The best documentary photography happens when skill and vision meet preparation and luck. For Joanne Chan , the formula was a little different. “I started taking my pictures when I went to pick up my roommate after work. She was working at a place called Honeybuns, and it was an all-nude dance club,” Chan recalled. “My roommate said ‘Oh, I think you should take pictures,’ so I took some pictures and then I made some workprints and presented them in my class, and during the critique my professor

It only takes seconds to tour David Gilbert’s West Asheville home to learn he’s a ferocious music fan. There are shelves of vinyl albums right past the front door. Toward the back is a long room with assorted music memorabilia and a complement of guitars, amps and a drum kit. This is where Gilbert’s bands rehearse.

Write about what you know about. It’s a time-tested path countless writers have traveled to bestselling books and films. So when Rachael Sparks took her first turn at genre fiction, her subject was obvious. “There was a story that came out that, by 2050, 10 million people would die from resistant infections,” Sparks said. “It just gave me a lot of fertile ground to think about what it would be like in that world, to be a survivor in that world.”

NOTE: This is the second of two stories previewing the 2019 Asheville Fringe Festival . Vanessa Owen and Gavin Stewart met on the dance floor seven years ago and have danced together and separately ever since. In crafting their new collaboration, they wanted to comment on the country’s immigration debate. The new work is called “Vessel,” and Owen dances it alone.

NOTE: This is one of two preview stories BPR is producing in advance of the Asheville Fringe Festival. Think of the theater, dance and music familiar to most people. You won’t experience any of that during the Asheville Fringe Festival , home to the experimental and adventurous. Those adjectives certainly describe the three locally made shows in this preview. The first comes from Judy Calabrese, mother of three, whose one-woman show recounts three decades of relationships with women.

Anya Hinkle moved from southern Virginia to Asheville in 2006 for the bluegrass music scene. She says she absorbed the soul of a bluegrass artist from the scene, of all places, in Japan. “People are really comfortable with a lot of silence, what I would consider awkward silence,” said Hinkle, whose husband is from Japan. They and their daughter visit Japan for a month or two every year.

It’s about quarter past nine on a Sunday night at the Fairview Tavern in Oakley. Most of the 15 or so people here are local comics who know each other, looking for some time at the open mic that’s just about to start. But there’s an unusual charge in the air. Hilliary Begley , the comic who launched Hallelujah Hilliary's Comedy Revival at the Tavern nearly two years ago, is back from Hollywood to host the show.

Here is the complete conversation between Darko Butorac, the new music director of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, and Blue Ridge Public Radio arts and culture producer Matt Peiken.

NOTE: BPR Classic is airing the entire hour-long conversation between Darko Butorac, the new music director of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, and BPR arts & culture producer Matt Peiken. Broadcasts are at 7pm Dec. 28 and 10am Jan. 15. Darko Butorac was a teenager in Seattle when the grunge movement swept the city and American pop culture. But as millions flocked to the music of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, Butorac saw classical music as his rebellion. “Grunge was becoming big and I

NOTE: The Blue Ridge Orchestra concert referenced in this story has been rescheduled for 5pm Jan. 13, 2019, in Lipinsky Auditorium, at UNC Asheville. It’s an early December evening, and cellist Franklin Keel is rehearsing with the Blue Ridge Orchestra. He’s the featured soloist in their upcoming program , and he wants to hear this Vivaldi cello concerto in a particular way. “Ignore the half-rest,” he tells his fellow musicians. “Play quarter, rest, quarter, rest.” Just from this window, you