slightly younger contemporary, Emily Dickinson, who wrote, tell all the truth but tell it slant. The truth must dazzle gradually. Unlike his 17th century progenitors, Peregrine's modern vanitas are designed not for the salvation of an individual life, but to remind the viewer that it may well be life itself in its many iterations that is at stake. Its demise, or at least its degradation, is happening on our watch, so unlike Dickinson, we may not have time to tell it slant. That was Review, Joseph Peregrine Delivers Beauty in Vanitas Paintings for the Anthropocene, by Donna Mintz. Next up, Arts ATL Bids Farewell to Long-Time Editorial Leader, Scott Freeman, by Arts ATL staff. Executive Editor, Scott Freeman, is leaving Arts ATL. Since joining the organization Since joining the organization as Deputy Editor in 2012, he has steered the arts-focused publication through several challenges. Now, he's embarking on a new venture as Editor-in-Chief of Atlanta Magazine. Scott has had a steady hand on Arts ATL's editorial content for more than a decade and was an invaluable partner to me when we worked to save Arts ATL from closure over three years ago, says Patty Siegel, Arts ATL Executive Director. Although he'll be missed, we're really happy for him and wish him all the best on this next chapter. Among the many qualities I admire in Scott are his journalism chops and his level head, says Arts ATL co-founder, Kathy Fox. His depth of experience and knowledge made him a great partner in both putting out a publication and working with writers. It was a difficult decision to make because I really love Arts ATL, Freeman says, but I just couldn't turn it down. It's a longtime dream job. It's the only other job I would even ever consider. Both Atlanta Magazine and Arts ATL are very close to my heart. It will be a homecoming of sorts for Freeman, who worked at the City Magazine for almost 10 years as a writer and then as executive editor. Longtime reporter, talented writer, and experienced editor, Scott Freeman has a clear understanding of Atlanta, the city, said his mentor, Lee Walburn, who was editor of the magazine for 16 years. As Scott accepts his latest challenge, he has a clear vision of what Atlanta the magazine can be. Current senior editors, Jillian Ann Renaud and Denise K. James are stepping in to fulfill Freeman's duties following his departure at the end of the year. The organization is conducting a search for its next executive editor. That was Arts ATL bids farewell to longtime editorial leader Scott Freeman by Arts ATL staff. Next up, review. ASO rings in the season with the potent hymns of Handel's Messiah by Pierre Roux. Way back in 1818, Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, devoted to music of the old masters, gave the US premiere of Handel's Messiah. Although the three-hour oratorio was meant for the Easter season when it premiered in 1842, and remained a fixture of Britain's holy week throughout the 18th century and beyond, Boston first heard it at Christmastime, where it's remained firmly planted ever since. Handel was a practical composer, and as with most of his music, he revised Messiah each time it was performed in his lifetime, tailoring it to the available singers and instrumental forces. That there's no definitive version perhaps contributed to its plasticity. As Britain's As Britain's empire and wealth grew, so too did Messiah. Victorian-era productions swelled to elephantine productions in gigantic spaces, with a thousand performers blasting away on the oratorio's three-part commentary on the nativity, passion, resurrection, and ascension. As a critic once observed, the work transformed from Handel's ideal of a sublime musical entertainment to a religious and patriotic totem. But Messiah, like a Christmas carol or the Nutcracker, is high art of the season, an all but indestructible evergreen. These works are also, to use the vulgar term, a cash cow, a work so popular and festive that arts organizations perpetually strapped for cash and looking to keep costs low can come to perform them almost by road. If you think about it, once you and your audience are committed to Messiah at Christmas, performing the complete work with all that non-Christmassy stuff doesn't really make any sense. So you cut two-thirds of the score, tack on the built-in standing ovation hallelujah, and it's a win-win. Marketing is a snap. The evening is shorter, less rehearsal time is needed, there's no overtime costs for the orchestra. The audience, forgetting what the full score sounds like, is satisfied. Rinse and repeat. Perhaps the only meaningful tradition that keeps this model afloat is that it does good box office. Thursday, in Symphony Hall, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra returned to its own performance traditions for Messiah. Since its abbreviated handle lasts just an hour, the concert's first half was J.S. Bach's Christmas Oratorio, or more precisely, just the first cantata of Bach's three-part work. For many years, this show has been conducted by ASO choral director Norman McKenzie, who slims down the ensemble to sort of baroque proportions. He gets most of the string players to use vibrato sparingly and use the bow more lightly, gets the woodwinds to add zest and brilliance to their phrasing. They were quick to warm up. The opening orchestral sinfonia was a bit clunky and hesitant until, in the nimble fugal section, the musicians loosened up and listened to each other as much as watched the conductor's baton. McKenzie has gravitas as a conductor, and he gave this little overture a sense of direction and purpose, carrying the weight of the ideas and images that were to come. Last time I heard McKenzie in this music a few years ago, his reading of Act I, called Part I in the score, was rather fussy and distracted by mannerisms. This year, he streamlined his approach with high spirits and minimal shaping, letting the music and the expression unfold organically. Each of the celebrated choruses and arias flowed, mostly, although as he approached the end of each movement, he tended to slow way down and drag the harmony to its resolution with unnecessary grandeur. Then he'd leave a small but unwelcome silence before jumping with vigor and vim into the next section. Yet there's an odd tension in McKenzie's interpretation. On the one hand, he's interested in treating Messiah properly in Handel's style of Baroque opera, which runs straight through without gaps. This is key, where the music's dance rhythms are at the fore. On the other hand, he likely had a lifetime of experience conducting Bach and Handel as church music in all its sobriety and solemnity. The struggle was audible and led to some conflicting musical priorities. That's all the time we have for this article, which is entitled, Review. A.S.O. Rings in the Season with the Potent Hymns of Handel's Messiah by Pierre Roux. That concludes today's Metro Arts program, which is brought to you by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. This has been Kristen Moody for GARS, the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Thank you for listening to GARS.
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