Have you ever lay down in a meadow and gazed at the stars? Greater Lansing’s fine arts scene is like that: a rich and rare mix of fertile, home-grown talent sprouting from small and sometimes unexpected venues and a dazzling constellation of larger institutions with international reach.
From an open mic night at UrbanBeat to the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Wharton Center, from a quirky local artist’s assemblages of backyard scraps to the angular galleries of Michigan State University’s Broad Art Museum, the area was packed with stimuli for the eyes, ears and mind in 2024.
In numerous cases, the local talent and the world-class artists were one and the same. Let’s see — who can we pick on as an example? If you’re lucky, veteran jazz saxophonist Walter Blanding, who’s acclaimed as far as China and Israel, might come to your town for a night to share his musical artistry and draw a story or two from his deep well of life experiences. But if you’re really lucky, he’ll set up shop permanently at MSU and dig in for a kaleidoscopic series of concerts at a cozy little venue like UrbanBeat. That’s just what Blanding did in 2024, bringing a variety of combos and themes to the Old Town venue, from the music of Detroit legend Donald Byrd with Detroit trumpeter Dwight Adams to last week’s holiday-themed celebration.
Owing to lack of space, Blanding will have to represent the entire panoply of jazz stars, from pianist Xavier Davis to legendary drummer Randy Gelispie, that operate from MSU’s jazz studies program and frequently grace local stages or even bump into you at Quality Dairy. If you doubt the wattage involved, 2024 was the year that their illustrious leader, jazz studies director and bassist Rodney Whitaker, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joining fellow members such as Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein. Whitaker is one of the world’s most committed and influential musicians and educators, and he also played a killer gig at UrbanBeat last month.
His apotheosis at the AAAS wasn’t the only milestone in the local arts community in 2024.
Earlier this month, it was announced that MSU Opera Theatre’s epic, ambitious and exuberant 2023 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Falstaff” won the prestigious American Prize in opera for a college or university production, with director Melanie Helton also taking high honors. Yes, we even have thriving and exciting opera in Greater Lansing, thanks to Helton and her talented students.
A few other local musical institutions reached some big milestones this year. Nationally acclaimed organist Brian Charette called Jazz Tuesdays at Moriarty’s Pub “the best steady jam session I’ve ever attended.” In July, the weekly showcase of local and touring artists celebrated its 10th year, with a waiting list of top jazz musicians itching for a piece of the action.
If any local institution knows how to reach from the grass roots to the stars, it’s the Ten Pound Fiddle, which is celebrating an even bigger milestone — an astonishing 50 years. From a bucket of Creole-flavored acoustic blues by fiddler Cedric Watson and guitarist Corey Harris on Jan. 12 to an appearance by rising national country star Amythyst Kiah on Nov. 20, the Ten Pound Fiddle continued its rich tradition of hosting touring stars, local stalwarts and community-based musical fun in 2024, powered by greater Lansing’s tight-knit and passionate folk, country and bluegrass community.
All of the Above Hip Hop Academy — and its visionary founder, rapper Ozay Moore — reached a milestone of its own, bringing its creative and educational mission to a permanent home at 303 S. Washington Square in downtown Lansing.
The mix of local talent and world-class quality is also a hallmark of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Timothy Muffitt. The LSO’s reputation for punching above its weight class, shared by many local arts organizations, gives it the heft to draw a star soloist like British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, who can write his own ticket at any hall in the world and is coming to town to play Beethoven’s epic Fifth Piano Concerto with the LSO in 2025. Musicians closer to home provided many of the most memorable moments in 2024, including January’s world premiere of a mind-bending trumpet concerto by MSU composition Professor David Biedenbender, with the orchestra’s own principal trumpeter, Neil Mueller, soloing, and a thundering Holiday Pops collaboration with LaVonté Heard’s Transcendence Performing Arts Center, a massed chorus of gospel singers, that finally brought together two mighty forces in the city’s musical life to spectacular result.
Wharton Center director Eric Olmscheid demonstrated his commitment to bringing world-class fine arts programming to Greater Lansing by hosting two touring symphony orchestras this year: the Detroit Symphony and its dynamic music director, Jader Bignamini, on May 2 and, in a major programming coup years in the making, the London Philharmonic on Oct. 17.
In the visual arts, an ever-evolving constellation of smaller galleries, churches, community halls and libraries featured the work of hundreds of local artists, while the Broad Art Museum continued to refine its mission of bringing cutting-edge art to MSU and the capital region.
Under interim director Steven Bridges, the Broad continued to develop its uncanny knack for mounting exhibits with both local appeal and international dimensions. An absorbing dive into the abstract work of Palestinian American artist Samia Halaby, who received her master’s degree at MSU in 1960, gave a visionary body of work a long-overdue showcase. But the knockout show of the year, still running at the Broad, immerses the viewer in a swarm of 6,000 steel monarch butterflies. Esmaa Mohamoud’s compelling autobiographical meditation, “Complex Dreams,” is the first in a series of Signature Commission exhibits that will bring international artists into close collaboration with the Broad and its staff to create works that are designed to inhabit the museum’s singular architecture, from conception to installation.
Lansing’s poetry and spoken-word scene continued to flourish in 2024. On April 5, no-holds-barred slam poet Neil Hilborn held forth at the Poetry Room, poet Masaki Takahashi’s lively series of readings and poetry-related events. Veteran poet and educator Ruelaine Stokes, who succeeded Takahashi as Lansing poet laureate this summer, continued to nurture and inspire the local poetry community with numerous readings, special events and guest artists.
For 11 days in April, the Capital City Film Festival showcased more than 100 shorts and feature-length films at venues around town, including Central United Methodist Church, R.E. Olds Transportation Museum and the Fledge.
The festival season seemed extra festive in 2024. East Lansing’s Summer Solstice Jazz Festival has perfected the art of mixing local talent and national stars, with vocalist Kurt Elling as headliner at this year’s event in June. Bookending the summer, Jazzfest Michigan lit up Turner Street in Old Town in early August with an expanded five-day, four-stage spread in celebration of the event’s 30th year. A week later, saxophonist Phil Denny brought back the chill vibe of the Armory Smooth Jazz Fête, which has become a destination for smooth-jazz aficionados and artists from across the country.
The mid-July Dam Jam music festival at the Brenke Fish Ladder in Old Town climbed further to the top of Greater Lansing’s most popular and artistically successful events, with local hip-hop artist Jahshua Smith and R&B artist Mystur Love on hand to generate the earthy, jubilant vibes that have come to characterize this unique event. Prospects for the Dam Jam are bright — the Brenke Fish Ladder will undergo a long-awaited upgrade into a one-of-a-kind, Pure Lansing-style music venue beginning next year.
Since the recent crushing Spartan defeat — I mean the one inflicted by Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C. — no year-end fine arts wrap-up has been complete without the latest blah-blah-blah on Lansing’s long-awaited downtown performing arts center. The twist this year is — cue William Shatner — “no blah-blah-blah!” Construction fences are up, posters are posted around town, and, most importantly, financing is in place for the $28 million, 2,000-person-capacity Ovation Center for Music and the Arts, with new construction set to start in the spring. While not a performing arts center in the traditional sense, the Ovation will be a much-needed venue for touring rock, hip-hop, country, comedy and other performing artists; a home to a variety of community events and educational programs; and the permanent base of the Lansing Public Media Center.
In an exciting set of designs for the Ovation unveiled this fall, Detroit-based Albert Kahn Associates, an architectural giant with a long history of innovation, came up with a glowing, transparent vision of glass, wood and steel that combines elegant glitz with welcoming, local earthiness.
One building doesn’t make an arts scene. But the designs unveiled in October seemed to codify and reinforce the world-class aspirations and community spirit that characterize so much of Lansing’s fine arts scene, from the Broad Museum to the Lansing Symphony, the Ten Pound Fiddle, the Wharton Center, MSU jazz studies and many more local artists who quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, punch above their weight.
A thousand pardons to the many musicians, artists and organizations we have no space to mention here. Not to toot our own horn, but the only way to really keep up with it all is to read City Pulse every week, not just the last week of the year.
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