(Portland, ME) The Block Party returns to the Portland Arts District, for another year of outdoor, interactive art installations, performances and fun! On Saturday, September 9th, SPACE Gallery, in collaboration with a host of Portland arts organizations, alongside numerous neighbors, will transform a portion of the Arts District along Congress Street into a temporary zone for artistic exploration and enjoyment. Block Party 2011 will feature site-specific installations and performances by Maine artists Greta Bank, Kimberly Convery, Sean O'Brian, and Lorem Ipsum Theater Productions, ranging from a mobile theater to a scale-model Godzilla film set!

Providence, RI's What Cheer? Brigade, a 19-piece street marching band, will ratchet up the party vibe with their irresistible New Orleans meets Samba meets Balkan Brass sound. Attendees will be able to witness the debut of Pickwick Independent Press' project "Analog Tweets", observe Shoot Media Project's "Newscast" in production, get in on the fun with The Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine's "Make Your Own Musical Instruments and Costume" station for kids, and pop-in to Mayo Street Arts' "Dress-Up Photo Booth" for an impromptu portrait session. With additional performances and projects from the ICA at MECA, Portland Ovations, Portland Stage, The Telling Room, Mensk, Sylvia Kania Gallery/Dooryard Collective and more, Block Party 2011 is bound to delight and surprise!

This event is made possible by generous support from the Maine Arts Commission. For more information, please visit www.space538.org.

(Brunswick, ME) On Friday, September 30th at 7:00 pm. The Steve Grover Sextet will present a concert featuring jazz interpretations of The Beatles songbook. Drummer and award-winning composer Steve Grover is the guiding musician behind The Beatles Project, assembling a crack sextet of some of Maine’s finest jazz musicians to perform his arrangements. The group will perform sextet arrangements of Beatles material from the recent CD “Flying” and new sextet arrangements of “Thank You Girl”, “The Inner Light”, “Dear Prudence”, and several others. Special guest artist Trent Austin—an outstanding trumpet player familiar to Brunswick Junior High and High School students—will be on hand as part of the group. Be sure to mark your calendar for this fun and musically satisfying event featuring great jazz interpretations of some of the greatest songs from the most influential pop band of all time.

For more information, please visit www.explorefrontier.com.

(Waterville, ME) On Saturday, October 1st at Colby College's Strider Theater Pas de Deux 2 returns. Two of today’s most exciting ballet artists, Boston Ballet Principal Dancers Kathleen Breen Combes and Yury Yanowsky, will perform another bravura program of pas de deux and solo work. Combes, hailed by the New York Times as “a ballerina of colossal scale and boldness,” is among the country’s foremost Balanchine interpreters, and Yanowsky was recently called “brilliantly versatile” by the UK’s What’sOnStage.com.

For more information, please visit the Arts at Colby website.

(Saco, ME) Through November 13, 2011. Concurrent exhibitions at the Saco Museum celebrate the art of drawing, presented in conjunction with The Maine Drawing Project. "Drawn from the River: Drawings by Artists of the Saco River Valley" will use drawings from the Saco Museum's permanent collection to explore how drawing was part of the artistic process for 19th-century local artists like Gibeon Elden Bradbury and Charles Henry Granger.

(Image: " "Late Summer, Western Quadrant" by Christy Bergland)

"Christy Bergland: Late Seasons of Great Pond" will highlight a 16-piece series of drawings in a variety of media by Biddeford Pool artist Christy Berland.

For more information, please visit the Saco Museum website.