State of the Arts: April 28, 2011 Archive
Art Hounds: Zenon, Brutes and chasing windmills
Posted at 7:00 AM on April 28, 2011
by Chris Roberts
Filed under: Art Hounds, Dance, Events, Music, Theater
Zenon Dance Company performs Before After by Uri Sands. Photo credit: William Cameron.
This week's hounds celebrate a production that 'dreams the impossible dream,' a dance company at the height of its powers, and an indie rock band that's big on tight, crafted power pop.
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Choregrapher and dancer Penelope Freeh thinks the Twin Cities has been blessed to have a dance troupe like Zenon Dance Company in its midst for the last 28 years. Penny says Zenon's 28th Spring Season concert is special, with its veteran dancers performing works by local heavyweights Uri Sands and Wynn Fricke, as well as pieces by New York choreographers Sydney Skybetter and Kyle Abraham. It runs through Sunday at the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis.
Minneapolis playwright, director and actor Aditi Kapil says Ten Thousand Things Theater has a unique ability to take the most ambitious material, be it a Shakespeare play or a musical, and reduce it to its most meaningful form. Aditi says that's what it's done with "Man of La Mancha," on stage at Open Book in Minneapolis April 29th through May 1, and the MN Opera Center, May 6 - 8. The advanced tickets are sold out, but a limited of number of tickets will be available at the door each night.
Billie Jo Konze says 'folkiness' is everywhere in indie music, which is why "The Brutes" are a beath of fresh air. Billie Jo, a local actor and singer, predicts the Brutes will impress you with their smart, highly crafted, infectious rock songs. The Brutes' next gig is Friday, April 29th, at the Kitty Kat Club in Minneapolis.
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Thursday news and reviews
Posted at 10:37 AM on April 28, 2011
by Marianne Combs
Filed under: News and reviews
Art
Governor Mark Dayton declares May 7 Caponi Art Park and Learning Center Day
Caponi Art Park, a spring and summertime spot in Eagan filled with mind-bending trippy sculptures, has extra-reason to celebrate its spring opening next weekend.
- Jessica Armbruster, City pages
Books
Borderline chick-lit
What's expected from a writer with Hustveldt's intellectual pedigree -- a person whose knowledge includes cognitive neuroscience and seemingly all of Western poetry -- is something tougher, challenging, original, something that dares to look at old patterns in a new, perhaps even disturbing, light.
Article by: EMILY CARTER , Special to the Star Tribune
Dance
Northrop Dance Season announced
Winnipeg, Houston and Alvin Ailey are among the names featured in the 2011-12 Northrop Dance Season.
Article by: GRAYDON ROYCE , Star Tribune
Events
MayDay 2011 gives 'Caws to Unite' in Powderhorn Park
The charm of this particular parade is that it is not dotted with shiny corporate mascots, but a hodge-podge of homemade signs, costumes, and masks.
- Coco Mault, City Pages
Funding
Board: 'No embezzlement' at Southern
No money given to the Southern Theater by the McKnight Foundation was used to enrich an individual, according to a communique posted Wednesday on the theater's website.
- Claude Peck, Star Tribune
Music
Community bands offer fellowship of music
In Minnesota, community bands are almost as common as lakes -- we have more per capita than any other state -- and they can be as reflective of our musical culture.
- KIM ODE , Star Tribune
Youth Symphonies and SPCO form alliance
The Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies will move to St. Paul this summer.
- GRAYDON ROYCE, Star Tribune
SPCO, Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies form alliance
The organizations said the move will make them financially stronger.
- Pioneer Press
Czeslaw's Loop unites dozens of local musicians for massive riverside Art-A-Whirl project
Previously known as the Boat Project, which would invite local noise and experimental rock bands to play on the roof of a houseboat and out in the middle of the Mississippi River behind Northeast's Sample Room restaurant (and won our "Best Local Concert" award in 2010), the event will grow even bigger and be streamlined into a more official presentation as Czeslaw's Loop: The Final Opus.
- Andrea Swensson, City Pages
Basilica Block party fleshes out lineup with the Jayhawks, Citizen Cope
- Andrea Swenson, City Pages
Jayhawks, Citizen Cope added to Basilica Block Party
The Jayhawks played their first local reunion show at the 2009 Basilica Block Party and have since continued to perform live, while recording a new album that's due out later this year. Memphis native Clarence Greenwood records under the name Citizen Cope and typically plays the Twin Cities at least once a year.
- Ross Raihala, Pioneer Press
Soundset Series: Up-and-comers MaLLy, Rocky Diamonds, and Duenday
Soundset, the hip-hop festival thrown by Rhymesayers and populated by some of the biggest names in independent rap, is just around the corner.
- Jack Spencer, City Pages
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Twin Shadow fill the bill at the Triple Rock
Openers and relative newcomers Twin Shadow were clearly the main attraction
- Sarah Heuer, TC Daily Planet
Stage
The critic and the audience: 'Next Fall' at the Jungle
There's a point at which critics find themselves having a different experience of theater than audience members, and I think those moments are worth examining.
- Max Sparber, MinnPost.com
Omar Sosa delights at the Dakota
Posted at 2:50 PM on April 28, 2011
by David Cazares
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Criticism
Omar Sosa performs tonight at the Dakota Jazz Club
From his opening notes, it's clear that Afro-Cuban pianist, composer and arranger Omar Sosa has a distinct vision, one that reconnects African music from around the globe with the African continent.
It's a worldview Sosa delivered remarkably in a performance at the Dakota Jazz Club on Wednesday night.
Sosa started with Intro to Elegua, an acknowledgment of the Santeria deity that opens doors. A practitioner of the Yoruba-based religion and a Catholic, the pianist left no doubt that he would use melody and percussion to explore new musical terrain.
With a light touch, Sosa coaxed listeners into a ceremony that was both thoughtful and celebratory, quickly making room for his three accompanists to join him on percussion and horns.The pianist switched back and forth from acoustic to electric piano, but also used a variety of special effects boxes near the piano, along with recorded voices and assorted sounds.
As the airy feeling faded, the ensemble with the big-band sound took off on a roaring flight on Metisse, with thundering playing by Marque Gilmore on drums and Childo Tomas on electric bass, and extended solos by Peter Apfelbaum on saxophone.
Inventive, intricately arranged and pan-African, their tunes juxtaposed expressions of tranquility and forcefulness.
Throughout the 90-minute second set, Sosa showed agility and inventiveness, fusing Afro-Cuban romps, with straight-ahead jazz runs and jazz fusion. Going where the spirits led him, he played with emotion and zeal, sometimes spinning around as if in an emotional trance and delighting in his discoveries.
At times, Sosa evoked a young Herbie Hancock, blending funk into his repertoire. At others, he reminded concert-goers of his experiments with hip-hop, playing percussive licks on his face with his hands, as Tomas played the role of human beat box.
Sosa's performance, the second I've seen in the last several years, showed remarkable growth for the pianist from Camaguey, Cuba, whose experiments with a variety of genres places him among world's most innovative jazz musicians.
Delivering his compositions as mini suites, he told complex musical stories, varying tempo and rhythm, and mixing the Cuban genres of danzon, cha, cha, cha and son with straight-ahead jazz. Linking them all were powerful syncopated rhythms and the call of Africa.
Toward the end of his show, as one concert-goer complained about another's enthusiastic but appropriate responses to the music's call, Sosa told them what his music is all about: peace and love.
He then took them to church with a tune from his 2008 recording Afreecanos: Light in the Sky. Both ancestral and futuristic, it was a nice summation of Sosa's approach.
Park Square Theatre receives $600,000 for expansion
Posted at 12:21 PM on April 28, 2011
by Marianne Combs
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Funding, Theater
Park Square Theatre
Photo by Teresa Boardman
Park Square Theatre, which is in the midst of a $4.2 million campaign, has just been given a big push toward its goal.
The theatre just received $600,000 in new gifts, including $350,000 from The St. Paul Foundation, $200,000 from the F. R. Bigelow Foundation and $50,000 in new gifts from individuals.
Including the most recent gifts, the theater has now raised nearly $3.2 million, or 75% of its campaign goal.
The "Next Stage Campaign" is intended to fund, among other things, the construction of a second stage, and provide Park Square with the resources to double its programming.
According to Artistic Director Richard Cook, the St. Paul Foundation gift is the largest single grant in the theatre's 35-year history.
In a release issued today, Park Square also announced the theatre has already sold more tickets this season than in all of last year's record-breaking season, with two shows yet to open (Opus by Michael Hollinger opens May 13 and Panic by Joe Goodrich opens June 17).
Attendance to date is 57,242 compared with last year's total attendance of 55,832.
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