Throughout the past year, numerous interesting people have been featured on these pages so it was difficult to choose just 11 who we think are going to be worth watching in the coming 365 days. The following list highlights a broad range of people who we predict are going to be do great things or tackle interesting challenges. That could mean releasing another bestseller, organizing major events that benefit their respective regions, winning a Grammy, or releasing a new record. No matter what the challenge, the 11 listed here are sure to give us more to talk (and write) about in the coming months.
1. Alex Gray, Waterfront Concerts LLC
In 2010, Gray realized a longtime goal of bringing mainstream concert acts to the area with the Bangor Waterfront Summer Concert Series and has even bigger plans for 2011. As the former owner of Russell’s Entertainment Complex in Bangor and Orono nightclub Ushuaia, Gray has been in the entertainment business for several years. In 2010, he worked to bring Tim McGraw and the Warren Brothers, Alan Jackson, Jason Mraz with Robert Francis, Lynyrd Skynyrd and others to the waterfront venue. Gray has said he envisions 12 to 15 shows next year and has begun negotiating with potential acts. Gray and others are in negotiations with the City of Bangor to ensure that the outdoor concert series remains a long-term enterprise.
2. Allison Melton, University of Maine MFA student, artist and singer
Melton’s artwork has beautified key public venues in the Bangor area throughout 2010. In January, she fabricated a dress out of price tags for the Bangor Art Walk. In May, she was commissioned to create “Lily’s World,” an art installation of 1,000 square feet of recycled plastic, to hang in the lobby of the Collins Center in Orono. And in December, she organized the undergraduate student exhibition “Clutter: A Creative Exploration of Junk and Stuff” in a vacant former hair salon in Bangor. She ended the year building a commissioned Christmas Tree out of 3,000 tuna cans and 200 tomato soup cans in Hollywood Slots in Bangor. When she isn’t planning out an art project, Melton is bringing rock ’n’ roll music to the town as lead singer of Queen City, a popular area band that frequents Bangor venues.
3. Christopher Smith, movie critic and novelist, Bangor Daily News
Named the 2010 Best Critic by the Maine Press Association, Smith has held the post of Bangor Daily News’ film critic for 14 years, during which he wrote more than 4,000 reviews. Last year was a turning point for Smith. His first novel, the thriller “Fifth Avenue,” was released in October and climbed the charts to the No. 4 top-selling e-book on Amazon.com. He has sold tens of thousands of copies in the U.S. and the U.K., and publishers are now in a bidding war over publishing rights to the novel. The sequel is more than half-complete and scheduled to be released by spring.
4. Lucas Richman, music director, Bangor Symphony Orchestra
With his natural warmth and ability to communicate with BSO patrons new and old, you sometimes forget that Lucas Richman is also an excellent musician and composer. When he was chosen as the Sym-phony’s new leader back in May, after months of searching, it was clear that he would become an invaluable asset to the arts and culture of eastern Maine. As the 2010-2011 season has rolled on, that has certainly been proven true.
5. Jasmine Ireland, area actress, director and educator
You may have seen her in the role of Honey in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” or Tybalt in “Romeo and Juliet,” both Ten Bucks Theatre shows. Maybe you saw her as Vel, the rabbit, in Penobscot Theatre Company’s “The Velveteen Rabbit.” In all three shows, you saw a versatile, intelligent actress who moves around the stage with inherent grace, and who infuses her performances with a raw energy that’s often hard to find. When she’s not on stage, she’s teaching performing arts at Ellsworth High School.
6. Timothy Lo, executive director of the KahBang Festival
Lo dreams big, whether it’s KahBang, the music, art and film festival that he runs each year, or it’s staging a write-in campaign for City Council (he lost, but he says he’ll try again next year). Embodying the do-it-yourself ethic and exuding seemingly boundless optimism and energy, Lo has emerged in the past year as one of the faces of New Bangor; young, connected and cool. It’s people like Lo that will lead Bangor into the future.
7. Sarah Joy Chaples, Washington Hancock Community Agency’s Down East Business Alliance
Tom Roberts, farmer at Snakeroot Organic Farms, Pittsfield
Two years ago, there were 80 active farmers markets in Maine. In 2010, there were 104. This growth can be at least partially attributed to a national rise in awareness of local farmers, growers and purveyors and the healthy, natural food they provide to communities. It’s people like Sarah Joy Chaples and Tom Roberts, the former a community economic organizer and the latter an organic farmer, who will lead the charge in getting more of that local food into homes across the state, with a Maine Farmers Market Association in the works for 2011. Everybody benefits — from the producers, to the everyday market shoppers and low-income families using EBT cards to buy healthy, local food to put on the table.
8. Travis Bourassa, Sean Collinson and Jessica Harvey, editors, Flannel Magazine
What started as a photocopied ’zine two years ago has developed into a full-fledged arts and culture publication. Flannel Magazine, founded by then University of Maine New Media students Bourassa, Collinson and Harvey, shines light on the underground aspects of Maine culture, from visual artists to musicians, from everyday working stiffs to high school students. Though its focus is statewide, its home base is in Orono, and its outlook is all-inclusive. Neither lobsters and lighthouses nor trendy and bourgeois, Flannel Magazine takes a look at the real Maine — the flannel wearing, hard-working, creative people living anywhere from Presque Isle to Portland.
9. Tim Bell, executive director, Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine
Bell takes over at the helm of the state’s 12,000-member SAM after George Smith spent 18 years running the organization. Bell comes to Maine from Florida and will have to hit the ground running as he lobbies the legislature for SAM-supported measures. Smith was sometimes divisive, but very influential. How well Bell fares will help determine the course of SAM as the organization moves forward without its longtime leader.
10. Andy Shepard, president and CEO, Maine Winter Sports Center
Shepard will have a busy beginning to 2011 as he serves as host to not one but two World Cup biathlon events in Aroostook County. Hundreds of athletes and thousands of spectators are expected for the events in Presque Isle and Fort Kent. Fort Kent hosted a World Cup in 2004 but Shepard says he hopes to do more to leverage this year’s exposure in the European tourism market, setting up Aroostook County as a destination for biathlon-watchers across the continent. Shepard says organizers didn’t have “the necessary infrastructure in place to capture the European interest” in 2004 and says things will be different this time around.
11. Mudseason, Bangor-based jam band
Anthony Ambrosino, James Morang, Windell White, Jed Profeta, Fred Snyder and Hannah Summers Jones are the six core members of the band Mudseason. They had a great year last year, playing local festivals and getting into the first-ever Nateva Festival in Oxford. This year, they’re poised to take it to the next level, with a new album set for the summer, gigs all over New England, and a featured spot on Relix Magazine’s winter CD compilation. Mainers already know their blend of folk and roots rock, with just enough psychedelic funk sprinkled in to turn heads and intrigue ears. We’re just going to have to learn to share it with the rest of the country.