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Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop Announce Programming for Women of the World (WOW) Festival, March 2-4, 2012

Headliners include Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rain Pryor and NPR's The Kitchen Sisters

Baltimore, Md. (January 27, 2012) - The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and BSO Music Director Marin Alsop announced today the programming for the highly anticipated, first-ever Women of the World-Baltimore Festival (WOW-Baltimore) on Friday, March 2 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, March 3 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 4 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and neighboring venues.  Delivered in partnership with London's Southbank Centre, and co-artistically directed by Jude Kelly, the founder of the WOW Festival, WOW-Baltimore is a new, three-day festival for and about women featuring a series of panel discussions, interactive workshops, spontaneous performance and a community forum for casual conversation.  The pinnacle of the Festival is the WOW-Baltimore Concert on Saturday, March 3 at 8 p.m. - an evening of storytelling, music and dance hosted by actress and comedienne Rain Pryor and features a special appearance by singer/songwriter and five-time Grammy Award-winner Mary Chapin Carpenter.  Please see below for complete event details or visit WOWbaltimore.org.

WOW-Baltimore boasts a rich and diverse daytime line-up that gives a voice to women and girls who are breaking the mold in science, business, law, the arts, health, activism, education, politics, sport, fashion, finance and family life, as well as men who are trying to build gender equality at work and in the home.   Core Festival elements include:
• Keynote speakers - NPR's Peabody Award-winning The Kitchen Sisters shed light on "The Hidden World of Girls"; American Visionary Art Museum's Rebecca Hoffberger discusses why "The Ladies are the Muses"; and, Alice Hill, Senior Counselor to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, tackles the federal response to human trafficking.
• Macy's Speed Mentoring - Women exchange ideas and gain insight from experts across all fields in a modified speed dating format.
• WOW Bites - TED-like talks, ideas or manifestos.
• WOW How-To's and Workshops - Interactive sessions that are practical, fun and informative, from crafting to "How smart is your smart phone," financial fitness to the "Do's and don'ts of dieting," and everything in between.
•  A WOW Marketplace showcasing women's businesses, non-profits, products, activities and arts and crafts; and,
•  Spontaneous performances (Zumba, dance and more), a film screening of the compelling documentary Miss Representation moderated by Max Weiss of Baltimore Magazine, and Stoop Stories Workshops for women to learn how to tell their own story.

Throughout the weekend, women (and some men) will lead panel discussions to ignite conversation and motivate solutions and action.  Highlights include:
• "Girls: An Endangered Species or our Next World Leaders?" moderated by Julie Willig, the Girl Up! Campaign Associate for the United Nations Foundation, and featuring a panel of Baltimore's own 11-18 year-old girls;
• "Women in Technology: Why so Few?," with Zoe Bell, the Senior Producer for Zynga (creator of games such as Farmville and Words with Friends);
• "From Good to Great: When Women Drive the Bus," including Dr. Claire M. Fraser, Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine;
• "Food & Wine: The Philosophy & Inspiration of Food in Community," with Rita Blackwell, the Women's Industrial Kitchen chefs Tina Perry & Irene Smith, and a number of women from varying ethnic communities;
• "Men Talk" about what it means to be a feminist male and support empowered women, with CENTERSTAGE's Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah and WEAA's Marc Steiner;
• "Female Chefs share their versions of brunch (with a twist)," with the region's leading female chefs; and
• "The F-Word Debate: Is Feminism Today's F-Word?" moderated by WOW Founder and Artistic Director of London's Southbank Centre, Jude Kelly.

This is just a sampling of what WOW-Baltimore has to offer.  To view a complete Festival lineup, visit WOWbaltimore.org.

Concert Programs
Evening ticketed performances conclude the Friday and Saturday Festival days.  The WOW-Baltimore Concert on Saturday, March 3rd is a night of music, dance and spoken word with stories that celebrate the life, love and the spirit of women. From folk to funk, drama to comedy, this showcase features Mary Chapin Carpenter, who will perform an intimate "storytellers" set with a trio selected from her touring band. (Ms. Carpenter has donated a portion of her fee back to a nonprofit showcased in the WOW-Baltimore Festival.) Among the other local luminaries featured in this evening-long program are actress and comedienne Rain Pryor, formerly of HBO The Wire's Maria Broom, Stoop Storytellers, the Baltimore-based contemporary dance company Dance & Bmore, a "WOW Mom Choir," jazz singer Lea Gilmore and a Soulful Celebration with Baltimore City College Choir and eight of Baltimore's premier dance companies.

As part of WOW-Baltimore and the BSO's year-long celebration of women, on Friday, March 2 at 8pm and Sunday, March 4 at 3pm, the BSO's multimedia performances of Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light combine live orchestra with the 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc.  The landmark silent film features actress Renée Falconetti, whose portrayal of Joan of Arc is regarded as one of the 100 greatest film performances of all time.  The BSO, conducted by Alsop, will be joined by the Baltimore Choral Arts Society to present this rarely performed work in its entirety.

About the History and Creation of WOW-Baltimore
Founded by Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of London's Southbank Centre, the WOW - Women of the World - Festival was created to celebrate the formidable power of women to inspire change, explore womankind's shared history, draw attention to injustice, enjoy female camaraderie and to encourage men to add their support to a movement that seeks a more fair world. WOW-Baltimore was inspired by BSO Music Director Marin Alsop's participation in the inaugural WOW Festival presented by the Southbank Centre in March 2011. It also furthers the BSO's vision under Alsop to become a more accessible community resource that is both relevant in the 21st century and has a real and positive community impact. It has always been WOW-Baltimore's intention to be an event for the community and presented by the community.  In keeping with this ethos, the BSO held 10 community "Think-In" planning sessions to help shape the content of WOW.  More than 400 women (and men!) responded to this open invitation to share their personal stories, discuss issues facing women in Baltimore and around the world and help plan the first-ever WOW-Baltimore. WOW-Baltimore is the first WOW Festival outside of London. The second annual WOW Festival at Southbank Centre, supported by Bloomberg, takes place on March 9-11, 2012.

Marin Alsop, BSO Music Director and WOW-Baltimore Co-Artistic Director
Hailed as one of the world's leading conductors for her artistic vision and commitment to accessibility in classical music, Marin Alsop made history with her appointment as the 12th music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. With her inaugural concerts in September 2007, she became the first woman to head a major American orchestra. She also holds the title of conductor emeritus at the Bournemouth Symphony in the United Kingdom, where she served as the principal conductor from 2002-2008, and is music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California.

In 2005, Ms. Alsop was named a MacArthur Fellow, the first conductor ever to receive this prestigious award. In 2007, she was honored with a European Women of Achievement Award, in 2008 she was inducted as a fellow into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2009 Musical America named her "Conductor of the Year." In November 2010, she was inducted into the Classical Music Hall of Fame. In February 2011, Marin Alsop was named the music director of the Orquestra Sinfônica do estado de São Paulo (OSESP), or the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, effective for the 2012-13 season. Ms. Alsop was named to Guardian's Top 100 Women list in March 2011. In 2011 Marin Alsop was named an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre in London, England.

A regular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, Ms. Alsop appears frequently as a guest conductor with the most distinguished orchestras around the world. In addition to her performance activities, she is also an active recording artist with award-winning cycles of Brahms, Barber and Dvo?ák.

Marin Alsop attended Yale University and received her master's degree from The Juilliard School. In 1989, her conducting career was launched when she won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood where she studied with Leonard Bernstein.

Jude Kelly, Southbank Centre's Artistic Director and WOW-Baltimore Co-Artistic Director
Jude Kelly OBE joined Southbank Centre as Artistic Director in September 2005 and is responsible for creating a unified artistic vision for the whole 21-acre site. She has held a number of important positions in the world of arts and culture. She made her name as Artistic Director of Battersea Arts Centre in the 1980s establishing it as a national venue. In 1986, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company before becoming the first Artistic Director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse (WYP) in Leeds. As Artistic Director and CEO of the country's largest regional theatre, she established the WYP as an acknowledged centre of excellence. Jude left the WYP in 2002 to establish a series of arts spaces called Metal, an artistic "laboratory" that develops creative ideas in a number of contexts. In her career, she has directed more than 100 productions with actors including Sir Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, David Suchet, Alan Rickman and Alison Steadman. Jude Kelly was awarded an OBE for services to the theatre in 1997 and is a member of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad Board, member of the London Cultural Consortium, chair of Metal and chair of the Trustees for World Book Night.

Mary Chapin Carpenter, singer/songwriter
Mary Chapin Carpenter has always chosen her own path. From her first gigs as a rising star on Washington D.C.'s folk scene in the early 1980s, she has made a reputation as both a singer and songwriter with a mind of her own. Over the course of an 11-album recording career, Carpenter has won five Grammy Awards and sold over 13 million records. She has scored 12 Top 10 singles, including "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," which was nominated for a Record of the Year Grammy.

Carpenter signed with Zoë Records in 2007, and her first release with the label, The Calling, received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album, her fifteenth overall Grammy nomination. In 2008, Zoë Records released Carpenter's first holiday album, Come Darkness, Come Light, which includes some favorite Christmas songs by other writers, rarely heard traditional tunes, and six Carpenter originals. In 2009, Zoë Records released Carpenter's twelfth album, The Age of Miracles. 

Carpenter has achieved the same success as a live performer having toured nationally and internationally for nearly two decades winning two Pollstar Country Tour of the Year awards. She has remained immersed in humanitarian work throughout her career, performing in support of cancer and AIDS research, U.S. troops overseas, the Campaign for a Landmine Free World and hunger relief efforts, among other causes. Carpenter was also part of a CNN special on the anniversary of September 11, and recently she has contributed a regular, bi-weekly column to The Washington Times. Additionally, Carpenter has been featured on NBC's "Today Show;" CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman," NPR's "Morning Edition," NPR's "All Things Considered" and CBS News' "Sunday Morning."

WOW-BALTIMORE FESTIVAL
Friday, March 2, 2012 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.-Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (JMSH)
Saturday, March 3, 2012 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.--JMSH
Sunday, March 4, 2012 from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.-JMSH

WOW-Baltimore Festival

WOW Day Passes (entrance & access to all WOW daytime Festival events for a SINGLE WOW day) are $10 general admission and $5 for students. A WOW Weekend Pass (entrance & access to all WOW daytime Festival events on Friday, Saturday & Sunday) are $20 general admission and $15 for students. Tickets can be purchased at BSOmusic.org, 410.783.8000 or by visiting the BSO Ticket Office.

WOW-BALTIMORE CONCERT
Saturday, March 3, 2012 at 8 p.m.-JMSH

Mary Chapin Carpenter, singer/songwriter
Rain Pryor, comedienne
Maria Broom, actor
Stoop Storytellers
Dance & Bmore
WOW Mom Choir
Lea Gilmore, singer
Baltimore City College Choir
 Linda Hall, director
Local Baltimore dance companies

Tickets are $55 for premium and box seats and $42 for non-premium seats and are available at the BSO Ticket Office, 410.783.8000 or BSOmusic.org. 

VOICES OF LIGHT CONCERT
Friday, March 2, 2012 at 8 p.m.-Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (JMSH)
Sunday, March 4, 2012 at 3 p.m.-JMSH

Marin Alsop, conductor
Baltimore Choral Arts Society
 Tom Hall, director

Richard Einhorn: Voices of Light

Tickets are $28 to $61 and are available at the BSO Ticket Office, 410.783.8000 or BSOmusic.org.

WOW-Baltimore Festival is sponsored by:
    
Macy's Foundation

Notre Dame of Maryland University

Miles & Stockbridge LLC

McGuireWoods

Wells Fargo

SECU

Towson University

WOW-Baltimore Media sponsors include:

Baltimore Sun

Urbanite Magazine

WBAL TV

WPYR

WPOC

Magic FM

My City 4 Her

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