Midday

Tom is joined by filmmakers Bobby Marvin Holmes and Ras Tre Subira founders of Reflection of Kings, a new media program teaching young Baltimoreans how to harness the power of the media to tell their stories.

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Midday is thrilled to be broadcasting from the beautifully renovated and restored Enoch Pratt Central Library in downtown Baltimore. The library looks great following a three-year, $115 million dollar face-lift. Today, from an impromptu stage in the Library's grand Central Hall, Midday host Tom Hall and his guests discuss what’s new about the 86-year-old building itself, and the range of programs that the Enoch Pratt Free Library offers. During the broadcast we meet Wesley Wilson, Chief of the Central Library, and Vivian Fisher, Deputy Director and head of the African American Department here at the Central Library. They describe the expanding array of programs and services offered by the Pratt. We begin by welcoming the president and CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Heidi Daniel and Jean Campbell. Campbell, an architect, is a senior project manager with Beyer, Blinder, Belle, the architecture firm that that oversaw the renovation of this beautiful and historic building.The Grand Reopening of the Central Library -- a community block party -- is slated for Saturday, September 14, from 11am-4pm. A ribbon cutting ceremony is set for noon, at noon with Pratt CEO Heidi Daniel, Baltimore Mayor Jack Young, Senator Ben Cardin and other city leaders and dignitaries in attendance.Video of the event will be posted soon on the WYPR Facebook Page.

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Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins us on this Wednesday afternoon (we're broadcasting live on Thursday from the Enoch Pratt Free Library) for another of her weekly reviews of the Maryland stage. Today, she spotlights the new production of Proof that opens the 2019-2020 season at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre.In playwright David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play, which opened on Broadway in October 2000, we meet Catherine, who has inherited her late father Robert’s house, hundreds of his notebooks, his mathematical genius, and, she fears, his debilitating psychoses. She grants one of her father's best students, Hal, permission to comb through his voluminous writings, where he discovers a revolutionary mathematical proof -- a discovery that sparks a crisis of identity for Catherine. Everyman Resident Company member Megan Anderson, who played Catherine in Everyman's sell-out first production of Proof in 2004, returns to play Catherine’s older sister, Claire. Joining Ms. Anderson in the cast are Jeremy Keith Hunter as Hal, and fellow resident company actors Katie Kleiger as Catherine, and Bruce Randolph Nelson as Robert. Proof, directed by Resident Company member Paige Hernandez, continues at Everyman Theatre through October 6. Follow the link for showtimes and ticketing information.

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Today, Midday on Ethics. Prescriptions can be expensive, we know that. But what happens when a life-saving drug costs millions of dollars every year to keep one patient alive?Most patients can’t afford that, and neither can many employer and union-based insurance plans. Drug companies say the old economies of scale don’t apply with some of these new drugs that are meant to battle rare diseases; But when cost becomes a barrier to saving a life, who should decide who gets it? Dr. Jeffrey Kahn is the Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bio Ethics. He joins Tom Hall today to discuss the ethical issues around ultra-expensive drugs.

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On this month's edition of Midday Culture Connections, Tom is joined again by Dr. Sheri Parks, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at the Maryland Institute College of Art. As the NFL marks its 100th anniversary, controversy continues to surround the league.Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, remains unemployed three years after he began his kneeling protest against police brutality and racism in America, and the NFL's new partnership with hip hop mogul Jay-Z has raised eyebrows, rather than hopes, about the league’s commitment to addressing a history of racial discrimination.Milton Kent, host of WYPR's Sports at Large and a professor of journalism at Morgan State University, joins us for a conversation about how the dynamics of race and power are playing out, off the field. Then, Tom and Dr. Parks discuss the New York Times 1619 Project, a multimedia, multi-part reframing of the history of slavery in America. The Project has generated a backlash by some leading conservatives. Four hundred years after the arrival of the first enslaved Africans, how does the legacy of slavery fit into our historical memory? This conversation was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook Page, and you can watch the video here.

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Today, it’s another edition of Midday in the Neighborhood, a series in which we’ve set out to spotlight the remarkable tapestry of communities that make up the city of Baltimore. According to the group Live Baltimore, there are 278 unique neighborhoods in our city, full of folks working to make their communities, and our city, better. The intention of this series is, over time, to hear from people who actually live in all of the neighborhoods in our diverse and vibrant city, and get their perspectives on what’s right about Baltimore, what can be improved, and what people may not know about our many different communities. Today, Tom is joined by people who are active in three adjacent neighborhoods on the city’s West side: Upton, which includes one of Baltimore’s most historic thoroughfares, Pennsylvania Avenue; Bolton Hill, bordered on its western perimeter by Eutaw Place, and home to the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); and Penn North, just south of Druid Hill Park, a magnificent greenspace designed in 1860 by Howard Daniel, John Latrobe and George Frederick. With Tom in the studio today are: Debbie Ramsey. She is an Open Society Institute Fellow and the founder and executive director of Unified Efforts, a non-profit that serves kids age 5-18 in several neighborhoods on Baltimore’s West Side, including Penn North;Linda Rittelmann serves on the Executive Committee of the Bolton Hill Community Association;And Wanda Best is the executive director of the Upton Planning Committee.We welcome listener calls, emails, Tweets and Facebook comments.This conversation was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook page, and you can watch the video here.

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We begin today's Midday on the Arts program with the legendary jazz impresario and NEA Jazz Master, Todd Barkan. With Chef Robert Weidmaier, he is the proprietor of the Keystone Korner nightclub in Harbor East, at the corner of Eden and Lancaster. Tonight, tomorrow and Sunday: the great Vibraphone virtuoso Warren Wolf appears with the Wolfpack. And next weekend, Christian McBride, the host of NPR’s Jazz Night in America will be there with his band, the New Jawn. Keystone has music every night of the week, too, and Sundays, they offer a brunch. This month, for at least the next three Sundays, members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform chamber music from 11-2. BSO players are in the 12th week of a lockout stemming from a contract dispute with BSO management, so if you’ve missed them at the Meyerhoff this summer, you can catch small groups of them at Keystone Korner on Sundays. Check the links above for a complete listing of all the acts appearing at Keystone.This program was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook Page, and you can watch the video here, beginning at 0:00 and running through 20:30.

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Today's Midday on the Arts program continues with a conversation about a great festival in Baltimore that literally takes art to the streets. The 5th Annual Little Italy Baltimore Madonnari Arts Festival is underway as we speak. Artists from across the world are hard at work creating elaborate and amazing chalk art right on the streets of one of Baltimore’s most historic and vibrant neighborhoods. They’ll be at it until Sunday, and in addition to all the street art, there will be performances, and of course, because it’s Little Italy, lots of great food. Cyd Wolf is the Executive Producer of the festival, as well as the executive producer of the Cabaret at Germano's Piattini. Carlos Alberto GH is an acclaimed street artist from Guadalajara, Mexico. They join Tom in the studio to offer a glimpse of the entertainments in store at the Festival, which runs from Sept 6-8.This program was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook page and you can watch the video here. This segment runs from 21:30 to 34:16 on the stream.

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Midday on the Arts concludes today with an internationally acclaimed classical guitarist, the Russian American virtuoso Piotr Pakhomkin. He has toured the world, and won several international guitar competitions. After finishing his studies with Manuel Barrueco at Peabody, Piotr became the First Prize winner of the 2012 Mexican International Guitar Competition in Culiacan and has taken top prizes at the 2012 Boston GuitarFest International Guitar Competition, Great Lakes Guitar Competition, Montreal International Guitar Competition, and the European International Guitar Competition, “Enrico Mercatali,” in Italy. After completing the prestigious Strathmore Artist-in-Residence program in 2014, he returned to serve as a faculty member and mentor in their Institute for Artistic Development.​As the winner of the 2016 Respighi International Soloist Competition, he made his concerto and solo debut at Carnegie Hall in the Chamber Orchestra of New York's ----Masterwork Series---- in June 2018. Piotr plays exclusively on a 2010 Ross Gutmeier Guitar using Oasis GPX strings. He and his family have settled in Frederick, Maryland, where he founded and directs The Segovia Academy of Music, which provides music education and training to all ages and skill levels, ranging from the complete beginner to aspiring professionals.Piotr Pahkomkin joins us Live in Studio A and performs two pieces: Francisco Tarrega's Capricho Arabe and Johann Sebastian Bach's Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1.This segment was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook page. You can watch the video of Mr. Pakhomkin's performance here, beginning at 39:19 in the video stream.Midday host Tom Hall opened the segment with an update on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's labor-management dispute. Lovers of classical music are certainly aware that the members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra are embroiled in a contentious contract dispute with BSO management. The musicians have been picketing in front of Meyerhoff Symphony Hall for much of the summer, after management canceled the summer season, and locked out the musicians. Midday has been in touch with members of the BSO administration and the players committee. Management will lift the lock-out on Monday. Both sides are meeting at this hour (noon on Friday, September 6) to try to reach an agreement by Monday, when rehearsals for the 2019-20 season are scheduled to begin. The first concert of the season is scheduled to take place at the Meyerhoff on Saturday night, September 14th at 8:00pm. Go to the BSO website for information about the event.The BSO musicians, separate from management, are producing their own concert that afternoon at 4:00pm at the New Shiloh Baptist Church with Music Director Marin Alsop on the podium, and guest artists Brian Stokes Mitchell, Janice Chandler Eteme, and choral singers from the community. You can find details about that concert event at the musicians' website.

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It’s another edition of Midday at the Movies, our monthly look at what's new in films, and filmmaking. Ann Hornaday, film critic for the Washington Post, joins us on the line from the Toronto International Film Festival as the industry's race to the Oscars and other awards begins its post-summer surge. Toronto is one of the biggest festivals in the world, and its audiences have an uncanny ability to pick award winners. One film getting a lot of buzz at #TIFF19 is the Festival's official selection, a revisionist history and ----anti-hate satire---- called Jojo Rabbit, directed by New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi.Jed Dietz, the founder of the Maryland Film Festival, joins us as well, with tips on what to see this weekend in local theaters.Among the films we discuss today are After the Wedding and Luce (at The Charles Theatre); The Nightingale and Honeyland (at the Parkway Theatre); and Blinded by the Light and Where'd You Go, Bernadette (at The Senator Theatre).(Because of Ann Hornaday's Toronto screening schedule, this conversation was pre-recorded.)

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