Localized Gets Virtualized
One SLC concert tradition is surely SLUG Magazine’s Localized concert series, which is paired with editorial pieces on the guests of honor at each show. The monthly showcase, though, has of course had to undergo some changes due to the sad realities of COVID-19, and how difficult it makes the task of putting on live shows. Enter Virtualized, the magazine’s answer to the problem of the pandemic and its new way of celebrating SLC’s very best local artists. First up in the series—which will stream live to SLUG Magazine’s YouTube this Friday, Nov. 20 at 8 p.m.—are Josaleigh Pollett and Marny Proudfit, two prolific locals both still riding the highs of recent album releases. For Pollett, that’s her album No Woman Is The Sea, which came out this past March, and which chronicles the pain of a divorce and which also marks Pollett’s first foray into crafting a collaborative and intricately produced indie album with breadth beyond her solo folk leanings. For Proudfit’s part, her album The Barn is one long-due, released this year seven years after its initial inception when she was a young drop-out from Berklee College of Music. The Barn, like Pollett’s No Woman Is The Sea, relied on the talents and contributions of many other musical friends, and Proudfit is paying it forward to those friends by donating proceeds from the album to them, since most are now out-of-work career musicians in their own right. Both artists deal in translating the turmoil of the self into moving musical portraits, complimenting each other and standing out in their own rights. Lucky for us, though, you can enjoy both thanks to SLUG’s Virtualized event, alongside their opener, future.exboyfriend.

SLCPL Opens Call for Performance Arts Festival
The Salt Lake City Public Library is moving ahead with plans for its eighth annual Performance Arts Festival, which gives stage not just to local artists, but invites submissions from artists of national and international origin. Last year’s festival featured single and multi-disciplinary artists from all over SLC as well as Ogden, and from afar came performance artists from New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., as well as from Belfast, Northern Ireland and Melbourne, Australia. This year, it may be easier than ever to open the pool up to those far-flung participants, because the decision has been made to move the festival online. Premiering over the weekend of April 2 - 3, 2021, it may seem far off to plan such a move, but with official word that mass distribution of a vaccine for the coronavirus is still as far out as July, it seems like an apt move. The call for submissions to the live-streamed, two-day event is now open, running through Dec. 15,  11:59 p.m. Artists of all kinds are invited to submit a proposal for a piece which is predicated on “making real actions, unrehearsed ideas manifest[ed] for the first time in this live screen.” More specific details on submission guidelines can be found at events.slcpl.org/paf.