Queen City Nerve’s motto has been the same since our start: If you think nothing is happening in Charlotte, you’re not trying. While we’ve always included a Lifeline in our print issue, here’s our online version to help give you weekly reasons to engage.
Fat Tuesday w/ Soda City Brass Band
Feb. 17 • 7 p.m. • Middle C Jazz • $41
Not to get all Catholic on y’all, but Fat Tuesday marks the culmination of the Mardi Gras/Carnival season begun on Twelfth Night (Jan. 6). Then comes Ash Wednesday and Lent, 40 days of fasting, prayer and repentance. So you best party — and commit small sins to repent — while you can. Middle C celebrates Mardi Gras with Columbia, South Carolina’s Soda City Brass Band.
With its infectious mix of traditional jazz, marching band cadence and deep funk rooted in African-Caribbean rhythms, the group covers hard-charging Crescent City marching tunes made famous by luminaries like The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, The Soul Rebels and more.
Black Violin
Feb. 18 • 8 p.m. • Belk Theater • $54 and up
Launched by Black classically trained violinists/violists Wil Baptiste and Kev Marcus, Black Violin is categorized as a hip-hop/classical crossover act, but that only hints at the virtuosic pair’s impact. Black Violin, which takes its name from a seminal album by Black swing-era violinist Stuff Smith, handily obliterates preconceptions about what a string-driven concert entails.
A stereotype-shattering Black Violin set is like a rhythmically and harmonically complex rock concert, incorporating jazz, R&B, roots, rap, pop and a DJ. A member of a cappella group Pentatonix, Kevin Olusola is a pioneer of “celloboxing” — playing the cello and beatboxing at the same time.
Redveil
Feb. 19 • 8 p.m. • The Underground • $31
Precocious rap phenom Redveil started making beats at 11 years old and drew nearly equal amounts of praise and fire for his 2022 album Learn to Swim. Depending on who you choose to believe, the Maryland-raised rapper either crafted deeply reflective tracks where he sounded wise beyond his years, or he toiled in the shadow of influences like Tyler, the Creator.
On his 2025 LP Sankofa, Redveil takes the producer’s reins and fuses cathartic melodies and heartfelt tributes to family over jazz rhythms, soulful harmonies and intentionally blown-out trap-style beats. Drawing on retro shadings of artists like Etta James, indie-pop singer Chenayder opens with smooth songwriting gems.
‘Boundless’
Feb. 20-March 21 • times vary • Patricia McBride and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance • $38 and up
Charlotte Ballet’s Boundless presents the immersive, 50-minute contemporary dance piece Kamuyot. Created by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, the dynamic all-ages piece places audience members in close proximity to the dancers. In fact, attendees are surrounded by the performers, effectively erasing the barriers between watching the dance and being part of it.
Staging vignettes ranging from the physically intense to the absurd, Asheville-based choreographer Nicole Vaughan-Diaz masterminds and orchestrates movements that are exciting, engaging and delightfully silly. Kamuyot, a Hebrew word meaning “quantities,” is an invitation, urging everyone to move together, listen beyond words and surrender to the living art of bodies in motion.
‘Designing Dynamism’ Opening
Feb. 21 • 5 p.m. • Mint Museum Randolph • Free
The full title of the Mint’s Designing Dynamism exhibit reveals what all the fuss is about: Kuba Textiles from the Democratic Republic (DR) Congo. When these textiles were “discovered” by the early-20th-century European art world, they significantly influenced Modernist artists.
Traditionally used in royal courts or funerary rites, the most visually potent Kuba textiles, the prestige squares, are woven from raffia (palm leaf) fibers. The cloth is then covered with flat embroidery stitches or cut pile, which resemble velvet. The exhibit includes classic examples of the craft as well as work by contemporary artists working in DR Congo today.
