Down at the City Gallery on Fri­day night they are run­ning anoth­er one of their Late Night Ses­sions, where you get to cruise around the big exhi­bi­tion (this time it’s the bien­ni­al Prospect show) in rel­a­tive peace and lis­ten to love­ly live music while you do so. And all for free.

City Gallery’s pop­u­lar late night Fri­day returns. Wan­der through Tele­com Prospect 2007: New Art New Zealand to a back­drop of inde­pen­dent and elec­tron­ic sounds by local per­form­ers. Fea­tur­ing Penelop­ing, Tc Wed­de with Luke Buda, and Aspen.

The love­ly Luke Buda is of course in The Phoenix Foun­da­tion, as is (the equal­ly love­ly) Tc Wed­de. Aspen is also love­ly and also known as Sign­er, and is one half of Over the Atlantic and one half of Skallan­der. And the “medi­um-core girl-boy plinkpop!” Penelop­ing also have a very good rep­u­ta­tion as a live act. Hav­ing expe­ri­enced Late Night Ses­sions many times before — from the point of view both of a per­former and a patron — I can hearti­ly rec­om­mend this event.

Then on Sat­ur­day March the 24th, from 10:00am ’til 2:00pm, Aro Street’s new­ly revamped park is the site of the Aro Val­ley Fair.

Expe­ri­ence bohemi­an inner city life at the annu­al Aro Val­ley fair. The fair will have stalls sell­ing every­thing from jew­ellery to food. There will also be live bands and enter­tain­ment fea­tur­ing Olmecha Supreme and Home­fire Burn­ing. Make sure you drop by and check out the rhythm and soul of Aro Val­ley.

It’s been a long damn time before there has­n’t been some kind of con­struc­tion or road­ing work in Aro Street or the park; I’m look­ing to the fair as some sort of unof­fi­cial “re-open­ing” cel­e­bra­tion as much as any­thing else. ‘Rain day’ for the fair is Sun­day, 25 March.