On Friday, May 7th at 7:30 pm.

(Brunswick, ME) Duke Ellington’s birthday is coming up! To honor the event, the Novel Jazz Septet will be in performance at Frontier Café, featuring the swinging music of the great American jazz composer, Duke Ellington and fellow composer, Billy Strayhorn. They'll highlight Ellington’s and Strayhorn's well-known tunes, plus rare, vintage gems, recently unearthed from original scores and re-interpreted for you at Frontier.

For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit the Frontier Cafe and Gallery website.

(Searsport, ME) On Friday May 21st at 7:00 pm, Left Bank Books in Searsport will host a poetry reading from “Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama's First 100 Days”, a new anthology edited by Rachel Zucker and local poet Arielle Greenberg. The collection began as a blog in response to a call the editors sent out to poets requesting original poems on assigned days during the critical first 100 days of Obama's term in office. While contemplating this project, Greenberg and Zucker wondered, “Could we get one hundred poets to commit to writing a new poem during the first one hundred carefully watched days of the new presidency? Yes, we could! Poets wrote back immediately and with gusto.” The results were published daily online. As the blog (http://100dayspoems.blogspot.com) evolved into a book, the decision was made to open with Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem, “Say it plain: that many have died for this day,” and to continue with 99 other pieces by poets of all ages and geographic locations. These include Cornelius Eady, David Lehman, Mark Doty, as well as Greenberg and Belfast Poet Laureate Linda Buckmaster, both of whom will be at the shop Friday evening to read from the collection and sign their poems.

The presidential election of 2008 was an historically significant moment that most of us will never forget. As reviewer Denise Duhamel puts it, “The poem-a-day breeziness of the work is instructive not only to poets but also to cultural and academic critics, and Starting Today will be an important cultural and historical document.” The contents vary in tone from the slyly earnest to the downright funny, from the hopeful to the highly politicized. The poetry reading will begin at 7:00 pm and all are welcome to attend and enjoy looking back at the emotionally charged first days of this presidential administration. For more information or to reserve a copy of the book, call 548-6400.

>link to Left Bank Books website

At the Venue Music Bar on Saturday, May 22nd and at Bray's on Friday, May 28th.

(Freeport, and Naples, ME) Maine’s own blues guitar virtuoso and top notch music that you don’t wanna miss! Mark Miller has been playing guitar and belting out the blues for many years. He started playing guitar at age 6 and hasn’t stopped since.

Legendary blues guitarist Mark Miller captivates and inspires with emotional guitar work that can only come from a true master. Clean and connected best describes his style.

For more information, please visit the Venue Music Bar and Bistro website or Bray's website.

On Saturday, May 29th at 8:30 pm.

(Unity, ME) Massachusetts-based quartet The Brew cook up a musical melting pot on their brand-new, self-released album, Back to the Woods, that combines their roots in classic rock, adding ingredients of prog, jazz, reggae, world beat, indie, funk and orchestral pop, sometimes in the course of a single song. The band has been busy building a fan base by touring the northeast, playing events like the Gathering of the Vibes in Connecticut and the Up North Festival in Maine and headlining Boston’s famed Paradise Rock Club. They opened for Bruce Hornsby in 2006, and again in 2008, and were voted Best Opening Act by his fan site. This year, the band was nominated for the “Best New Groove” (Best New Artist) award at the Jammy’s in New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

For more information, please visit the Unity Centre for the Performing Arts website.