Arts Festival

American Music and Arts FestivalListen to an eclectic range of music -- including blues, folk, bluegrass and gospel -- when Western Maryland College presents the second American Music and Arts Festival this weekend at the Carroll County Farm Museum, 500 S. Center St., Westminster. Headlining the festival, which wraps up Common Ground on the Hill, a weeklong summer program, is musical renaissance man Peter Rowan. Other performers include Tom Ware of Blues Nation, an all-Native American blues band; and Sankofa (pictured)

Mission: A component of the college of Fine Arts and Communication at Towson University, the Maryland Arts Festival strives to provide a forum for high-quality artistic endeavors with emphasis on production and display of work by Maryland residents. The summer festival features six weeks of theater, music, art and film. Participating artists include recognized music and theater professionals, community members and students selected through competitive auditions. Festival programming is chosen to enhance accessibility of the arts to the public, to develop new works, to produce revivals of masterworks of the Broadway musical repertoire, and to present existing works that are never or seldom seen in the Baltimore area.

To be part of the enormous crowd singing along with the Temptations at Artscape Friday night was to praise the familiar and the communal, to not ask anything new of the world, but to bask in its predictable pleasures for one simmering summer evening. It's fun to know so many people, so many strangers, can all chime in on the chorus of "My Girl."It is easy to approach the entire festival the same way: To return every year, knowing just where the stages are, where to get the best kebabs, where to ogle the same (more or less)

Annapolis Jazz FestJazz up Father's Day from noon to 7 p.m. Sunday at the Annapolis JazzFest on the banks of College Creek at St. John's College. Presented by the Friends of Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, the outdoor celebration features saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, vocalist Vanessa Rubin (pictured), the Cecilia Smith Quartet, Rumba Club, Dave Burns and Hot Mustard, and the Guitar All Stars. A free workshop celebrating the 100th anniversary of Duke Ellington's birth is scheduled for 10 a.m. Sunday.

CHILDREN LOOKING for the "write" stuff can find it this weekend at the Annapolis Waterfront Arts Festival.More than 20 members of the Maryland Writers Association will assist children with writing and reading, and staging their own poems and stories.The activities for fledgling writers will be Friday at 11: 30 a.m., 1: 30 p.m. and 3: 30 p.m.; Saturday at 11: 15 a.m., 1: 30 p.m., 2: 15 p.m. and 5: 15 p.m.; and Sunday at 11: 30 a.m., 3: 30 p.m. and 4: 30 p.m."We just think it's important for kids to be enthusiastic about writing and reading.

Common Ground on the Hill, a six-day celebration of music and the arts at Western Maryland College, will culminate this weekend with a concert featuring blues, bluegrass, jazz and gospel.The American Music & Arts Festival will feature storytellers and dancers moving to the beat of African drums. Entertainers from across the nation will perform tomorrow and Sunday at the Carroll County Farm Museum in Westminster.The event is expected to draw nearly 500 people.After a week of classes in subjects as varied as the autoharp and artifacts of Seminole culture, students and teachers will show what they have learned from each other.

Mother's Day poetry readingComplex relationships between mothers and daughters will be explored by Maryland poets during a Mother's Day poetry reading at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Bibelot bookstore in Timonium Crossing, 2080 York Road. Seventeen poets, many of whom appear in the newly published anthology of poems "Thy Mother's Glass: Poems for Mothers and Daughters," will participate in the second annual event. Among them are Ann Christie, Rosemary Klein (pictured), Natasha Saje and Tillie Friedenberg.

Island festivalEnjoy a vacation to the islands without ever leaving the country at the free Caribbean Festival on Sunday at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Museum Drive, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Swing and sway to calypso music as a parade of costumed dancers floats by, sample spicy island delicacies or listen to the rhythm of the steel drum band. Call 410-396-6314.Funny bonesTake your medicine, a double dose of laughs administered by legendary comic greats Carl Reiner (below right) and Mel Brooks, "The Knights of Comedy," Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Lyric, 140 W. Mount Royal Ave . Reiner won seven Emmys as the creator of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," and Brooks directed such comedy classics as "Young Frankenstein" and "Blazing Saddles."

Common Ground on the Hill, a six-day celebration of music and the arts at Western Maryland College, will culminate this weekend with a concert featuring blues, bluegrass, jazz and gospel.The American Music & Arts Festival will feature storytellers and dancers moving to the beat of African drums. Entertainers from across the nation will perform tomorrow and Sunday at the Carroll County Farm Museum in Westminster.After a week of classes in subjects as varied as the autoharp and artifacts of Seminole culture, students and teachers will show what they have learned from each other.

TOWSON -- County fire officials sent trucks to all 26 stations yesterday to collect personnel records in anticipation of requests from the U.S. Justice Department, which has notified the county it plans to investigate allegations of racial discrimination in the Fire Department.Some firefighters were alarmed enough by the record collections to call their union and department dispatchers, but Michael H. Davis, spokesman for County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger, said the actions were not the result of specific federal requests.

It's a safe bet that Artscape, Baltimore's annual outdoor festival of the arts, is one of the best things that ever happened to this city. This year the three-day event in July attracted more than 300,000 visitors for a dazzling weekend of art exhibitions, musical performances and tasty food along the Mount Royal Avenue corridor, and it seems to get better every year. It's also one of the most inclusive occasions in the city's civic life: Everybody's invited, and everybody shows up, ready to enjoy themselves and revel in the rich cultural life of this community.

When a group of local artists created Foodscape 24 years ago, it was with tongues firmly in cheek that they named the annual art exhibit at Mount Royal Tavern. The title Foodscape indicated the artists' displeasure with Artscape, Baltimore's arts extravaganza, which the artists felt focused on food, rather than art. Foodscape founder Ronald R. Russell went back to that sly humor a few years ago when he created Regurgiscape, which opens Tuesday at Roman's Place, a small bar close to Patterson Park.

Judging urbanscapes by their appearances can be as misguided as judging books by their covers. Consider the slice of North Avenue between Charles and Howard streets. A cursory glance reveals several buildings that could use a few essentials, like, say, windows. Or tenants. Fast-food businesses in need of a little sprucing. An iffy motel. That sort of thing. But a second glance makes this stretch of Baltimore look not just less gritty, but actually blossoming. Take in a wider view that covers some of the surrounding blocks, especially along Charles, and the signs of fresh life jump out - cafes and restaurants with a dynamic vibe, galleries with a flair for the edgy, intimate theaters.

In the past few years, shrinking album sales and illegal downloads have shaken up the music industry. But after a downturn in the late '90s, live music festivals are once again flourishing - offering some hope for a struggling industry. After the horrendous 1999 Woodstock and the subsequent sputtering of Lollapalooza, American music festivals looked all but done for. But now, festivals such as Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, a revitalized Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival are grossing in the tens of millions, making them formidable revenue sources.

Artscape will expand onto Charles Street this year to in an effort to boost the Station North Arts and Entertainment District and bring more people to the galleries, restaurants and shops in Midtown Baltimore's designated arts area. The arts festival, set for July 18-20, will continue to be centered in Bolton Hill along Mount Royal Avenue. But this year the festival will also occupy Charles Street from Mount Royal north to Lafayette Avenue, with a music stage, food court, street performers and other activities.

ART THE GREAT MIGRATION / / 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St. N.W., Washington. $8-$10. 202-387-2151 or phillipscollection.org. ....................... All 60 panels of Jacob Lawrence's groundbreaking visual epic of the largest internal migration in U.S. history, the movement of rural Southern blacks to the urban North, are reunited in this spectacular exhibition, created when the artist was still in his 20s. This is the work that put African-American art on the map when it was first exhibited in the 1940s.

The nation's premier stage plans to mount a three-week festival of the arts and culture of the Arab world next season - a programming decision with political overtones. The festival, called "Arabesque" and presented in cooperation with the League of Arab States, will be held at the Kennedy Center from Feb. 25 to March 15, 2009. There will be performances from 22 nations in dance, theater and music, including 12 premieres. Visual arts and fashion will also have a part. In recent years, the Kennedy Center has shone spotlights on the arts of Japan and China - but neither is a culture with whom the U.S. recently has been in conflict.

Arts Festival Across the bay Go to the third annual Plein Air Easton Competition and Arts Festival on the Eastern Shore. Artists paint outdoors, as well as exhibit and sell their works. Events, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., are at various locations. Call 410-822-7297 or go to pleinair-easton.com.

TODAY BALTIMORE COUNTY COUNCIL -- The Baltimore County Council will meet in a legislative session at 4 p.m. in council chambers on the second floor at the County Courthouse, 400 Washington Ave., Towson. A vote is scheduled on funding to encourage redevelopment in Pikesville. 410-887-3196. TOMORROW ELECTION DAY -- Polls in Maryland will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the general election. The state Board of Elections Web site is www.elections.state.md.us. WEDNESDAY GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH -- Howard County Genealogical Society will meet at 7:30 p.m. to discuss "Computer Software for Research and Recordkeeping."

Arts festival -- The 41st annual Bel Air Festival for the Arts will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. today in Shamrock Park behind the Bel Air Town Hall on Hickory Avenue, rain or shine. Admission is free. About 350 artists, photographers and craftsmen from the mid-Atlantic region will showcase their work. The festival also will feature performances by the Harford Ballet at 9:30 a.m.; Bay City Seven at 10 a.m.; Members of Applause at 11:30 a.m.; Starlighters at noon; Sounding Brass at 12:30 p.m.; Upper Chesapeake Chorus of Sweet Adelines at 1:30 p.m.; Chuck Baker Orchestra at 2:30 p.m.; Silver Eagle Cloggers at 3:15 p.m.; and the Bel Air Community Band at 4 p.m. Food vendors will be on site, and free shuttle bus service will be available from the Motor Vehicle Administration parking lot on Route 24. Parking for a $2 donation to the Bel Air Auxiliary Police will be at the town parking garage.