Jan sends along this release…

Decatur High School 2009 graduate Anna Rose Gable brings her singing group, the Yale Women’s Slavic Chorus, here Saturday for a week-long concert tour. As described on the chorus’s web site: “The group was established at Yale in 1969 and performs music from all over the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The Slavic Chorus prides itself on maintaining a diverse repertoire of complex and traditional arrangements. A single concert might see fast-paced Russian songs, soft and mysterious Croatian lullabies, brassy Bulgarian favorites, and many more. We are entirely student-run and -directed, learning from singing masters, sheet music, source recordings, and one another. We strive to do justice to the unique dissonances, rhythms, and vocal qualities of the music we sing, and have even begun to add some traditional folk dancing to our performances!”

When the group performs at the Decatur Library at 2 p.m. Sunday with Ensemble Kalinka, a Russian children’s singing group, Anna Rose will have come full circle. She discovered Slavic music there while in high school, when she checked out a CD of The Bulgarian Women’s Choir. After going online to find out more about the choir, she found video of Yale’s Slavic Chorus and was hooked. Now a Yale senior, Anna Rose joined the chorus as a freshman and acted as its director last year, overseeing production of the group’s latest CD.

Here’s an article about the chorus from the 2012 Yale Daily News | WEEKEND.

Full schedule below.

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Prior to tonight’s Decatur City Commission meeting, the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (which will consist of Mayor Baskett, and Commissioners Cunningham and Boykin) is scheduled to meet at 6:30pm to consider the purchase of DeKalb County’s Callaway Building site.

Documents for the meeting spell out that the city would pay the greater of…

(a) FIVE MILLION EIGHTY-NINE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND N0/100 DOLLARS ($5,089,300.00), or (b) TWENTY-FIVE AND N0/100 DOLLARS ($25.00) PER SQUARE FOOT 

According to an article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle last month, the city will potentially work with Cousins Properties to redevelop the site.

If the sale is finalized, the agreement between the city and the county would allow the county 18 months to move off the property, while the city could use currently unoccupied space for municipal court services while the Beacon Hill complex is under-construction.

If you’ve got some serious time to kill, you can read through all the legalese in the attachments HERE.

I don’t believe it’s an overstatement to say that this is one of the cooler things to come out of Decatur EVER!  The Decatur Arts Alliance sends along this note…

Sidewalk Saturdays in Decatur are fast-approaching! During April, May and June there will be street performers, artists, poets, singers, musicians, dancers, and sidewalk chalk artists performing on key streets and corners in downtown Decatur and Oakhurst. Performers will pass an audition and receive an hourly stipend.

Ready to take your art to the streets of Decatur? The application deadline is March 21st and we will be hiring artists quickly. Submit your application along with a digital copy of, or link to, your work. If you are not interested in participating in Sidewalk Saturdays but know artists who may be, please pass this email along.

Artists: Download the application HERE!