2024 • The Year in Arts, Culture & Community

“The hardest thing is to live richly in the present without letting it be tainted out of fear for the future or regret for the past” -  Theodore Roethke

As we close out what has arguably been a chaotic, tumultuous, yet equally encouraging and hopeful year in 2024, this opening quote from Saginaw’s Pulitzer Prize winning poet laureate aptly summarizes the ongoing evolution of the Arts & Cultural community throughout the Great Lakes Bay Region as they continue to serve as beacons for creativity, hope, and vision as we move into the unchartered waters of 2025.

While arts and cultural resources populating our region have largely recovered  - as with other sectors of society - from the disruption and financial repercussions of the pandemic that left stages and galleries vacant for nearly two years; added pressures such as inflation have also impacted the theatrical & concert industry over the past year, as it has with most consumer oriented endeavors.

Reflecting upon these challenges, another Roethke quote comes to mind: “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” 

Fortunately, the Great Lakes Bay Region is blessed with many artistic and cultural entities that utilized the spark of illumination embedded within the artist’s eye and sensibilities for bringing growth and vision into the challenge of any environment, creating something new, prosperous, and vital in the process.

The biggest stories exemplifying this vision for fusing the world of arts, commerce, culture, and community together in 2024 were numerous, but without doubt a good place to start is with the Midland Center for the Arts, which embarked upon an impressive  $47 million renovation that promises to redefine the essence of  this artistic & cultural showcase in 2025.  Through large portals in the atrium, visitors will witness a new interactive museum that will ignite the spark of curiosity and showcase the architectural design of Alden B. Dow in a renewed light, inviting patrons to immerse themselves in a truly spectacular space. While the construction is underway, the  Center will remain operational, showcasing its commitment to the community's uninterrupted access to cultural enrichment. The $47 million project not only aims to revamp the museum, but also modernize the building's infrastructure, including a revamped main entrance.

A second big notable trend in 2024 was the ever-increasing number of free Summer Music Festivals dedicated to bringing top-notch regional and national entertainment to the public at little or no impact to their wallet. Events such as Saginaw’s Friday Night Live and Party of McCarty, Bay City’s Concerts in Wenonah Park, The Labadie Rib Fest, and Midland’s free weekend concerts on Main Street, along with Concerts at the Tridge, to name but a few kept our region rockin’ during the summer months.

One of the musical highlights this year consisted of contemporary trumped players and vocalists Bria Skonberg & Benny Benack III, who embarked  upon a swinging celebration of the Great American Songbook with a 45-city North American that stopped at Midland Center back in February. As she told the REVIEW in an exclusive interview: “Before I moved to New York City in 2010 I did a lot of music from the classic jazz era from 1900 up through the 1940s and 50s, but my goal once I moved there was to try new things and stretch the boundaries of jazz. But now, I’m exploring the stuff at the foundation of where it all began - strong melodies, songs that tell memorable stories through the lyrics of the people that created it - and that’s the trunk of the tree.”

The Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum hosted several impressive exhibitions in 2024, beginning with a powerfully mesmerizing display from Harlem Renaissance artist Richmond Barthé, featuring 22 works from this eminently gifted & talented, yet relatively unknown groundbreaking sculptor.  With an impeccable technique, his masterful sculptures celebrated Black identity, portraying the beauty, dignity, and humanity of African American subjects at a time when their representation was scarce in the art world.

Later in the year they also showcased an exhilarating journey of groundbreaking musical artists titled Front Row Center: Icons of Rock, Blues, and Soul, which took patrons on a musical odyssey through the golden eras of Rock, Blues, and Soul music by featuring over 70 photographs of iconic photographer Larry Hulst that captured the freewheeling energy of live music and the enduring visual spectacle of rock’s greatest performers, including rare shots of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, and Lauryn Hill to name but a few.

Similarly, with “Souvenir of Saginaw, Michigan’, the Castle Museum of Saginaw County History  crafted an enthralling and interactive exhibition offering a window back through time into the way Saginaw looked and existed back in 1889. Featuring large enormous reproductions of magical-sepia-toned lithographs, this exhibit offered visitors an Alice through the looking glass glimpse back in time to a wealth of street scenes, views of public buildings, and thriving businesses that suggested the vibrancy of what was then Michigan’s third largest city.

Local author Jeanne Blum Lesinski also released her debut collection of poetry in 2024 titled Tethers End through national publisher Shanti Arts, which contains an astonishing array of contemporary poems rendered through a variety of poetic styles that vividly tackle an equally broad array of subjects ranging from the sudden heart attack of a beloved parent, to the solace found in the splendor of nature, to a spaniel dog held back from its true nature by the desire for and distance of the object of its attention. With this collection spanning over 40 year of poetry, Lesinski calls herself a super late bloomer.  “Better late than never,” she notes. ”Besides, sometimes it takes living a chunk of life to know what you want to say, and even more time to learn how and to have the courage to say it.”

Pit & Balcony Community Theatre continued with their astounding track record of staging top-notch regional premieres of contemporary theatrical works off the beaten track that resonate strongly with divergent audiences. A pair of their most successful outings in 2024 consisted of The Play That Goes Wrong, an Olivier Award-winning 2012 comedy that was a hilarious hybrid of Monty Python & Sherlock Holmes, which partly worked so well because at its core it is a celebration of the essence of Live Theatre, which as with any complex and tightly orchestrated endeavor has many moving parts in motion that must all come together. With the world seeming as if it is falling apart, there exists a perverse comfort in watching things go smash in a safely contained environment, proven by the somewhat brutal allure of people attending monster truck jams, or watching videos of toddlers falling off tricycles, which struck a similar vibe with this production.

Another highpoint was P&B’s production of WILD PARTY - a powerfully rendered and unforgettable musical with book music, and lyrics by Andrew Lippa that took audiences back to the 1920s - a time of sizzling jazz, love and longing, lust and loss, risk and revenge involving people living on the edge. “Wild Party is unlike any musical of which I am aware,” noted Director Todd Thomas. “Although set in the 1920's, the consequences of an unwavering pursuit of self-pleasure and attention and the resulting boredom when we aren't entertained are not that different now, 100 years later.”

Having launched a stellar series of innovative and dynamic presentations that have reached high into the musical stratosphere, the Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra took music fans to the boundaries of outer and inner space during their 88^th season by opening with a performance of Gustav Holst’s ‘The Planets’ synchronized to actual NASA photography and video shot deep in space, and closed out the season by performing in faithfully synchronized precision the entire score of  J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek film The Future Begins while the film was shown to audiences.

On a sadder note, the Riverside Saginaw Film Festival screened several top-notch contemporary films & documentaries at their 2024 Spring Film Festival at Saginaw’s historic Court Street Theatre, only to have the venue’s visionary owner and developer Thomas Braley pass away a couple months later, leaving the fate of this historic venue in limbo.

For fifty years now, the Great Lakes Bay Region has been fortunate to have a group of dedicated volunteers known as The River Junction Poets, who celebrated their 50^th Anniversary in 2024. Committed to advancing the beauty, importance, and riches to be rendered through this art form that is known as poetry, the group initially began back in 1974 as an idea of Diane Gotay, and was then known as The Poet’s Workshop.  Armed with a litany of admirable goals, they offer workshops, presentations, and informal open readings. Their goals are to appreciate and improve members writing talents, to share their own work, and to communicate the joy of poetry with everyone. As a part of these goals, they have implemented programs in the schools, presented readings for the community, and invited well-known poets to share with both schools and the community at large.

Also celebrating their 50^th Anniversary in 2024 were Bill & Judy Wegner of Records & Tapes Galore, which first opened its doors back in January of 1974 and started by providing musical recordings of popular artists in formats ranging from vinyl, to cassette tape, to compact disc and managed to outlive such big box franchises as Tower Records, Harmony House and Media Play at a time when everybody was predicting how digital streaming would mark the end of the independent record retailer.

The REVIEW also held its 38^th Annual REVIEW Music Awards celebration at The Westown in Bay City back in late April, featuring a broad range of live performances and handing out 60 trophies  to musicians, bands, venues, and music related video, streaming, and production entities populating the Great Lakes Bay Region in multiple genres ranging from Jazz, Blues, Country, Rock, and  Hip-Hop. With a total of 8,565 people casting votes during both the nomination and final voting rounds, a total of 1093 musicians & groups from the region were nominated  by the general public, with the top five nominees in each division moving to a final round of voting and the winners honored at this special annual celebration.

Newcomer Val Hazel  won Best New Artist of the Year and the group ADABOY! became the first band in the 38-year history of the REVIEW Music Awards to win ‘Best Variety Band’, ‘Best Original Band’, ‘Best Rock Band, and ‘Best Alternative Band’, with their first single release Time (Voices Run) recorded down in Nashville last year with Grammy Award winning engineer Joe Baldridge also nailing several top honors, which is an amazing feat for a group who’s sixth and current incarnation is barely two-years old.

The late Spring & Summer months witnessed a pair of landmark events for the history books: the 2024 Memorial Cup and the Shine Bright Mural Project, each of which cemented the reputation of the Saginaw valley as a beacon possibilities that can be derived by fashioning pro-active synergies between  the arts & commerce. Celebrating its 105^th year in late May and early June, for the first time in the history of the Memorial Cup the city of Saginaw became the first city in the state of Michigan to host the championship of the Canadian Hockey League; and only the fourth time an American city has hosted the tournament. With The Saginaw Spirit securing the OHL Championship title, an estimated 4,500 overnight stays in area hotel rooms were tied to this event, with an estimated $25-30-million in revenue derived throughout the region.

Shortly following this landmark event, the Shine Bright Mural Project dedicated the completion of the vibrant, stunning, and transformative public art installation created by internationally acclaimed Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel.  Located in Old Town Saginaw at the site of the former grain silos, this inspiring addition to our city's cultural landscape now stands as a testament to the power of art to transform and uplift communities. "We are honored to have Okuda San Miguel's artwork in our city," said Larry Preston, Co-organizer of Shine Bright. "The Shine Bright Mural is more than just a beautiful addition to our urban landscape; it is a beacon of creativity and positivity that will inspire residents and visitors alike for years to come."

Other memorable moments worth of mention in 2024 included the long awaited re-opening of The Stables Nightclub & Lounge in Bay City - a welcome addition to our regional entertainment scene; and stellar programming by the crew at The Temple Theater in Saginaw, who continued to bring world-class entertainers such as Steve Martin & Martin Short, Get the Led Out, and Yo-Yo Ma to our regional stages.