Music Maker Relief Foundation – a non-profit organization that supports traditional Southern musicians by documenting and presenting their music will be premiering their photography exhibit, We Are the Music Makers! on May 18th, 2018 at the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center. On May 17th at 7:00pm, the Music Maker Blues Revue featuring Alabama Slim, Thomas Rhyant,  Cool John Ferguson, Bubba Norwood, and Harvey Dalton Arnold will perform at 463 Court St. as part of the Virginia Arts Festival.

We Are the Music Makers! delves deeply into the living musical culture of the South and the musicians who make it. The exhibit premiered at the the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2014 and has since traveled to the Birthplace of Country Music, BB King Museum of Art, Levine Museum of the New South, the Earl Scruggs Center and many more.  Along with the photos, the exhibit will feature various pieces of folk art, including pieces from Elder Anderson Johnson of Newport News.

GRAMMY Award-winner Marty Stuart says, “Throughout We Are The Music Makers, the viewer is granted access to worlds that are beyond reach and off limits to most. There is less than a razor’s edge of difference in royalty and rogue at the bedrock of American roots music.”

“Music Maker is a fabulous project; real evidence that the music I have always loved is alive and well”.

– Eric Clapton

About the exhibit:

Visitors will experience thirty panels that feature photographs of traditional Southern musicians taken by Music Maker founder and Executive Director Timothy Duffy over the past twenty years.  The exhibit panels speak to the significance of each musician’s style and have a storytelling quality, putting each figure in the context of their community. Audio and video are also included which further enhance the content of the panels.

The panels on display feature musicians from all over the Southeast, from GRAMMY winning group the Carolina Chocolate Drops to the lesser known, like Bluesman Guitar Gabriel and Snake handler/circus performer Willa Mae Buckner. The exhibit draws attention to musicians that have shaped our uniquely American culture through their music.

About the Music Maker Blues Revue:

The Music Maker Blues Revue is an all-star band and a thriving musical institution. It was born in the early 1990s as a backing band for Guitar Gabriel, and quickly became a power cell of Music Maker’s live presence. Featuring dozens of different Music Maker artists over the years—from Etta Baker and Macavine Hayes to Robert Lee Coleman and Pat “Mother Blues” Cohen—the Revue has played all over the world in every kind of venue. They’ve busked on the sidewalks of High Point, NC, and received standing ovations at Carnegie Hall. From Argentina to Australia, Europe to Guatemala, and across the U.S., the Revue pleases all types of fans; “the boogiers and the bookworms,” as drummer Ardie Dean puts it.

What: Music Maker Blues Revue Performance

Where:  463 Court St., Portsmouth, VA 23704

When: Thursday, May 17th, 2018 | 7:00pm

Cost: $25 (adults), $22.50 (seniors/military), $18.75 (Student under 25)

Tickets: http://secure.vafest.org/single/eventDetail.aspx?p=475

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For more information please contact: Cornelius Lewis | corn@musicmaker.org | 919.643.2456