SOLD OUT! 2025 Baltimore Crankie Festival
Watch the world’s greatest stories unroll before your eyes! Baltimore's beloved festival of scrolled panoramas, known as "crankies," returns!
Creative Alliance provides venue space for
Music, Performance & Film, Youth & Family, Festivals & Community, Exhibitions, Classes, Fundraisers, and Signature Events.
Buy TicketsWatch the world’s greatest stories unroll before your eyes! Baltimore's beloved festival of scrolled panoramas, known as "crankies," returns!
The wildly popular Mortified Baltimore, produced by Alex Hewett and Adam Ruben, stars everyday adults sharing their most embarrassingly real teenage love themed diary entries, poems, letters, lyrics, and locker notes in front of total strangers.
The wildly popular Mortified Baltimore, produced by Alex Hewett and Adam Ruben, stars everyday adults sharing their most embarrassingly real teenage love themed diary entries, poems, letters, lyrics, and locker notes in front of total strangers.
Creative Alliance's inaugural performing artist in residence, tap dancer and vocalist, Brinae Ali, and her bandmates of the Baltimore Jazz Collective celebrate the life and legacy of Baltimore's greatest tap dancer: Baby Laurence (February 24, 1921-April 2, 1974). Baby Laurence was the first tap dancer to record a jazz album—Dancemaster (recorded in 1959, released in 1977). Brinae will be sharing works in progress that reimagine his music, as well as original compositions and choreography. The Baby Laurence Legacy Project is supported by NEFA's National Dance Projects, Johns Hopkins University Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts, and Peabody Jazz & BFA Dance Department.
Named for an ancient Celtic harvest festival in honor of the Irish god Lugh, patron of the arts, Lúnasa is indeed a gathering of some of the top musical talents in Ireland. Its members have helped form the backbone of some of the greatest Irish groups of the decade.
Reid Anderson’s work as a composer and bass player has helped to define the sound of The Bad Plus since its inception in 2001. Widely considered one of the most significant groups of their time, The Bad Plus has amassed widespread acclaim and created an uncompromising body of work that spans 15 studio albums and countless live performances.
The Bad Plus are widely considered to be one of the most significant groups of their time and Anderson’s prolific work as a composer has defined their sound throughout the years.
His new band with Tina Priceman (Violin) and Gregg Belisle-Chi (Guitar) is based on his long time passion for electronic music. Using analog synths and drum machines Anderson explores the compositional and interactive possibilities of electronic music with live musicians.
The guitarist, composer, ethnomusicologist, and instrument builder Paolo Angeli is associated with traditional Sardinian music. Whatever you want to call it, nobody else is doing it quite like this. Paolo Angeli, the Sardinian sorcerer, manually magics beautiful, multi-layered music from his unique prepared guitar: a hybrid orchestra of an instrument with strings going in all directions, foot-pedal-controlled motorised propellers and hammers to create shimmering drones and bass-lines as he bows, strikes, plucks and strums while producing rhythmic atmospherics by treading on a plastic bag and adjusting tunings on the fly. Electronic effects are utilized but no loops. With this singular instrument he improvises and composes unclassifiable music, suspended between traditional music of Sardinia, free jazz, flamenco, arabic suggestions, post-folk and pre-everything else, and came back in Sardinia with his voice in to the furrows of tradition
Jeff Parker is recognized as one of contemporary music’s most versatile and innovative electric guitarists and composers. With a prolific output characterized by musical ideas of angularity and logic, he works in a wide variety of mediums - from pop, rock and jazz to new music - using ideas informed by innovations and trends in both popular and experimental forms. He creates works that explore and exploit the contrary relationships between tradition and technology, improvisation and composition, and the familiar and the abstract.
Nicknamed “The Caribbean Patti Smith” by The Guardian, Moonlight Benjamin plays powerful and original music blending Caribbean Vodou melodies and 70s blues rock inspired by Dr John, Alabama Shakes, The Black Keys, and Oumou Sangaré. Creative Alliance presents Moonlight Benjamin’s new performance, Wayo, which is a spellbinding cry of pain showcasing her thundering vocals and lyrical themes on faith, energy, and our connection to the source. These new songs from Haiti’s Vodou priestess delve deep, immersing her philosophical messages in heavy blues rapture; killer riffs; and hand-clapping, foot-stomping percussion.
Bia Ferreira is a Brazilian singer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and artivist that defines her music as "MMP — Música de Mulher Preta" (Black Woman Music). Her songs are against racism, homophobia and other subjects. Her songs are all about feminism and love. Politics is also a topic.
Los Pirañas is an instrumental supergroup blending Colombian rhythms with bold experimentalism. The trio—Eblis Alvarez (Meridian Brothers), Mario Galeano (Frente Cumbiero, Ondatropica), and Pedro Ojeda (Romperayo, Sidestepper)—have spent decades pushing boundaries while rooted in Bogota’s vibrant musical scene. Fusing cumbia, champeta, and tropicalia with avant-psych rock, dub minimalism, and spiked jazz, their sound is a kaleidoscopic exploration of past and future.
After a 3-year hiatus, we are thrilled to welcome back our incredible Bob Dylan tribute show. Dylan turns 84 this May, so come celebrate him with us. Once again our hosts are The Complete Unknowns, a special project devoted to interpreting Dylan's songs, comprised of five veteran musicians from the tight Baltimore musical community. Lead by singer-songwriter Sam Nitzberg of The Old Part Of Town who has curated this and other tribute shows at the CA over the years
You can find Julius Rodriguez in many places. You could walk into a packed jazz haunt and bear witness to him behind the piano with energy practically surging from his fingers through the room. You might scroll up on social media and catch him alternating from drums to bass to guitar at the speed of a jump cut. You may also step onto festival grounds and see him on stage either solo or accompanying another likeminded visionary, jamming like his life depends on it. No matter where, the New York-born and Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer electrifies any lane. By doing so, he also transcends perceived boundaries between genres and styles, redefining the music to mirror his own fluid creative inclinations and delivering a sound that's solely his alone.
Black Assets returns with a special summer edition of A Soul Stage. This edition will be a special celebration of the soulful R&B style blending hip-hop, jazz, opera, and spoken word of Jill Scott, and the 25th anniversary of her first album, the masterpiece that is "Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol.1". Her debut album, Who Is Jill Scott?: Words and Sounds Vol. 1, went platinum in 2000, and the follow-ups achieved gold status. Scott has won three Grammys and is a New York Times best-selling poet for The Moments, The Minutes, The Hours.
Buy your tickets online, in person, or over the phone by calling 410-276-1651. Members save $10 on almost every show!
Our Box Office is currently open from Noon to 5pm on Tuesday thru Saturdays and one hour before all ticketed events. We accept cash, cards, and checks. Service fees are waived for in-person ticket purchases.
Creative Alliance supports area artists, promotes Baltimore as a center for creative production, acts as a positive force in our community, and advocates for cultural expression rooted in a sense of place.