The Knight Arts program is now seeking grant opportunities in St. Paul that can create transformational and sustainable change through artistic excellence and collective cultural experiences. If you’re interested in learning more about working with Knight in the arts, please contact Program Director Polly Talen.
By Meena Mangalvedhekar, Speaking of Home Speaking of Home received a $25,000 grant to create a public art project focused on illuminating the lives of Minnesota’s diverse communities while transforming the St. Paul skyway system. Today production coordinator Meena Mangalvedhekar checks in with Brad Palm, Speaking of Home’s “super power” and photographic retoucher… SOH: What [...]
If you find yourself at loose ends tonight, I have an idea for you. Why not ring in 2013 with “Happy Crazier New Year”? It’s a zany hour-and-a-half: part improv, part musical sketch comedy, fueled by audience participation, sight gags and clever slapstick. The show, directed by company founder Tyler Olsen, is a follow-up to [...]
By Peter Leggett, Walker West Music Academy On Saturday, December 15th Walker West Music Academy welcomed the University of Manitoba Jazz Studies faculty for a jazz master class. Led by renowned jazz bassist Steve Kirby, the group featured Anna-Lisa Kirby on vocals, Quincy Davis on drums, Will Bonness on piano, Derrick Gardner on trumpet, and [...]
Only about 20 people turned out this Monday night for Nautilus Music-Theater’s Rough Cuts show in Lowertown, and a number of them are slated to perform at some point. Everyone seems to know everyone else – many in the audience are theater folk – but the mood in the room is companionable and welcoming, rather than [...]
By Elissa Weller, VocalEssence 2012 marks the 15th year of the annual Welcome Christmas Carol Contest. Co-sponsored by VocalEssence and the American Composers Forum (ACF), the Welcome Christmas Carol Contest provides composers with the opportunity to compose a modern-day yuletide carol, to be sung, you guessed it, by the VocalEssence Chorus and Ensemble Singers. This [...]
On the third Tuesday of every month for more than 13 years, St. Paul Poet Laureate and Kay Sexton Award-winner Carol Connolly has hosted a collegial gathering of local poets, writers and bibliophiles at the University Club, in a gracious room overlooking the Mississippi River. The lineup changes every month; the area’s most beloved writers [...]
No season is so fraught with special events as the Christmas season, which is much closer nowadays to the end-of-year Saturnalia from whence it sprung than it is to a time of devotion (call it Festivus, if you like). But the great corpus of Christmas music, sacred and secular, that surrounds us at this time [...]
Last week, Public Art Saint Paul (a Knight Arts grantee) announced the addition of two new Saint Paul City Artists in Residence (CAIR) – Amanda Lovelee and Sarah West. Lovelee and West join Marcus Young, who has served as the city’s Artist in Residence since 2006; together they make a collaborative, creative team based in [...]
Late last week, Public Art Saint Paul (a Knight Arts grantee) announced the expansion of its City Artist in Residence (CAIR) initiative, a six-year-old partnership between PASP and the City of St. Paul (also a Knight Arts grantee). The CAIR program stems from a desire to move artists “upstream” in infrastructure development and civic creative [...]
For the first time since its closure more than 40 years ago, St. Paul’s historic Union Depot will once again be open for business beginning this Saturday. The depot was put out of commission, thanks to restructuring of area rail service in 1971, but in 2006 the Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority (RCRRA) purchased the [...]
