Events Calendar

Join us for an afternoon of sizzling burger, live music, refreshing beverages, an awesome kid zone, and more! Sample and vote for your favorite burger. We’ll be on the corner of West Main St and Daniel Morgan Ave starting at 12 until the last burger is sold. Admission is free. Tickets are required to purchase food, beverage, and kid zone activities.

On exhibit Saturdays and Sundays from 12 – 4 p.m., Rocky Cove Railroad is a G-Scale (garden scale) model train that demonstrates the coming of trains to western North Carolina at the turn of the 20th century. The exhibit is located below the Grand Promenade. Please note, Rocky Cove Railroad will not operate in rainy or wet conditions.

Hit the trails and learn more about The North Carolina Arboretum’s botanically diverse forest with a guided trail walk! April through October, this free hiking program is led by trained volunteer guides who take small groups of participants along woodland trails and through a variety of forest types. Depending on the season and each guide’s area of expertise, topics of discussion may include wildflowers, plant and tree identification, natural history and more.

Guided trail walks are limited to 15 people, including the guide, and are not recommended for guests under 16 years of age. Groups depart from the Baker Visitor Center Lobby on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. and Saturdays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m..

Walks last 1.5 – 2.5 hours, are approximately one to two miles in length. As this program is held rain or shine, all participants should dress appropriately for the weather.

There is no pre-registration; walks are first-come first served and sign up sheets are located in the Baker Visitors Center.

Walks are FREE; however, donations to The North Carolina Arboretum Society are appreciated. Regular parking fees apply. Arboretum Society Members always park free.

Know Before You Go

• Guided Trail Walks are not recommended for guests under 16 years of age.
• Guided Trail Walks are rain or shine and all participants should be dressed comfortably and for the weather.
• Hikes cover 1-2 miles and last 1.5-2 hours.
• Well-behaved leashed pets are welcome to accompany their owners. In the rare case that a pet is disruptive or negatively impacts the experience, the pet and its owner may be asked to excuse themselves from the guided walk.
• COVID-19 Safety: In order to hear the guide and fully participate in the trail walk, participants will be in close proximity to one another for extended periods of time. While face coverings are not required, participants should use their best judgement to keep themselves and others safe while enjoying the trails. Individuals who are experiencing flu-like symptoms or suspect they may have been exposed to COVID-19 should not participate.
• At this time, no more than 6 spaces may be filled by a single family/group through pre-registration for any one Guided Trail Walk. If additional spaces are available on the day of the Walk, additional members of the family/group may participate. We apologize for any inconvenience and look forward to welcoming larger groups in the future.

steamWORKS

From the songbook of Johnny Cash comes this unique musical about love and faith, struggle and success, rowdiness and redemption, and the healing power of home and family. More than two dozen classic hits including “I Walk The Line,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and, of course, “Ring of Fire.” Performed by a multi-talented cast, Ring of Fire paints a musical portrait of ‘The Man in Black’ that promises to be a foot-stompin’, crowd-pleasin’ salute to a unique musical legend!

From the songbook of Johnny Cash comes this unique musical about love and faith, struggle and success, rowdiness and redemption, and the healing power of home and family. More than two dozen classic hits including “I Walk the Line,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and, of course, “Ring of Fire.” Performed by a multi-talented cast.

Director Ben Hope adds “Having spent many years working on various productions of Ring of Fire (this production will be my personal 10th!), The most extraordinary thing I keep finding about Mr. Cash is how unanimously loved he is, even now, 20 years since his death. No other project seems to attract such a varied and enthusiastic crowd as the music of Johnny Cash. I think it’s because he wrote for the ordinary. His words and music are authentic and simple, and he speaks plainly about things we all connect with. He was fallible, with personal demons and shortcomings. He makes us feel like our own imperfections are normal and mundane, and he teaches us that there’s beauty and hope, even in despair. I love Johnny Cash, and I know Flat Rock audiences are going to love Ring of Fire’.”

Don’t miss this inspiring story, all the great music, and an evening of iconic Johnny Cash!

Ring of Fire is presented by WHKP and Carolina Ace Hardware. Flat Rock Playhouse’s 2023 Season is supported by Charlotte & Bob Otto, Optimum, WHKP, and WTZQ as well as the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. www.NCArts.org

For a complete lineup with show descriptions and to purchase tickets, visit www.flatrockplayhouse.org.

“This is a phenomenon.”- New York Magazine, Sara Holdren

All rise for Academy Award® winner Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork. The New York Times Critic’s Pick TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is “the most successful American play in Broadway history” (60 Minutes). With direction by Tony Award® winner Bartlett Sher, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD — “the greatest novel of all time” (Chicago Tribune) — has quickly become “one of the greatest plays in history” (NPR).

Emmy Award®-winning actor Richard Thomas will play the role of Atticus Finch in the National Tour.

Boldly Urban and Richly Pastoral.

From the swirls of sound on urban streets to the poignant strains of traditional songs, our final concert of the season paints an aural portrait of America. Led by guest conductor Jacob Joyce, immerse yourself in a fusion of rhythm, melody, and life fully lived. Explore the vibrant, colorful neighborhoods of New York City with Jesse Montgomery. Your tour continues with a saucy yet poetic ode to the enthusiastic spirit of America illustrated by George Gerswhin and played by Dominic Cheli. Finally, get swept away by the sunny, scenic soundscape created by Charles Ives. Sit back, close your eyes, and let the music transport you. 

Part of Spartanburg Philharmonic’s Zimmerli Series.

Full Concert Program:

– Montgomery, Coincident Dances

– Gershwin, Piano Concerto in F major

– Ives, Symphony No. 2

Hailed by the New York Times as “Sophisticated and Beguiling” and praised by the Los Angeles Times for their “astonishingly vital music-making,” the award-winning, New York-based ensemble, REBEL (pronounced “Re-BEL”) is one of North America’s top-tier ensembles specializing in 17th- & 18th-century repertoire performed on period instruments.

Named after the innovative French Baroque composer Jean-Féry Rebel (1666-1747), REBEL was formed in The Netherlands in 1991; that same year the ensemble took first prize in the Van Wassenaer International Competition in Utrecht and gave their critically-acclaimed American début in New York City in 1992. Since then the ensemble has garnered an impressive international reputation, enchanting diverse audiences with their unique style and their virtuosic, highly expressive and provocative approach to the baroque and classical repertoire. The core formation of two violins, recorder/traverso, cello/ viola da gamba and harpsichord/ organ/ fortepiano expands with additional strings, winds, brass, theorbo and vocalists, as needed.

Arguably the most aired American baroque ensemble in the U.S. today, REBEL is regularly featured on the nationally syndicated shows Performance Today and Sunday Baroque, and has appeared several times on MPR’s St. Paul Sunday. REBEL remains the only period instrument ensemble ever to have been awarded an artists’ residency at National Public Radio, has been featured on BBC’s Radio 3 and has recorded over twenty CDs on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Naxos, Dorian, Sono Luminus, ATMA, Hänssler Classic and Bridge Records.

Converse University faculty, staff, and students, and active military, please email Joyce at [email protected] or call 864-596-9018 to order discounted tickets.

Face masks are optional.

Eat, drink and be merry! Join us this Saturday (and every Saturday) from 7pm to 10pm as we host live local talent! The talent in our beautiful city is incredible, so come out for dinner and live music. Saturday, February 3rd we will have the acoustic sounds of Katie D. Check out our website for a list of all artists that will be playing!

From the songbook of Johnny Cash comes this unique musical about love and faith, struggle and success, rowdiness and redemption, and the healing power of home and family. More than two dozen classic hits including “I Walk The Line,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and, of course, “Ring of Fire.” Performed by a multi-talented cast, Ring of Fire paints a musical portrait of ‘The Man in Black’ that promises to be a foot-stompin’, crowd-pleasin’ salute to a unique musical legend!

Join us for an evening of cocktails and conversation with National Book Award-winning author Charles Frazier and his beautiful new novel, The Trackers. A sweeping Depression-era story of art, aspiration, intrigue and the American dream, this is a literary event we’re over-the-moon excited about. Your ticket includes admission, a cocktail in the spirit of the story, and a copy of the book, as well as an after-hours bookstore evening with Charles.

For this event, all books will be presigned and personalized (if you wish) through the link below. Charles’s other titles are also available for sale and signature, but books will not be signed in person.

BOOK SUMMARY

Deep in Depression-era America, painter Val Welch travels westward to the rural town of Dawes, Wyoming, where he’s landed a New Deal assignment to create a mural representing the region for their new Post Office. A wealthy art lover named John

Long and his wife Eve have agreed to host Val at their sprawling ranch. Rumors and intrigue surround the couple: Eve left behind an itinerant life riding the rails and singing in a western swing band. Long holds shady political aspirations, but was once a WWI sniper—and his right hand is a mysterious elder cowboy, a vestige of the violent old west.

One day, Eve flees home with a valuable painting in tow, and Long recruits Val to hit the road with a mission of tracking her down. Journeying from ramshackle Hoovervilles to San Francisco nightclubs to the swamps of Florida, Val’s search for Eve narrows, and he soon turns up secrets that could spark formidable changes for all of them.

In The Trackers, singular American writer Charles Frazier conjures up the lives of everyday people during an extraordinary period of history that bears uncanny resemblance to our own. With the keen perceptions of humanity and transcendent storytelling that have made him beloved for decades, Frazier has created a powerful and timeless new classic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Frazier grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Cold Mountain, his highly acclaimed first novel, was an international bestseller, won the National Book Award, the ABBY Award, the Heartland Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film by Anthony Minghella in 2003. He is also the author of Thirteen Moons, Nightwoods, and Varina.

REVIEWS

“Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain is the most impressive and enthralling first novel I have read in a long time. It is a magnetic story, ambitious in scope, with richly developed characters and beautiful evocations of landscape. Though set in an earlier time, it is contemporary in the profoundest sense, with resonance of A Farewell to Arms.”

—Willie Morris

“Strikingly beautiful . . . In its vivid evocation of a time and place, its steady storytelling momentum, and its unabashed affirmation of a fiction that takes moral choice seriously, Cold Mountain calls to mind Snow Falling on Cedars.”

—Newsday

“Thirteen Moons brings this vanished world thrillingly to life… One of the great Native American, and American stories, and a great gift to all of us, from one of our very best writers.”

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Nightwoods is unsettling stuff, tense and eerie and brutal. . . .Nightwoods is no typical thriller. It hits hard because you come to care so much about the characters, all of them drawn with that precise enchanted prose. By the book’s climactic scenes in the shadowy mountain forest that gives Nightwoods its title, the unhurried, poetic suspense is both difficult to bear and impossible to shake.”

—Entertainment Weekly

Join us for an evening of cocktails and conversation with National Book Award-winning author Charles Frazier and his beautiful new novel, The Trackers. A sweeping Depression-era story of art, aspiration, intrigue and the American dream, this is a literary event we’re over-the-moon excited about. Your ticket includes admission, a cocktail in the spirit of the story, and a copy of the book, as well as an after-hours bookstore evening with Charles.

For this event, all books will be presigned and personalized (if you wish) through the link below. Charles’s other titles are also available for sale and signature, but books will not be signed in person.

BOOK SUMMARY

Deep in Depression-era America, painter Val Welch travels westward to the rural town of Dawes, Wyoming, where he’s landed a New Deal assignment to create a mural representing the region for their new Post Office. A wealthy art lover named John

Long and his wife Eve have agreed to host Val at their sprawling ranch. Rumors and intrigue surround the couple: Eve left behind an itinerant life riding the rails and singing in a western swing band. Long holds shady political aspirations, but was once a WWI sniper—and his right hand is a mysterious elder cowboy, a vestige of the violent old west.

One day, Eve flees home with a valuable painting in tow, and Long recruits Val to hit the road with a mission of tracking her down. Journeying from ramshackle Hoovervilles to San Francisco nightclubs to the swamps of Florida, Val’s search for Eve narrows, and he soon turns up secrets that could spark formidable changes for all of them.

In The Trackers, singular American writer Charles Frazier conjures up the lives of everyday people during an extraordinary period of history that bears uncanny resemblance to our own. With the keen perceptions of humanity and transcendent storytelling that have made him beloved for decades, Frazier has created a powerful and timeless new classic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Frazier grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Cold Mountain, his highly acclaimed first novel, was an international bestseller, won the National Book Award, the ABBY Award, the Heartland Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film by Anthony Minghella in 2003. He is also the author of Thirteen Moons, Nightwoods, and Varina.

REVIEWS

“Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain is the most impressive and enthralling first novel I have read in a long time. It is a magnetic story, ambitious in scope, with richly developed characters and beautiful evocations of landscape. Though set in an earlier time, it is contemporary in the profoundest sense, with resonance of A Farewell to Arms.”

—Willie Morris

“Strikingly beautiful . . . In its vivid evocation of a time and place, its steady storytelling momentum, and its unabashed affirmation of a fiction that takes moral choice seriously, Cold Mountain calls to mind Snow Falling on Cedars.”

—Newsday

“Thirteen Moons brings this vanished world thrillingly to life… One of the great Native American, and American stories, and a great gift to all of us, from one of our very best writers.”

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Nightwoods is unsettling stuff, tense and eerie and brutal. . . .Nightwoods is no typical thriller. It hits hard because you come to care so much about the characters, all of them drawn with that precise enchanted prose. By the book’s climactic scenes in the shadowy mountain forest that gives Nightwoods its title, the unhurried, poetic suspense is both difficult to bear and impossible to shake.”

—Entertainment Weekly

Greenville Technical College’s Speech Communication and Theatre department presents The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon by Don Zolidis.

The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm are turned on their heads in this fast-paced, rollicking ride as two narrators and a group of actors attempt to combine all 209 stories ranging from classics like Snow White, Cinderella, and Hansel and Gretel to more bizarre, obscure stories like The Devil’s Grandmother and The Girl Without Hands. Guaranteed to tickle the funny bones of all ages this is an off-the-rails comedy with lots of audience participation and madcap fun.

La Sylphide (translated to “The Sylph”) is a magical morality tale about the pitfalls of temptation.  Set in Scotland, the ballet tells of James, his fiancé Effie, and a beautiful Sylph who first appears as a dream, ultimately luring James into the woods, abandoning friends and his bride.  La Sylphide features exquisite classical technique, intriguing characters, and leaves questions for the audience to ponder about the choices we make. La Sylphide is one of the oldest full length classical ballets still in repertoires of major ballet companies across the globe.

International Ballet’s La Sylphide will feature Greenville Native Ekaterina Nechayeva as the Sylph.

From the songbook of Johnny Cash comes this unique musical about love and faith, struggle and success, rowdiness and redemption, and the healing power of home and family. More than two dozen classic hits including “I Walk the Line,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and, of course, “Ring of Fire.” Performed by a multi-talented cast.

Director Ben Hope adds “Having spent many years working on various productions of Ring of Fire (this production will be my personal 10th!), The most extraordinary thing I keep finding about Mr. Cash is how unanimously loved he is, even now, 20 years since his death. No other project seems to attract such a varied and enthusiastic crowd as the music of Johnny Cash. I think it’s because he wrote for the ordinary. His words and music are authentic and simple, and he speaks plainly about things we all connect with. He was fallible, with personal demons and shortcomings. He makes us feel like our own imperfections are normal and mundane, and he teaches us that there’s beauty and hope, even in despair. I love Johnny Cash, and I know Flat Rock audiences are going to love Ring of Fire’.”

Don’t miss this inspiring story, all the great music, and an evening of iconic Johnny Cash!

Ring of Fire is presented by WHKP and Carolina Ace Hardware. Flat Rock Playhouse’s 2023 Season is supported by Charlotte & Bob Otto, Optimum, WHKP, and WTZQ as well as the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. www.NCArts.org

For a complete lineup with show descriptions and to purchase tickets, visit www.flatrockplayhouse.org.

“This is a phenomenon.”- New York Magazine, Sara Holdren

All rise for Academy Award® winner Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork. The New York Times Critic’s Pick TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is “the most successful American play in Broadway history” (60 Minutes). With direction by Tony Award® winner Bartlett Sher, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD — “the greatest novel of all time” (Chicago Tribune) — has quickly become “one of the greatest plays in history” (NPR).

Emmy Award®-winning actor Richard Thomas will play the role of Atticus Finch in the National Tour.