March 2012

Just five months before he died, Louis Armstrong gave a performance at the National Press Club in Washington, singing and playing the trumpet for nearly a half-hour at a party for the cluba€(TM)s newly elected president. That concert was recorded by CBS newsmen who attended the event, and the press club later pressed about 300 vinyl copies and distributed them to journalists who had attended. It was never released as a commercial album, even though it was one of the last times the jazz trumpeter performed before his death in July 1971…

Frank Supak An Appreciation

[read at the April 9th plaque dedication at the Hollywood Bowl sound booth]

Today we honor a man who did his job so well that crowds of people never even knew he was there.

Did you attend a show, any show, at the Hollywood Bowl between 1970 and 1993? Frank Supak was there, too, and though you may not have seen him (unless you were working), you probably walked right by him. He was in the sound booth in the middle of the second promenade, and he’s the reason the music sounded so good. “Frank was a sound artist,” says Ernest Fleischman, the Creative Director and a close collaborator of Frank’s at the Hollywood Bowl for many years…

MARYLAND STATE ARTS COUNCIL ANNOUNCES 2012 INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS AWARD RECIPIENTS

State awards grants in playwriting, crafts, photography, music composition, and music performance

Baltimore, MD: The Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC), an agency of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, has recognized vocalist Erin Dickins from Talbot County for creating work of exceptional quality. Ms. Dickins has been awarded the 2012 Individual Artist Award for Non- Classical Music Solo Performance for her CD, Nice Girls…