There’s big news afoot over at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (MMAA): Kristin Makholm, director of what has for three years been a ‘museum without walls,’ announced last week in a series of interviews with area media outlets that MMAA has found a brick-and-mortar home – at least for the time being. After years [...]
Book lovers take note: two big literary launches are underway this week. First up: Tonight, in the underground retail space below Nina’s Coffee Café of St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood, the brand-new Subtext bookstore will hold its first-ever in-store reading. The event features an impressive line-up of local writerly talent: Minnesota Book Award-winner Ed Bok [...]
Late last week, the League of American Orchestras named the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) as one of 24 U.S. orchestras to receive a 2011-2012 ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. The musician-led, internationally-known chamber orchestra (also a Knight Arts grantee) is being recognized, specifically, in the category of Programming of Contemporary Music. It’s such a [...]
One of my all-time favorite summertime traditions is starting up again: Open Eye Figure Theatre has just begun its beloved Driveway Tour, for which the company of puppeteers, led by Michael Sommers and Susan Haas, takes its show on the road. With a charming, cleverly designed mobile puppet theater in tow, the traveling players deploy [...]
For theater in the park, you just couldn’t have found a more conducive setting than Saturday’s postcard-perfect late spring afternoon in St. Paul’s idyllic Swede Hollow Park — and this wasn’t just any performance either. An enthusiastic crowd gathered to hear award-winning composer Ann Millikan’s new one-act chamber opera, named for this very spot. The [...]
Last Wednesday over the lunch hour, I attended a small but lively unveiling ceremony for a public art project, a bit of “placemaking” on University Avenue in St. Paul. Glass artist Steve Bougie, with the assistance of apprentice Richard Fuller, adorned an otherwise unremarkable stretch of chain-link fence around a parking lot with a “chained-glass [...]
No more than 15 people came out to Nautilus Music-Theater’s cozy studio space for Sunday night’s performance of “The View from Here,” a play by New York City-based playwright Timothy Huang. And that’s a crying shame. Like last year’s magnificent “Joan of Arc,” this intimately staged show points to the breadth of creative possibilities in [...]
It rained hard for an hour or so early Saturday evening, so there weren’t many cars or pedestrians on the road when artist Matt McAuliffe donned a blindfold and took his car out for a spin. “Blindfolded Drive” was captured on video and streamed online in real time; he was joined by a few volunteer [...]
Ask anyone who lives in a neighborhood riddled with foreclosed homes and derelict storefronts, and they’ll tell you: an empty building is much more than just an empty building in hard economic times. These neglected spaces become a locus for petty vandalism and crime, the abandoned commercial and residential properties’ growing disrepair an unmistakable hallmark [...]
It’s a big week at new music hotspot, Studio Z: Zeitgeist and internationally acclaimed Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung will present the world premiere of his new chamber work, “Spiral XIV – Nimitta.”
