As the name reveals, Olympia’s Center Salon is not your typical evening of entertainment. One definition of “salon,” according to Merriam-Webster, is “a fashionable assemblage of notables.”
The Center Salon, set for Saturday, March 22, is an assemblage of notable and mostly-local artists working in a variety of forms, including literature and visual arts.
“It’s really fun to see so many different genres of art in one night,” said Jill Barnes, executive director of The Washington Center for the Performing Arts, which produces the event with the Northwest Playwrights Alliance. “It’s pretty special. The center hosts touring artists from all over the world, and this event showcases our homegrown talent. It complements the rest of our programming and who we are and what we do.”
Barnes has been emceeing the event since 2019 and singing at it since 2022, accompanied by pianist Jennifer Hermann, the center’s director of education and community engagement. “It surprises a lot of people,” Barnes said. “People know me more as an executive director.”
This year, she has another surprise in store: a duet with center board chair Tim Coley, a highway patrolman. “I won’t say what we’re singing,” she said. “It just kind of happened. We were waiting for a meeting and talking, and we just started singing a song together.”
The March 22 salon, the eighth, is the first to include a comedian, Sam Miller. Miller, who tours nationally, is known for self-deprecating stories about his past — which included drug addiction, living on the streets and jail time — and present — including his happy marriage and plentiful adventures with his young sons. He’s often called “larger than life” and not only because of his size.
Also new to the assemblage is electronic music by Robert Hunt, who’ll perform with Andrew Ipsen. “Electronic music is something we haven’t done before,” said Bryan Willis, Artistic Director, Northwest Playwrights Alliance, who curates the event with Barnes. “We’re really excited.”
Willis has been following Hunt’s music since the guitarist and songwriter was in high school. “His sister was my son’s high-school sweetheart,” Willis said. “It’s very Olympia.”
Also appearing at the event, held in the center’s Black Box, are painter Lynette Charters, who’ll talk about her life and work; singer/songwriter/playwright Kat Eggleston, who’ll perform a song from “The Fall & Rise of Oscar the Bird King,” created in collaboration with Willis; and poet Janet Steward, one of Willis’ former students.
Along with the live performances, there’ll be a screening of the film Chain, by Tzu Ying Ho and Ling Han, who won the festival’s Ten Minute Film Contest. “It’s a stunning 3D animated short based on the Chinese proverb: ‘The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind,’” Willis said. The film competition draws applicants from around the world, and “Chain” was a collaboration among multiple artists, mostly living on the West Coast.
For those who gather in person, the salon is a way to connect with other creatives. “All of these art forms come together,” Willis said. “It’s really exciting, and part of the idea is that the featured artists can inspire one another.”
Hermann, who has been playing piano as part of the salon since 2022, has a special fondness for the event that predates her involvement — and her employment at the center, where she’s been working since the fall.
“I was a patron of this before I was a performer,” she said. “I was really struck by seeing people in our community showing their own work. The people that I came to see were my music friends, and the music that they chose to perform was not what they would usually perform. It was a showcasing of their hearts.”
“The center is a representation of our community, and this event is literally that,” she added.
WHAT:
The Center Salon
WHEN:
7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 22
WHERE:
The Black Box Theater at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. S.E., Olympia
TICKETS:
$25-$39
LEARN MORE:
https://www.washingtoncenter.org/event/the-center-salon-3-2025/