Baltimore, Maryland.

Across the channel from the Marriott Hotel where we were staying for our national conference, a large tented facility attracted my attention. It looks like a music venue from the distance, but I was not to find out for sure until we went for our dinner walk to a nearby restaurant. Upon our return from dinner, the sound of music wafted over the pier and throughout the area. As we strolled along the water’s edge, many people had stopped to enjoy the sound of reggae music from the artists performing that evening.

Being of a certain age, the music had no recall value for me, but from what I could hear, I understood why so many people stopped within earshot to listen. I would find out later that the group performing that evening was Rebelution, a reggae rock band from California. According to Wikipedia, the band was formed in 2004 and by 2007 found themselves on top of the iTunes Best Reggae Album list. They were nominated for a Grammy in 2017.

The venue was originally known as Pier Six Pavilion since its construction in 1981, however in 2018, naming rights were sold to the Municipal Employees Credit Union of Baltimore. The name they selected is the MECU Pavilion. The City of Baltimore owns the venue that has a capacity of 4,400 guests.

About the photo: As the sky was losing its last vestiges of “blue hour” lighting, the warm glow of the yellowish street lamps reflected the warm temperatures that evening which were in the high 80’s F (around 28 C). The image was captured on my Samsung S7 cell phone at f/1.7, 1/10 sec., ISO 200. I used Adobe Lightroom and Luminar Flex to post process the image of listeners enjoying the music that evening. Most browsers support clicking on the image to enlarge it for a better view.

John Steiner