Orange County Arts Commission

Around her Triangle stomping grounds, Rebecca Newton is best-known as the longtime big-voiced leader of Rebecca & the Hi-Tones. But she’s always been a major local-music presence offstage and behind the scenes, too.

As you’d expect of an ensemble named after a Leonard Cohen album title (and led by a frontman named after jazz guitar legend Django Reinhardt), Chapel Hill’s The Old Ceremony has always been one of the most elegant bands in town.

United Arts of Wake County, in partnership with the Raleigh Fine Arts Society, recently hosted the second Spoken Word Competition for high school students. On January 7, twelve finalists, including Carrboro High School’s Milagros (“Mili”) Lopez Secena,

PopUp Chorus events are come-one-come-all affairs in which a crowd of singers convene, rehearse, perform and record a couple of songs. The group’s videos then go out over social-media channels, and they’ve attracted favorable attention from many of their cover subjects.

Story via Arshia Simkin, The Underline, Orange County Arts Commission Gideon Young wears many...

Story via David Menconi, Down on Copperline, Orange County Arts Commission Hillsborough’s Mango...

Phyllis B. Dooney, a visual storyteller, who has worked in photography, film, and audio is the founder of PHOTO FARM—a new, collaborative photography studio in Chapel Hill.

Now 30 years old, Saxsquatch can be cagey about many of his biographical details. But a few details are known. He’s an Orange County native who attended Carrboro High School, although he claims not to have graduated because, “It’s tough for Saxsquatch to be accepted in high school.”

You may think of town meetings as rather staid, dry affairs, but the Carrboro Town Council opens every meeting with a poem, selected by the current Carrboro poet laureate, Liza Wolff-Francis.