First Friday: April 4

First Friday is here again! It promises to be a feast for the eyes with the opening of the Primal exhibit at 621 along with works from FSU's Art Students League in the Nan Boyton Memorial Gallery (attached to 621). Also worth seeing are the collective works of this semester's graduating art students at the FSU Museum of Fine Arts, which include a wide variety of art, from painting to multimedia to installation.

Check out http://www.railroadsquare.com/first_fri.html for more info and a clickable version of the map below.

Historic Photos of Tallahassee

For those interested in the cultural roots of Tallahassee, October is quite an exciting month!

Historian and author Andrew Edel recently published Historic Photos of Tallahassee, which chronicles two centuries of Florida's capital city, from it's founding around 1824 to the present. Text is sparse, but generally unnecessary, as the photos tell their own stories. Most of the images have been pulled from various archives and presented more or less chronologically. As a non-native -- I'm from Orlando -- I have a hard time appreciating details that Tallahassee natives (and history buffs) will surely find fascinating. The city has a lot of history waiting to be discovered.

Andrew Edel will be speaking and signing books on October 25, at 7:00pm in the Knott House Museum. For anyone interested in history or in Tallahassee's roots, the museum is also hosting a Historic Architecture tour during the month of October, which is cheap and unique. Aside from that, the Tallahassee Visitor's Bureau also hosts a Historic Ghost tour during October that embarks at 6:00pm and explores architectural history and ghostly lore by twilight.

FSU Kaleidoscope Series

With an outstanding array of musicians, the Kaleidoscope Series of concerts at FSU is a wonderful - and cheap! - way to see, hear and generally experience chamber music. But with such a misleading name, I wonder if these concerts suffer low attendance. I'm sure that many Tallahassee natives are very familiar with Kaleidoscope and readily recognize it as the chamber music series, but for the 40,000 students at FSU who have the opportunity to enjoy free chamber music, it might be a little vague.

That being said, if you have any interest in classical music, you absolutely must try one of these concerts. Even if you find full orchestras to be somewhat boring, I can guarantee that chamber music is a different experience - much more personal and far more interesting.

These concerts are always held in Opperman Music Hall, which is a little out of the way if you've never been there and aren't familiar with that corner of the FSU campus. You can see it pretty well on the Beta version of the FSU Campus Map. Tickets can be bought at the door, and are always free for FSU students. For more information, like directions, updated times, season subscriptions, and anything else you may want to ask, call (850) 644-4774.

Tallahassee Democrats Event Listings

Tallahassee Democrat Event Calendar

Always I am finding new things to do in Tallahassee and new resources to find interesting activities. This is a rather obvious one that I overlooked, perhaps because the Democrat's website does not include a readily accessible link to the 'Events' section. The search feature takes a little effort to use, unless you know exactly what you're looking for, and unfortunately it's difficult to browse by category. It's a simple matter, though, to check out what's going on during a specific day. There's a surprising number of entries here, most (if not all) of which are not related to FSU or university life, which is very refreshing.