From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Former arts administrator Taylor Barnes of Jamestown, North Dakota, has a cabin in Detroit Lakes, and she admires the work of Project 412 in engaging the community to create public artworks.

Last year, they welcomed Danish artist Thomas Dambo to create a series of large trolls, which remain on view in and around Detroit Lakes. Now, the trolls have company: artist-in-residence Olga Ziemska has created four large sculptures of natural materials, entitled “Of the Earth.”

Three of the site-specific sculptures are temporary, but the fourth — a butterfly, currently in the works —will remain at the Ortenstone Gardens & Sculpture Park in Detroit Lakes.

Taylor says: I think they had probably 300 volunteers that worked for over 100 hours with her creating the pieces [three of which portray women built at large scale].

One woman is emerging from the earth. Another head is lying on its side, kind of listening. The third one is the woman's head and torso. I particularly like this one, because she's just got this hair that looks as though it's being blown back by a hurricane that's all made out of twigs and branches and sustainable materials.

— Taylor Barnes

Lux Mortenson of Brooklyn Park is excited for people to see the one-woman musical “Penelope” at the Elision Playhouse in Crystal. It runs June 20–28.

Lux says: I’m so thrilled that “Penelope” at Theatre Elision is coming back this month! I was fortunate enough to see it last year, and it was all I could talk about for weeks.

Christine Wade is a marvel, a true multi-hyphenate who guides the audience on a tight and beautiful one-act journey through the eyes of Penelope, Odysseus' devoted, incredibly patient wife, as she waits for her husband to return home.

Everything comes together to leave the audience spellbound. This is absolutely one NOT to miss this summer.

— Lux Mortenson

Art enthusiast Doris Rubenstein of Richfield recommends visiting the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska to check out the new exhibit in the Reedy Gallery in the visitor center.

It’s called “Wax, Wire, Wood, and Clay,” and four artists use natural materials to create scenes from nature. It runs through July 28. It's recommended that visitors to the Arboretum book a ticket online in advance; children 15 and under are free with an adult.

Doris says: Lynn Sarnoff-Christensen is the driving force behind the exhibition. Lynn is an encaustic artist; she explained it to me as the process of painting with molten beeswax.

For this show, she's taken photos of birds’ nests, incorporating them into the picture, along with other media like oils and pastels. Lynn invited three of her friends to join in the challenge of recreating nature with natural materials.

Jodi Reeb sculptures weird seed pods and boulders from wire. Jim Gallop makes sculptures and bowls from knobby tree burls, and Cindy Syme carves tree portraits into clay tiles.

So what better place could art lovers look for a show about the beauty of nature than the Arboretum, especially at this glorious time of year in Minnesota?

— Doris Rubenstein

Correction (June 12, 2025): An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled Lux Mortenson's name. The story has been updated.

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the original submission.

Jean Shore of Balsam Lake, Wis., recommends crossing into Wisconsin for an evening of American roots music.

Minnesota singer-songwriters Emmy Woods, Sarah Morris and Laura Hugo will perform at The Historic Auditorium in St. Croix Falls this Saturday, June 7 at 7 p.m.

Jean says: Each performer brings a unique voice and style to the stage, blending folk and country and heartfelt storytelling. But what makes this even more exciting is the venue itself.

The Historic Auditorium was built in 1916 and was recently renovated in 2023, and it’s quickly becoming a cultural hub for this area.

— Jean Shore

Twin Cities theater maker Kurt Engh recommends seeing Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Passion,” staged by Theater Latté Da at the Ritz Theater.

Written by the same team that created “Into the Woods,” the show runs through July 13.

Kurt says: “Passion” is one of Stephen Sondheim’s lesser-known musicals, but one of his most complex and most honest and emotional.

It is a melodramatic story set in 1860s Italy during the unification of Italy. It is an uneven love triangle between a beautiful married woman, a very handsome army captain and a in the terms of the musical, a “troubled, ugly woman.” And it is about how love and desire are reflected through beauty and beauty standards.

It is a very fascinating musical in that it is directed as almost a chamber opera at a breakneck speed. There are no applause breaks. It does not let you go. It just keeps moving.

— Kurt Engh

Michael Krefting of Minneapolis loves the improv scene in the Twin Cities, and he recommends the Twin Cities Improv Festival, happening Thursday through Sunday, June 8.

This is the annual festival’s first year at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis, following the closing of HUGE Improv Theater last year.

Michael says: They have artists coming in from all over the world, a couple artists coming in from Japan. There are a lot of local names. When they select the artists for the festival, they’re always trying to get the local groups that are doing either the most interesting things or doing something new and creative that's picking up steam.

The whole improv community is very welcoming. And I would, I would come ready to not just laugh but also feel. I would say to expect the unexpected!

— Michael Krefting

(Want more improv? Krefting also recommends Improv A Go-Go at Strike Theater in Minneapolis. Every first, second, and fourth Sunday, four or five improv groups are chosen by lottery to perform, offering an affordable evening of “yes, and” energy.)

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Folk musician Emily Youngdahl Wright of Minneapolis admires writer and community-space-maker Amọké Kubat. She wants people to know about the final step of Kubat’s ongoing project to honor those who mother children by offering them a place to rest — literally.

The exhibit features rocking chairs that were created during a community build and then painted, collaged or otherwise re-created by Minnesota artists.

“Rocking Chair (Re)Evolution” is a free, drop-in show at the Weisman Art Museum on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis.

The exhibit is open Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29 from 11-5 p.m., with a ceremony on Sunday from 1-3 p.m. The rocking chairs will be gifted to 12 mothers and grandmothers previously chosen with community feedback. 

Emily said: The whole project itself is just such a beautiful example of thinking about what kind of rest do you need, and what kind of support do you need?

The chairs are an example, I think, of tending to the spirit and the heart and the body [in] this work that really doesn’t end when you’re a parent and when you’re a grandparent, and when you are tending to this world that is in so much need of tending right now.

— Emily Youngdahl Wright

Composer Eric Heukeshoven of Winona plans to head to Rochester to watch Hometown Opera Company’s New Media Opera performance, featuring scenes of new and familiar works staged in a multimedia format.

The first act consists of scenes from Rochester composer Kevin Dobbe’s “Tempus Fugit.” The second act centers women’s voices with scenes from Verdi, Puccini, Dvořák, Wagner and Strauss. Performances are Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29 at 7:30 p.m. at the Rochester Civic Theatre. 

Eric Heukeshoven said the staging is: As 21st century as I can possibly imagine.

It is an opera that explores the human experience and time, and it does this by combining live performances of vocalists and dancers with digital projections, what Kevin calls motion-capture ‘metahumans’ and singing projected avatars. I’ve seen a clip that he sent me recently, and it is absolutely mesmerizing.

(He adds that Act Two scenes are “fully staged and choreographed, but also using projections that Kevin has created.”)

— Eric Heukeshoven

Kelly Rabe of Champlain started taking hip hop and breaking classes over the pandemic, and she wants people to know that Minneapolis will be in the national eye this weekend when it hosts the Red Bull BC One Cypher One competition. Local and regional b-girls and b-boys will compete in one-on-one battle style for a spot at the National Finals in Denver.

The event will be held in a new venue on the Minneapolis scene: Royalston Square, located in the North Loop. There are open qualifier preliminaries on Friday. The main event is Saturday, starts at 7 p.m. and costs $10. 

Kelly described her experience: This is probably maybe my third year going to the BC One, and I have to say, it is like the most hyped event I have ever been to in the Twin Cities.

I mean, it’s better than music festivals. It’s better than dance parties. There’s just an energy like nothing else. The spectators are really supportive of the dancers. They’ll be cheering, they’ll be screaming, jumping up and down when they see the dancers do amazing things. It’s a really welcoming community.

Not to mention they have, like, world-renowned DJs that are spinning the tunes for these dancers. So, I mean, it’s a full dance and music action.

 — Kelly Rabe 

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Cindy Pope is a ceramic artist from Waite Park. She got a dose of early spring by visiting the ceramics exhibit “Garden Party” at the Paramount Center for the Arts in St. Cloud.

Created by Stacy Larson, who is originally from Cold Spring, the exhibit features wheel-thrown and hand-carved cups and tableware that look like delicate leaves and flowers, glazed in springtime colors. The exhibit runs through March. 

Julia Cheng of Duluth had a chance to hear the world premiere this fall of “mOthertongue: Lived Experience in Asian America.”

Soprano Jennifer Lien of Duluth performs three song cycles commissioned by Asian American women composers, accompanied on piano by Lina Yoo-Min Lee. Lien commissioned these new works in partnership with the Cincinnati Song Initiative with support from the Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals grant.

The duo has continued to perform these works in what Cheng refers to as “a living collaboration.” They’ll perform highlights of the song cycles at the College of St. Scholastica’s “Lunch With Friends” on March 25, with the full performance on March 28 at the college’s Mitchell Auditorium. 

Julia Cheng was touched by the performance and looks forward to hearing it again.

“I have to say that, as the child of immigrants from China, these songs really resonated with me,” Cheng said. “I always wondered, you know, how did they deal with the dislocation of leaving home, family, language, culture, developing new community, the wrenching loss of being separated from family? These are all things that I heard bits and pieces of in the song cycles by Melissa Dunphy and the other two composers.” 

Annalisa Buerke follows her former colleague artist Rick Love on Instagram, where she enjoyed watching his process of creating a series of sculptures now on view at the Tettegouche State Park Visitor Center in Silver Bay.

The five sculptures are all made of wood — some painted, some charred — that celebrate both forests and sustainability. The works evoke the moon, the sun, a tree, a waterfall and Lake Superior. They’ll be on view through March.

Tettegouche State Park’s Visitor Center includes both juried art shows (of which Love’s exhibit was one) and an artist-in-residence program. 

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Daniela Bianchini is a Minneapolis mosaic artist who is originally from Argentina. She’s drawn toward an exhibit at CLUES’ Latino Art Gallery in St. Paul that celebrates the art of sewing as it is passed through generations of women.

The exhibit, by Columbian-Minnesotan artist Adriana Gordillo and Nena’s Atelier, is titled “Connective Thread.” It opens Friday, March 14 and runs through May 14. There is a Cafecito de Hermanas (Coffee with Sisters) on Saturday, March 15 from 9 a.m. to noon that offers a time for workshops, resources, music and community connection. Register here.  

Daniela says: I feel very related to it. We all in Latin America grew up seeing our grandmas and our mothers sewing. I’ve seen a couple of images that the artists have been posting in their social media: collages of different compositions of fabric and flowers and needles, and things that you see that represent the art of sewing.

The community will be able to write something: their emotions, or their feelings about the exhibition, and some sort of petals that will then be sewed together and put in a dress.

— Daniela Bianchini

Anne Sawyer, executive director of Art Start in St. Paul, is looking forward to seeing Teatro Del Pueblo’s “Voces Latinas: A Broadway Musical Revue.” Directed by Mark Valdez of Mixed Blood Theatre with musical direction by Brenda Varga, “Voces Latinas” celebrates Latino artists’ contributions to Broadway through the years. Shows are at Park Square Theatre in St. Paul, beginning Friday, March 14 and continuing Saturday, March 15 at 7:30 and Sunday, March 16 at 2 p.m. 

Anne says: If you love musicals, this production promises to be so much fun. Teatro del Pueblo’s performers will sing a curated, eclectic collection of songs that is a take on the Latino experience on Broadway. There are some older, really iconic numbers made famous by the likes of Chita Rivera, such as “A Boy Like That” from “West Side Story” and “Bye, Bye Birdie’s” “An English Teacher.”

But there’s also pieces like Selena's "Amor Prohibido” and the “Hamilton” song “Dear Theodosia,” which was sung on Broadway by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom Jr. What is so engaging about this production is the range of musical styles and how they encompass so many themes, societal differences and passionate love, pride in one's mother country, family and the struggle to survive. It’s a show that will take you on a real roller coaster of emotion.

— Anne Sawyer

Laura Hotvet loves the cover band Pandora’s Other Box, and she’s excited for their upcoming concert, which feels tailor-made for Women’s Month.

“The Legacy of Lilith Fair” celebrates the female musicians who took part in Lilith Fair in the late 1990s, and the artists who have followed in their footsteps. The concert takes place at the Women’s Club of Minneapolis on Saturday, March 15 at 7:30 p.m. 

Laura says: Pandora’s Other Box is one of the most energetic and fun-to-listen-to, fun-to-dance-to, talented pop rock cover bands in the Twin Cities. The show features songs from [Lilith Fair concert tour] founder Sarah McLachlan, along with Paula Cole, Sheryl Crow, The Chicks, Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Chapman, Pat Benatar, Indigo Girls and more.

The second act will journey through the 25 years that followed, and this will be showcasing more current artists who benefited from the bravery of the original female pioneers in the Lilith era, such as Brandi Carlile, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Carrie Underwood, Paramore and more.

— Laura Hotvet

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Visual artist Brian Frink of Mankato is looking forward to an exhibit newly opened at the Carnegie Art Center featuring the sculptures of Todd Shanafelt, Pocket Toscani and Jim Shrosbree. “Strange Paradises” is on view through March 22, with an opening artist reception Friday from 5-7 p.m. 

Brian says: Todd Shanafelt and Pocket Toscani are both Mankato residents, and Jim Shrosbree is from out-of-state. Jim and Todd are ceramic artists, and Pocket is more of a traditional sculptor, but what their work shares together is a kind of playful quirkiness.

They are very abstract in their approach. But I would also say they’re kind of obliquely recognizable in terms of the content in the work. There;s also an interesting intersection of functionality and non-functional in all three of them.  

They are also very involved in painting and drawing. So, the exhibition will include their three-dimensional work as well as their two-dimensional work, which I think adds another texture and level of interest to what they're presenting.

Theater lover Brad Pappas of St. Louis Park is looking forward to seeing the indie rock musical “Hundred Days.” It runs through March 22 at Theatre Elision, a black box theater in Crystal. The show is 80 minutes with no intermission. 

Brad describes the show: Abigail and Shaun decide to get married three weeks after they meet. Abigail is plagued by these dreams, and she’s convinced that the man she loves is going to die within in a little over three months.

Abigail and Shaun concoct a plan. They’re going to live their whole lives in 100 days. They’ll have Halloween in the morning, Christmas in the afternoon, birthdays at sundown. This performance sounds so intriguing to me because it’s eight musicians. They’re all a part of the show, but they’re all playing instruments throughout the performance.

Burlesque dancer Renata Nijiya of Minneapolis is intrigued by An Opera Theatre’s “Opera Underground.” There are four performances whose exact Twin Cities location and details will be revealed to ticket holders 24 hours before showtime. Performances are March 12 and March 13 in northeast Minneapolis at 7 p.m., March 16 in the Longfellow neighborhood at 5 p.m. and March 25, 7 p.m. in the West Seventh area of St. Paul, with ASL interpretation. Shows run 90 minutes. 

Renata loves the ways AOT makes opera accessible, through the work it chooses, its pay-as-you-can performances and ASL interpretation. She also offers this tip: 

“After each show, it’s going to roll into an after-party and have a local band performing … each location has a different local band,” she said.

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Daryl Lanz, owner of Chapter Two Books in Winona, is glad to see Theatre Du Mississippi’s One Act Play Festival returning for a second year.

Playwrights from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa submitted original work earlier this winter, and the winning four short plays will be performed together to make a performance running about two hours.

The result is a grab-bag of comedy and drama by regional writers ranging from 10 to 50 minutes. Shows will be performed at the Valencia Arts Center’s Academy Theatre in Winona this weekend and next, Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m.  

Visual artist Fawzia Khan of Hopkins recommends the exhibit “Reflections and Conversations: Monica Rudquist and Jerry Rudquist” at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St. Catherine University in St. Paul.

Assistant professor Monica Rudquist explores the relationship between her ceramic art and paintings by her late father, Jerry Rudquist (1924-2001), who taught painting at Macalester College for 42 years.

On the gallery’s second floor, Sophia Gibson — an honors student of Monica’s — extends the legacy one step further by curating an exhibit of Jerry’s portraits. 

The exhibit runs through March 16, with an artist talk by Monica Rudquist on March 5 at 6:30 p.m. There will also be a screening and panel discussion of the short film “The Painted Eye,” which documents Jerry Rudquist’s painting process on March 12. 

In the East Gallery, Monica Rudquist’s deconstructed and reassembled bowls, plates and cylinders reflect the shape and textures of her father’s work.  

“Both artists deconstruct objects and put them together in new ways to create imaginary forms and leave the marks of their hands on the works,” Khan said. 

Diane Hellekson, retired writer and former art critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, was inspired by the mixed media exhibit “Sund: Notes from the Sea” showing at Form + Content Gallery in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis artist Moira Bateman created works reflecting on her summer 2024 residency in Ålvik, Norway, and on the human impact of its fjords. The exhibit includes found objects pulled from the fjords, textiles and an audio element that immerses listeners in the sounds of the sea and underwater noise pollution.

The exhibit is open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through March 8, with an artist coffee reception on Saturday, March 1 from noon to 3 p.m. 

Hellekson called it an intimate show that gave her a feeling of  “wonder and curiosity.” She says you have to look closely at each piece and see “What is this? Oh my gosh. This is a plastic bag, and you find out that Moira dug it out from among some rocks in a fjord in Norway, and yet, here it is in this strange, deteriorated condition on the wall of a gallery.”

“And it makes you think [how] this thing probably was there for years, and yet, if Moira hadn’t plucked it out, it would have kept breaking down, and all these little shards of plastic would have gone on to pollute and end up in some animal’s belly. It’s very emotionally affecting, and yet it’s also beautiful.” 

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Diane Richard of St. Paul worked for 21 years at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), and she wants people to know about “Artists at Work: the Mia Staff Art Show.”

It’s tucked away in the community commons area just past the cafe and the family center (pro tip: you can bring your lunch with you to the exhibit!) The show runs through April 13. 

Diane explains: You might never have thought about it, but the people who work in museums are often artists themselves — and good ones, too. They work as security guards, and they create public programs, hang art on the walls, help you figure out where you’re going, and sell you stuff in the shop.

And they work in everything from oil painting to watercolor and prints, ceramic sculpture to embroidery, video and collage. There’s even a tarot card created from crop seeds.  

One work waves from the wall: the menacing loon flag was security guard Rob McBroom official entry into the state’s flag contest.  As I strolled around, Cara O’Connell's portrait of Myrna drew me over. It’s from O’Connell’s series on caregivers. Myrna is a beatific presence under a halo of robins.

For me, the showstopper was Adam White’s “It Came with the Room.” White’s triptych collage is layered with thousands of cartoon bubbles filled with intriguing messages, many about the hellhound Cerebus. You could spend hours in front of it searching for meaning. 

Overall, the show gives insight into the mostly unseen hands responsible for MIA’s daily operations. What comes through is their passion for art.

— Diane Richard

Carla Mansoni is the director of arts and cultural Engagement at CLUES, one of the largest and oldest Latin organizations in Minnesota. She wants people to know about “The Art of Mental Health,” a group show of art created by people who work in the mental health field, curated by Kasia Chojan-Cymerman and Thrace Soryn.

The exhibit at the Vine Arts Center in Minneapolis opens this Saturday, Feb. 22, with an artist reception from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. featuring a performance by psychologist/musician Mindy Benowitz. The show runs on Saturdays through March. There is a performance by bluegrass Americana trio Echo Trail on March 15.  

Carla says: The idea is to focus on the mental health professionals who also use art to heal themselves. This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the diversity of art forms and how art and culture also heals the healer, elevating the humanity of those working in mental health spaces.

 — Carla Mansoni

Jennifer Bowen, founder and director of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, was deeply moved by the exhibit “SEEN” currently on display at the Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis.

Curated by Emily Baxter of We Are All Criminals, this show is half a decade in the making. Seven artists partnered with seven incarcerated artists to create installations. The show runs through May 18, with a panel conversation planned for Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 6 p.m. 

Some installations respond to incarcerated life, such as work by Sarith Peou and Carl Flink, which reflect the steps of traditional Cambodian dance Peou used to keep himself active and healthy while on COVID lockdown in his cell.  

Jennifer says: There’s another exhibit of a poet named Brian, who’s got a massive chandelier of bird cages hanging from the ceiling with some of his poetry being read and voiced over by himself and other folks that he lives with. And I think the title of the poem is “We Can’t Hear Ourselves Sing,” and it’s about the kind of chaos and cacophony of life inside a prison.

It was the first thing I saw when I walked into the exhibit. And it literally took my breath away, the way that it speaks metaphorically not just to the pain that incarceration causes, but to the kind of human need to still find beauty in the midst of that pain. 

But then there are other artists who chose to think about what the future would look like, or what healing might look like. There’s an artist named Ronald who has a garden reminiscent of the garden his grandfather grew when he was in Detroit that’s meant to be this kind of healing look forward. It’s a really heavy but beautiful exhibit.  

And one thing this exhibit does is offers the community, not only a chance to listen on phones to the artists’ voices and to see interviews, but it also gives the public a chance to write notes to them that will go back to them. 

— Jennifer Bowen

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Writer and art lover Susan Montag recommends the work of Theatre 55, a Twin Cities-based theater company whose shows all feature casts of actors over age 55. Their production of the musical “Little Shop of Horrors” is playing at the Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul through Feb. 22.

She’s particularly looking forward to hearing vocalist Patricia Lacy, who is known for her work with Luther Vandross and with Sounds of Blackness, sing out “Feed me, Seymour,” when she plays the hungry plant from outer space, Audrey II.  

Susan says: I’ve seen a lot of the Theatre 55 shows. They are always so much fun. I like to see on the stage the folks who represent someone in my age group, showing that people over 55 are still very vibrant, very energetic and have a lot of talent to share!

— Susan Montag

MacKenzie McCullum is a writer and podcaster living in the Twin Cities, and she suggests taking your Valentine to see a Minnesota-original rom-com play at Zeitgeist Theater in Duluth.

“String” opens tonight and runs through Feb. 22. There is an ASL-interpreted performance Wednesday, Feb. 19. The play was a runner-up for the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award. 

MacKenzie says: I like to say that this play is like your favorite Nancy Meyers or Nora Ephron romantic comedy that you see on screen, but it’s on stage. It’s just a beautiful showcasing of genuine love that you can find every day.

It’s an unlikely courtship between a poet and a pizza delivery boy. It’s a great ensemble play: there are lots of great characters that will make you laugh out loud.  

The playwright, Jessica Lind Peterson, is a Duluth native. She actually wrote this play while she was in school at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She went on to co-found Yellow Tree Theater based in Osseo. “String” had kind of a life of its own in productions all over the country, and now it is back in Duluth for the 20th anniversary.

— MacKenzie McCullum

Freelance mathematics writer Barry Cipra of Northfield recommends a solo art show that celebrates the connections between mathematics and art.

John Shier’s exhibit “From Order to Chaos” features visual art created from equations. The show at the Steeple Center in Rosemount runs through March, with an artist reception and talk on Wednesday, Feb. 19 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.  

Barry points out art and mathematics are both fundamentally creative endeavors, adding that John is part of a long tradition of artists using mathematical thinking to create their work. Leonardo da Vinci, anyone?

Barry offers this introduction: John Shier’s a retired physicist. He taught for many years at Normandale Community College here in the Twin Cities, and has been doing his own kind of art, using equations and algorithms to create interesting, colorful [works], everything from landscapes to completely abstract works.

He also uses a lot of randomness. He calls it stochastic geometry — a term of art in the mathematical world. You let chance play a big role in what you get. He then, of course, uses his own eye to make selections. If he doesn’t like what the computer produces, he’ll try it again and see if he gets something that looks better.

— Barry Cipra

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Linda Sloan of Hopkins, Minn., is the executive director for the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage. She predicts audiences will be on their feet at the Fitzgerald Theater in St Paul this weekend, moved by “The Sound of Gospel: An Anthology Depicting the Rich History and Evolution of Gospel Music.”

The play is written by Rev. William H. Pierce of 2nd Chance Outreach and directed by Academy Award-nominated artist Jevetta Steele, with musical direction by Grammy Award-winning artist Billy Steele. The all-ages show will be performed Saturday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 9 at 3 p.m. 

Linda says: I cannot say enough about this performance. It is amazing. When I went to the show a couple years ago, I was just blown away by the caliber of the talent and then the meaning of the songs. It’s just a phenomenal show.

You’ll hear anything from spirituals to praise and worship. It is just an opportunity for individuals who maybe have never really experienced gospel to understand the roots, the roots of where it comes from and why it is spiritual music. 

It’s so energetic. There are a couple little somber moments, because it is a history of gospel music, and there have been things in the past that maybe occur that required spiritual music. But for the most part, it’s just one of those “toe-tapping, get-on-your-feet, clapping, as if you were in a Baptist church” shows. 

— Linda Sloan  

Actor and singer Anna Hashizume of Minneapolis recommends seeing Frank Theatre’s current production of the play “Sanctuary City,” about two undocumented teens growing up in Newark, N.J., post 9/11.

She describes the play as a series of very short scenes performed by an outstanding three-person cast. The play runs in the intimate Open Eye Theatre in Minneapolis through Feb. 23. Masks are required for the Feb. 7 and Feb. 16 performances. 

Frank Theatre, which mounted the play, specializes in works that spark conversation, and Anna says this show feels incredibly timely.

Anna says: I know when [director] Wendy Knox first chose the play we didn’t know the political climate that was going to be happening at this moment in time, but it is a very timely play for what is happening in our nation right now.  

Theater has a lot of different functions. It can just be entertainment, which is also lovely at a time like this, but also being able to be educated and see different life experiences in front of your eyes in a relatively safe space can open something up in all of us.

 — Anna Hashizume

Donna Winberg of Deephaven, Minn., loves to walk the trails at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, so she’s been able to pop inside the visitor center to watch preparations for the Spring Flower show. The enchanted garden displays are now open to viewers with an Arboretum ticket daily through March 16.  

In addition to the Spring Flower show, Donna recommends continuing through the Synder Building to the Conservatory, which is currently packed with orchids and tropical blooms, with a stop at the Rootstock Café for a bite to eat. Additional ticketed events include an Art Fair on Feb. 15 and 16, After Hours with Flowers and Afternoon Tea events. 

MPR chief meteorologist Paul Huttner is also a fan; see his pictures in a recent Updraft Blog here.

Donna describes the scene: You’ll be amazed when you see the huge tree trunks they’ve brought in there, and the mosses and the lichens and the mushrooms. It’s just like a breath of spring, which we all need this time of year! What I really love is the local artist work that is incorporated into the displays. There’ll be different artists coming in [through the course of the show.]

[This week] there are mosaic glass birds and ceramic birds and all sorts of wonderful little fairy houses, bird houses. So you have to stand there and look at things for a while to have it all revealed to you, which is fun.

— Donna Winberg

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Roma Duncan is a piccolo player in the Minnesota Orchestra. She recommends a concert this Sunday where the flute will take center stage.

Flutist Adam W. Sadberry, accompanied by Joe Williams on piano, will perform this month’s Coffee Concert at the Lakeville Area Arts Center, Sunday, Feb. 2 at 2 p.m.  

Roma says: Adam’s really put together an interesting program with a lot of music from Black composers. Perhaps the one that catches my attention most is the finisher on the program, “Wish: Sonatine” by Valerie Coleman.

Valerie is a living composer. She’s a Black woman who is a flutist and a composer, and she’s gotten a ton of attention in recent years with with great reason; she always has such engaging, exciting works.  

One of the big pieces that I’m also excited about is the [J.S.] Bach Partita [in A minor]. It’s a real tour de force for flutists.

It’s not very often that we have these solo pieces where we just never stop playing. He has so many different composers on this program, so I think it’ll be really fascinating to hear him switch gears so many times between different eras, different styles, different feels to his repertoire.

— Roma Duncan

Theater artist Laurie Flanigan Hegge from Minneapolis recommends a light-hearted musical to see with your sweetheart: the musical “’Til Death.”

Written and performed by real-life married couple Jeremiah and Vanessa Gamble of Bucket Brigade, the musical, now in its 13th season, opens Friday and runs through Feb. 15 at Art House North in St. Paul. 

Laurie says: This show is a Valentine to marriage and commitment and a love letter to their community on the west side of St. Paul [where they live and perform]. 

“‘Til Death” features two sets of couples: a married couple who have been together for 15 years but are on the brink of separation, and a newly married couple who are goofily in love with each other. The two of them come together on a snowy night in a blizzard and end up spending a kind of madcap, silly night together, where the realities of what it means to be married and committed kind of crash into each other.  

It’s a fun musical: warm, funny and light-hearted, and it’s performed in a really intimate space called Art House North, which is an old church.

— Laurie Flanigan Hegge

Jazz musician Eric Heukeshoven of Winona recommends spending your Wednesday nights this February at the Rochester City Jazz Fest.

Hear live jazz at the Thesis Beer Project from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., starting Wednesday, Feb. 5.  

Eric describes the line-up: Next Wednesday, Feb. 5, is Darren Saner Quartet. Darren is a crooner from Rochester, very well known.

There is a wonderful band backing him up. The next Wednesday, Feb. 12, is a group called TakeTwo & Friends. They're very much straight ahead, right in the pocket. It’s piano, drums and tenor sax, but I think the “friends” indicates they're going to have people sitting in with them that night.

Then on the 19th is a new group from Minneapolis called 3-D. It features guitar, bass and drums. And wrapping it up [on Feb. 26], just in time for Mardi Gras, is Loud Mouth Brass, which is a New Orleans-style brass band. They will bring down the house, I’m sure.

— Eric Heukeshoven

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Jim Voegeli of Rochester visited to Winona Arts Center recently to see the opening of a photography and poetry exhibition entitled “The River Connects Us.”

Retired environmental engineer Pete Mutschler spent six years taking photographs along the full length of the Mississippi River, and for the past two years retired state demographer and poet Tom Gillaspy has written poems to pair with the photographs. The resulting 26 images and poems are on display through March 2 at the Winona Arts Center, which is open from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends.   

Voegeli appreciated both artistic halves of the exhibit. He says the enlarged photographs, encompassing all types of transportation along the river, “looked almost like paintings.” The title has a dual meaning.

Jim says: The river does just physically connect all of these photos together and poems. But as Peter said in the reception, the people that he met along the way, all the way up and down the Mississippi were such nice, friendly people that the meaning also has to do with all the people that live along the river, that we’re all connected together.

— Jim Voegeli

In June, the exhibit will be on view at the Great River Road Visitor and Learning Center (also known as Freedom Park) in Prescott, Wis. View the ongoing project at theriverconnectsus.org. 

Delta Rae Giordano is an actor and teaching artist based in Falcon Heights. She recommends the show “Loudly, Clearly, Beautifully.”

Elena Glass wrote and performs this show about her father, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was 14. The show includes original music by Twin Cities duet The Champagne Drops. It runs Jan. 24 through Jan. 31 at the Hive Collaborative in St. Paul. 

Delta says: I’m really interested to see how Elena is going to talk about this, present it to an audience, and create art out of something that’s, you know, a really sad personal loss. But from the description that she has on her event information, it sounds like she really wanted to let people know about this wonderful relationship she had with her dad, and probably some wisdom that he imparted. 

It’s directed by Allison Vincent, who is a very well known local performer and theater maker. She actually did a show about [losing] her own father that was just performed at the fringe last summer.

— Delta Rae Giordano

Georgette Jones is an arts educator and advocate in Watson and she is excited to enter the competition season for the Minnesota State High School League one-act plays.

From Pipestone to Mora, Detroit Lakes to Mountain Lake, each competing school has 35 minutes or less to shine with a play of their choosing, and Jones says the styles of show vary from comedy to drama to everything in between. 

The subsection tournaments begin today across the state. Find your nearest host school here. They competition culminates in a state festival held at the O’Shaughnessy at St Catherine University in St. Paul on Feb. 6 and Feb. 7. 

Georgette says: Some of these schools are coming from well-funded programs with huge, wonderful facilities. And some of these schools have a stage at the end of a gym and a volunteer director.

And yet, the quality of student acting and performance and different theater making criteria is just amazing. Every year, I never cease to be surprised by what I see on a stage at a one act play festival.

— Georgette Jones

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the original submission.

Ruth Sloven is a St. Paul-based artist. She recommends the group exhibition “WITNESS עֵד,” a group art show by Jewish artists for Palestinian liberation, at Modus Locus in Minneapolis.

Ruth says: This exhibit includes ceramics, sculpture, community, quilting, painting and video. Many of the works are traditional Jewish subjects, which have been repurposed in non-traditional ways.

What I’m excited about is that it’s a doorway into experiencing and expressing the grief about the destructive war in Israel and Gaza, and hopefully can be part of a path to healing.

— Ruth Sloven

Joseph “JoJo” Howsley is a music enthusiast based in Fargo. He recommends a showcase by Human Artistic Collaborations on Saturday, May 31, starting at 6 p.m. at Brühaven in Minneapolis.

Joseph says: I met Kyle Krause last weekend. He is the head of Human Artistic Collaborations, whose aim is primarily to champion human-led art in a space that's constantly being inundated by artificial intelligence.

They’re doing an event with one of my favorite producers in the scene. His name is Deerskin, and they have over, I believe he said, 12 artists who will be showcasing and selling their art.

— JoJo Joseph Housley

Kari Olk is a Brooklyn-based teaching artist who grew up in Minneapolis. She recommends “Orlando: A Rhapsody,” playing at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis through June 8.

Carrie says: “ORLANDO: A Rhapsody” by Vinora Epp and Steven Epp is a thoughtful reflection about art, gender, storytelling. It’s both based on Virginia Woolf — a few of her writings: “The Waves,” “A Room of One's Own” and, of course, “Orlando” — and it’s also combined with writing from Vinora and Steve.

To see them working together is really special. And so it’s really exciting to see her directorial debut, and it’s really exciting that she’s doing this work with her dad, Steve.

The story of “Orlando” is a story about a person who, over 300 years, goes back and forth between being a young woman and a young man, and they both perform as Orlando, and they both perform as versions of themselves.

— Carrie Olk

Correction (May 29, 2025): An earlier version of this story misspelled Kyle Krause. The story has been updated.

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Twin Cities actor Peyton McCandless is looking forward to seeing a new stage adaptation of her favorite childhood book, “Dealing with Dragons.”

The series, written by Patricia C. Wrede beginning in 1991, features Princess Cimorene, who refuses to fit the expected mold of a princess and instead runs off to live with a dragon and have adventures. The novel received the 1991 Minnesota Book Award for Fantasy and Science Fiction. Staged by Phantom Chorus Theatre in collaboration with Arts Nest, the show runs from Friday, Jan. 17 through Feb. 2 at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis. 

This is an all-ages show, but at a running length of 2 hours and 15 minutes, it may not be appropriate for very young children. 

Peyton McCandless raves about Phantom Chorus Theatre’s puppetry, including the dragon Kazool, who is over 10 feet tall.

Peyton says: I saw [Phantom Chorus Theatre’s] most recent show that was called “The Alchemist’s Bargain” at the Twin Cities Horror Fest this last fall, and it was one of the most visually stunning, amazing things I’ve seen in a really long time.

As far as I can tell from what I’ve seen, they’re total geniuses about puppets. They’re really inventive and creative in the puppets that they create, because they make all their own puppets, and also in how they actually use those puppets to tell the story.

And it really feels like they’re not just using puppets for convenience or because it’s cool, but because they actually understand deeply what that art form is. I really can’t think of a better way to put dragons across on stage.

— Peyton McCandless

Lyn Reed is a former art teacher and a ceramic artist living in Orr, but she made the trip to the Northwoods Friends of the Arts in Cook, Minn., to take in the joyful colors and compositions of fabric artist Cecilia Rolando of Ely.

Entitled “Piecing it Together,” the exhibit runs through Jan. 31. Several small quilts designed and sewn by NWFA’s Round Robin Quilt Group are also on display. 

Lyn Reed offers this look around the gallery, where the colors and textures provide a welcome burst of inspiration in January.

Lyn says: She calls it fabric collage, and that’s exactly what it is. She must have just an incredible resource of fabrics because I notice fabric from Southeast Asia … Japan … she’s used doilies, antique lace, gingham …There’s a piece I really like that’s red and white spiral.

She cuts different pieces of different sizes, and she’s collaged those together. You can see that she’s layered them. She’s using all different types of stitching, and the lines actually look as if they’re in a drawing. The compositions are really beautiful. 

It’s like a cornucopia of all different types of fabrics from around the world. If you love fabrics, you will enjoy Cecilia’s work.

— Lyn Reed 

Photographer Sarah Weiss of St. Paul is intrigued by a photography exhibit opening this Saturday entitled “With Liberty and Care for All.” Organized by Sarah Sampedro, the photography exhibit includes the work of more than 20 artists in the FotoMatter Artist Collective.

There is an opening artist reception this Saturday, Jan. 18, from 6-9 p.m., and the exhibit runs through March 22. The exhibit is on view in the first-floor gallery of the Northside Artspace Lofts; dial “1” on the call box for building access. 

Sarah Weiss says the photo exhibit grew out of discussions, led by Sampedro, about the concepts of freedom.

Sarah says: What if we put more care into the idea of freedom? What if we had the definition of freedom be more about “us” rather than ‘“I?”  

The work itself is really thought-provoking and introspective, and very much, I think, poignant … just a conversation that we’re due to have as a society.

— Sarah Weiss

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Life-long art lover Ted Pfohl of Little Falls wholeheartedly recommends that people see the work of Charles Gilbert Kapsner while it’s on view at Studio Pintura Fine Art Gallery in the Northrup King Building in northeast Minneapolis.

Kapsner is based in Little Falls but trained in Florence, Italy in the studio of Nerina Simi (1890-1987). The retrospective includes over 30 still lives, portraits and other works, gathered under the title of “Odyssey — A 50-Year Artist’s Journey: Not a Still Life!” The show’s run has been extended through Feb 8. 

Ted Pfohl muses on the odyssey of Kapsner’s work: I can in all integrity state that I am captivated by the stories within the works of Master Artist Kapsner, a designation earned within and from his colleagues in the world of fine art. Today, he voyages within oil and charcoal. He has been at several harbors within fresco. He has created a monument of paintings honoring the five branches of the United States military.

Each carefully chosen and curated piece provides glimpses into the creativity of a gifted helmsperson. There are flowers, bottles of wine, his wife — whom he calls Lady Catherine — still lives and portraits. As I was moving within the currents of the visuals before me, there were several times where my feet would not move as my gaze rested upon the piece before me.

— Ted Pfohl

Jewelry artist and silversmith Jessica Prill of Faribault works across the street from the Paradise Center for the Arts, and she says the exhibits there are always a source of inspiration.

She recommends taking in the new visual arts show, which opened this week and features painters Laura Andrews and Montana Becker as well as stained-glass artist Bob Vogel in the main gallery. Art by students of Bethlehem Academy will be featured in the Creger Gallery, which often features student work. There is an artist reception on Friday from 5-7 p.m., and the exhibit runs through Feb. 15. 

Speaking about the stained glass art of Bob Vogel of St. Peter, Jessica Prill says: [His work] blows my mind. He has done stuff with glass that I didn’t know was possible. He has found a way to make it look like he’s painting with glass. He uses the patterns in the glass like brush strokes. He does lamps, panels, fused glass: they’re just incredible.

— Jessica Prill

Dana Drazenovich of St. Cloud loves live music, and she wants people to know about Monday Night Jazz, a band that has been performing jazz for 20 years in St. Cloud.

Despite its name — a holdover from a previous location that was open on Monday nights — the sextet plays most Thursdays from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the Veranda Lounge in St Cloud. 

Dana says: I feel like Monday Night Jazz is just a gift to St. Cloud’s music scene, because I’m sure it’s introduced plenty of people to the genre, and it’s probably even made fans out of people who might not have otherwise even heard jazz performed live. 

They take a lot from the Great American Songbook, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein. You’ll hear songs like “All the Things You Are” and “Mood Indigo.” They throw in a few originals here and there, too.

They’ve got drums, piano, bass, guitar, sax and trumpet, so it’s a big, full sound. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get to hear guitar player and vocalist, Muggsy Lauer, scat. There’s a lot of laughing between songs, a lot of joking back and forth and they just put out the tip jar and go.

— Dana Drazenovich

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Art fan Deborah Bartels of St Paul took a delightful trip The Kerlan, which is one of the premier collections of children’s literature, housed in the Elmer L. Anderson Library on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota.

Called “Journey to Joy: Rise, Relevance, Representation in Children’s Picture Books,” the exhibit is open Monday-Friday 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., with docent-led tours available by appointment each day at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Please note: the Kerlan is closed on weekends and from Dec. 21-Jan 1 for the University’s holiday break. 

Deborah describes. the exhibit: The entrance to the exhibit welcomes viewers with life-sized, colorful cut-outs of joyful children doing cartwheels and reaching for the stars. A wall behind is covered floor-to-ceiling with enlargements of the covers of books that have won the Ezra Jack Keats Award. 

Displays invite visitors to see the process behind the published award winner: the submitted manuscript, the sketches that evolve into beautiful artwork and the notes of the authors and illustrators.

One of the surprising things I learned was that it is the editor who selects the illustrator for a submitted manuscript and that often the writer and artist never meet! 

“Journey to Joy” is displayed over four floors of the Anderson Library. A short elevator ride to the third floor brings you to the beginning of the exhibit which succinctly illuminates the history of children’s picture books, a history which is not always one to celebrate.

The exhibit doesn’t dwell long on this exclusionary past; it reveals a lesser-known history of positive efforts to represent the diversity of people and cultures and of the awards which encourage and publish more diverse children’s literature. 

I have long been aware of Newbery and Caldecott Medals which are well-known prizes in children’s literature. I knew little about the Ezra Jack Keats Award, which celebrates books that embrace all ethnic and social groups. The ground floor devotes an entire room to feature three indigenous Minnesota artist illustrators:  Jonathan Thunder, Annette S. Lee and Marlena Myles.

 — Deborah Bartels

Martin DeWitt, former director and curator of the Tweed Art Museum in Duluth, recommends making time to see the Twin Ports exhibit “Loaded” by Duluth artists Rob Quisling and Jonathan Thunder.

It’s showing across the High Bridge at the Kruk Gallery Holden Fine Arts Center, University of Wisconsin-Superior through Dec. 20 and by appointment until Jan. 15, 2025. 

Martin says: The exhibition is truly a collaboration by Quisling and Thunder, featuring a thoughtful and poignant selection by curator Annie Dugan of each artist’s diverse artistry that deals directly with their struggles and recovery from alcohol addiction. The exhibition is a powerful testament, not only to the artists’ long-term friendship, but also to their unique and powerful creative expression in a variety of media.

A dramatic, monumental acrylic painting on canvas by Thunder, smaller oil paintings and intimate prints and drawings by both artists, and a provocative mixed-media art installation by Quisling, fill the Kruk Gallery with inspiration, forthright honesty and beauty.

The notion of “Loaded” takes on new meaning, not only as a celebration of the artists’ sobriety but also how passion, friendship and creative expression can offer the potential for healing and resolve in this increasingly challenging world. This is an exhibition not to be missed.

— Martin DeWitt

From Art Hounds producer Emily Bright: This is the last Art Hounds for 2024, rounding out our 15th anniversary year. Don’t worry, we’ll be back in January. But before we take a little holiday break, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate what a distinct joy this show is.

This year, Art Hounds featured nearly 130 artists and events, from Worthington to Ely, from Fergus Falls to Winona, plus in venues across the Twin Cities metro area.   

Artists regularly tell me that folks turned up at their show because they heard about it on Art Hounds.  

And the range of shows is just as wide-reaching: visual arts exhibits and stage performances of all kinds. (And even some off-stage: we had not one but two dance performances on or near bodies of water, because that’s how we roll in Minnesota.) There were jazz concerts, community quilt projects, art strolls and cabarets, plus art collections at four different colleges.  

This is work that sparks conversation about the biggest topics of our day! Shows that make people feel seen. Art that spreads joy.  

Thank you to everyone who’s been on Art Hounds this year, for taking time to shine a light on someone else’s work.  

It’s not too soon to let me know about the shows you’re looking forward to seeing in 2025. 

Happy holidays, and we’ll see you soon. 

— Emily Bright

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Andrew Rosendorf of Minneapolis says he wouldn’t be the playwright he is today without the support he received early in his career from the Tofte Lake Center.

He wants artists at all levels of their career to know that applications for next summer’s artist retreats are open now through the end of December. 

Andrew says: I just want you to imagine going to a pristine lake near Ely, Minnesota, that’s adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. You paddleboard, you canoe, you wade feet into the lake.

You sit around a fire pit at night looking up at the crystal-clear night sky, like you’re at a planetarium. And you also get a work on your art surrounded by a community of artists. That’s Tofte Lake Center. I find it’s a soul-centering place that leaves lives and breathes the value that nature is nurture. 

It gives access to artists at all levels of disciplines, and identities: those who are emerging, parents, BIPOC artists, arts educators who need time to center their own work and small collaborative teams. 

I first got introduced to Toffee Lake Center because about 15 years ago, when I was in my late 20s, I went there to work on a play, and Liz Engelman, who is the founder and who runs Tofte Lake Center, said, “Come work on your play. We believe in you and your voice.” And for any artist starting out, there’s a huge sense of imposter syndrome, and here was a place early in my career telling me I belong, and that’s kind of everything for an artist.

— Andrew Rosendorf

Kerry Johnson is the high school choir director in Worthington. This Sunday, she’s headed to the Worthington Chamber Singers’ Christmas concert. The theme of the concert is “Love Came Down,” and for this 30th anniversary performance they will sing a work they commissioned from Venezuelan composer Reinaldo Moya, entitled “Ya Germinaba.”

The concert is Sunday, Dec. 8 at 2 p.m. at First United Methodist Church in Worthington. The concert is free, with a free-will offering. 

Kerry adds: Eric Parrish, the director, just really kind of has a knack for choosing themes and music that just really become more timely as the process of preparing that music goes on.

This year, the focus is on hope and on gratitude and on celebrating love, and the fact that we are more similar than we’re not. And I think this fall, especially, that’s an important message to to put out into the world, just that we have a lot of common ground that we need to tap into.

 — Kerry Johnson

Mabel Houle appreciates the vibrant community of artists living in her Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis, and she recently got a sneak peek at a show by three local artists at the Vine Arts Center.

“Dreams and Abstract Schemes” features the works of Kim Pickering, Susan Kolstad and Karen Brown. It will be on view for the next three Saturdays, including during this Saturday’s Seward Frolic. 

Mabel appreciates art that transports us away from reality and into another world.

Mabel says: I find Susan’s collages of these earthy landscapes very soothing, very comforting.

Her paper has such wonderful textures, and the colors are just calm and peaceful; and that’s quite different [from] Kim’s vivid dream images, which are more mind-bending, very colorful, very, very abstract — just beautiful images of something that's not in this world.

Karen creates these very unique sculptures that are not completely human and not completely animal.

— Mabel Houle

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Architectural historian Marjorie Pearson of St. Paul wants people to know that the new, expanded wing of the Minnesota Museum of Art, commonly known as the M, is now open in the historic arcade of the Endicott building in downtown St. Paul.

The major renovation triples the available exhibit space for Minnesota’s oldest art museum. The exhibit in the new wing, entitled “Here, Now,” features 150 works from the M’s permanent collection, ranging across centuries and styles. The museum is open Thursdays through Sundays and admission is free. 

When you visit, Marjorie recommends you take time to admire the architecture in addition to the art.

Marjorie says: This is a premier office building that was designed by Cass Gilbert in the early 1890s and the arcade with its wonderful arch stained-glass ceiling, beautifully restored by Stonehouse Stained Glass Studio in Avon, Minn., really enhances the whole gallery space.  

The Endicott building was constructed around the historic Pioneer building … the two buildings were combined. The galleries now are in the historic arcade, which was a shopping arcade for people in the offices downtown — a precursor to a shopping mall.

[Note: Cass Gilbert (1859-1934) was a prominent architect who lived and worked in Minnesota for portions of his life; he designed many important buildings, including the Minnesota State Capitol and the U.S. Supreme Court Building.]

 — Marjorie Pearson

Billy Nduwimana Siyomvo got an early view of the exhibit “Layers of Joy,” which he called “mind-blowing.”

The exhibit features five Minneapolis artists — Leslie Barlow, Alexandra Beaumont, Eyenga Bokamba, Cameron Patricia Downey and seangarrison — whose selected works celebrate Black joy and identity. Billy loved the work, and he recommends taking your time to take it in from all angles.

He was also struck by the exhibit’s backstory: the show was curated by University of Minnesota students enrolled in ARTH 3940: Black Art in Minneapolis, taught by Dr. Daniel M. Greenberg and Dr. Dwight K. Lewis, Jr. 

Billy describes the show: When you walk in, the first thing that embraces you is colors —different textures, colors, different stories. Each art piece I felt like was made with love. 

What I love about this [exhibit] is that this class is basically giving these artists a platform. I don’t think it’s every day that you hear about curating art; people need to understand that, yes, these artists are very important, but without the right curated spaces, their art is not put on a platform that it deserves to be on.

 — Billy Nduwimana Siyomvo

Rebecca Montpetit of Rochester is a lifelong fan of the Rochester Art Center, and she’s already making plans to go back again with her family to see Mini Golf and Chairs.

The interactive exhibit consists of 20 chairs from the private college of an Owatonna family, which artist then used as inspiration to create five mini golf holes. You can’t sit on the chairs, but you can play the golf holes. Clubs of all sizes, including adaptive clubs, are part of the exhibit, and there is a par for each hole. The exhibit runs through May 4, 2025. 

Rebecca describes what it was like to visit the exhibit with her kids, aged 8 and 10: The beginning of the exhibit leads you through this hall of chairs. And it was a really fascinating discussion with our kids to talk about.

We said, all of these have the same purpose: to sit! But look at all of the materials and ways that you can create ways to sit. They’re everything from corrugated cardboard to molded plastic to, a kind of a shag material.

So we had all sorts of different ways to explore, ways to sit. So it gave the artist creative license as well to really be inspired by the materials or the shape or even the thought process as they created the mini golf elements. 

— Rebecca Montpetit

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Norah Rendell is the executive artistic director of the Center for Irish Music in St. Paul. She saw — and loved — the original storytelling musical “The Well Tree” by the Heartwood Trio last spring. 

The trio consists of Sarina Partridge of Minneapolis, Heidi Wilson of Vermont and Willie Clemetson of Maine. They’re back for performances of “The Well Tree” tonight at 7 p.m. at the Twin Cities Friends Meeting House in St. Paul and Friday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. at New City Center/Walker Church in Minneapolis.

Norah says she imagines the acoustics of the church venues will be well-suited for a show with beautiful harmonies. 

Norah says: It’s an original singing story performance that includes songs and instruments and acting and illuminated paper cut art called a “crankie” [so named because a person turns a crank to scroll to new images].

It tells a story of a young woman who finds herself running away from home, and along her journey, she meets songbirds and snails and ancient trees as she finds her way home. And the three artists who perform are super talented. They’re beautiful harmony singers. There’s a fiddle player, a banjo player and they’re all actors and they invite the audience to sing along.  

It seems like it would be geared towards children, but it really suits anybody of any age who loves the experience of singing together with other people. You leave the show feeling great; it’s very inspiring, very positive. The show itself is really inspiring.

— Norah Rendell

Erin Maurelli is an artist and educator in the Twin Cities. She wants people to know about the MCBA / Jerome Book Arts Residency show which is up now at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, inside Open Book in Minneapolis.

Free and open to the public, this show displays the work of the three winners of the Jerome Book Arts Residency: photographer Christopher Selleck; papermaker Jelani Ellis; and artist and printmaker Louise Fisher.  

Erin says: Christopher Selleck is a photographer who takes on the body, the figure and what we think of as idealism, and through the lens of the camera, he’s able to capture kind of the ideal masculine body — which, in my experience, we don’t see a lot of that in art and art history. Christopher brings issues of identity and sexuality into his work as a gay man, I think the male gaze becomes part of his narrative. 

Christopher was selected to be part of the Jerome book arts fellowship, and the show is through January 4 of next year. He’s one of three artists that are part of that show, there are some hand-crafted books featuring his photographs as well as sculptural elements. He’s exploring bringing the photographic process into bookmaking.  

— Erin Morelli

Charles Luedtke is a retired professor of music at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, and he is heading to Gaylord tonight to see La Grande Bande.

The group specializes in performing music written from 1600-1800, using instruments of the period. Their November concert celebrates the 340th birthday of Handel with two of his works set near water, his famed “Water Music Suites” as well as his cantata “O come chiare e belle.”  

Handel’s "Water Musicks" is tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Gaylord. Michael Thomas Asmus, the founder and artistic director, will give a talk before the performance at 6:45 about the music. 

Charles says: It’s rather spectacular because he lives in Gaylord, just outside of Gaylord and his music performances have been kind of centered around that area, sometimes in St. Peter, sometimes in New Ulm.

So, it’s kind of local, but [it’s] tremendous quality. They’re not amateurs, never amateurs. They are all really professional performers and on period instruments — baroque instruments.

— Charles Luedtke

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Erinn Liebhard is the artistic and executive director of Rhythmically Speaking, a jazz and American social dance-based company.

She’s looking forward to the Threads Dance Project’s fall show, “Impressions,” this Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Luminary Arts Center in Minneapolis. 

Erinn elaborates: Their artistic director, Karen L. Charles, is a really fascinating artist. She was a mathematician and statistician who ended up shifting into dance education and eventually was able to open her own company. So she’s got a really sort of methodical yet artistic way of creating choreography.

Something that I love about Threads’ work is that I feel like it’s really artistic and accessible at the same time. So it’s saying something, but you don’t have to have special training in dance in order to understand.

(As part of the show), Threads is going to be re-exploring a piece about shoes. The piece is called “Abolition in Evolution, Part 2 – Shoes,” and it’s based upon the shoes we wear and what they say about us.

I think it’s really interesting that they’re taking this metaphor of walking in someone else’s shoes into a visual and artistic representation that causes you to ask questions about identity, race, class and how we see each other.

— Erinn Liebhard

Margit Johnson of Northfield appreciates the work of ArtMakers, and she’s looking forward to their new, original musical, “Alice’s Wonder.”

Shows are this Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. (with audio description) at Northfield Arts Guild Theater. Admission is free for this family-friendly show. 

Margit says: What I like about ArtMakers’ storytelling through music and theater is the genius of the artists with and without disabilities.

For 10 years now, ArtMakers start with individuals from the Northfield area, from Colorado and even from Norway; they craft a production around and adapt to the talents and special needs of each participating artist. This way, they create authentic, artist-centered projects in the community.

I know that “Alice's Wonder” is going to surprise and delight me. Alice is blind, and so is her friend, the White Rabbit. Their Wonderland is going to come alive with sound and what they call the brave idea of living your life as you choose. The ensemble includes local performers with disabilities alongside professional musicians from Northfield and the Twin Cities.

— Margit Johnson

Author Marcie Rendon of Minneapolis recommends that people see “The Adventures of a Traveling Meskwaki,” written by and starring Oogie Push.

Originally a one-woman show, the multimedia performance has been expanded to a cast of five. Full Circle Theater is producing the show, which will be staged at Park Square Theatre in downtown St. Paul.

There’s a preview performance tonight ahead of the opening Friday. The show runs through Nov. 24, and tickets are pay-as-you-are-able. 

Marcie says: It follows her adventures as she’s exploring and working with other Native people around issues of protecting the water.

It’s broader than just the water: it incorporates many of the things that she’s learned on all of these different travels that she’s done, from Alaska to Vancouver to Washington to California to out East. As a young person, she was a pow wow dancer. So she’s also got stories from that part of her life that she incorporates into her work. 

The thing to know about Oogie is that she has a wonderful sense of humor. She can also go really deep into the emotional aspects of a piece, like into a character that she's taking on.

— Marcie Rendon

This week’s Art Hounds look at an art exhibit about a walk along the Mississippi, Gilbert and Sullivan relocated to Scotland and a blend of concert band and technology.

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Rachel Coyne, a writer and painter in Lindstrom, loves outdoor arts events. She’s looking forward to seeing Cadex Herrera’s outdoor exhibition on the campus of the White Bear Center for the Arts in the north metro.

“First Person Plural” features 10 larger-than-life black-and-white murals, each featuring the faces of immigrants living in White Bear Lake, where Herrera also used to live.

The installation is intended to honor the diversity of immigrants in the area and their contributions. Herrera also directed a documentary about the project, which will be on view. The exhibit opens to the public Thursday with an artist event and celebration from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.  

Rachel says: I just like the idea that, you know, this could be somebody you’re passing on the street. But also they’re a work of art.

 — Rachel Coyne

Eric Parrish is the instructor of music and theater at Minnesota West Community and Technical College and the conductor of the Worthington Chamber Singers. He’s looking forward to a series of free events in Worthington to mark Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead.

Events start this weekend and run through next week, culminating in a performance by 512: The Selena Experience, a Selena cover band, on Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. Most events are held at the Memorial Auditorium in town. 

Among Saturday’s events: Puppeteer Gustavo Boada will unveil two commissioned 8-foot Catrina sculptures at noon. His performance group Little Coyote Puppet Theatre will perform “Skeletons in the Closet: A Day of the Dead Story” at 1 p.m., followed at 2:30 by a puppet-making workshop. 

The event coincides with the annual meeting of the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council, which comprises 18 counties and two sovereign nations. Art studios and public art will be open for self-guided tours.  

About 512: the Selena Experience, Eric says: This is the premier Salena cover band in the country. So it’s a really big swing for our small community.

People don’t know Worthington is one of the most diverse communities outside of the Twin Cities in the state of Minnesota. And it’s very exciting for us as a community to embrace this holiday and in this way with all the artists and activities.

 — Eric Parrish

Diane Wilson is a Dakota author living in Schaefer, and she got a sneak peek at the art exhibit Mní Futurism at Metro State University’s Gordon Parks Gallery in St. Paul. Mní is the Dakota word for water. In this exhibit, two Minnesota-based Native American artists reflect on our relationship with and use of water.  

The exhibit is a joint show of photographer Jaida Grey Eagle, who is Ogalala Lakota, and multimedia artist Abby Sunde, of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. The exhibit opens with an artist reception Thursday at 5 p.m. and runs through Dec. 5. 

Diane says: Their work is very thought-provoking. It’s visually stimulating, and it ranges from impacts on water from pipelines, from pollution but also looking at the impacts on issues like food sovereignty and treaty rights and access to healthy water. 

Jaida Grey Eagle’s photographs, for example, evoke the beauty of some of the traditional food practices. There are photographs of wild ricing. And there’s one that is so poignant of a young boy in a canoe, and it just evokes that generational relationship to wild rice and how dependent that traditional food is on clean water.

And then Abby Sunde looks at from a little more of a critical thinking lens. She looks at, for example, some of the impacts that pipelines have had on water in her community. So there is one series of drawings that are created from rust on glass, and it’s called “Stolen Water.”

It’s about aquifer breaches that occur when a pipeline piling is driven too deep, and it breaches into the aquifer, and all this water is released that isn’t supposed to be released. It’s stolen water.  

It’s a small and intimate gallery on the first floor of the library. The work of these two women complements each other beautifully in terms of the way that they think about and portray water as a relative.

— Diane Wilson

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Kira Pontiff of St. Paul is a self-described occasional actress and full-time lover of all things autumnal and Halloween. She was thrilled to catch a rehearsal of the play “The Halloween Tree,” which she described as a magical Halloween adventure.

It’s playing at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis, Oct. 20 – 27. The world-premiere play is adapted from Ray Bradbury’s 1972 novel of the same name. The 90-minute show is recommended for ages 8 and up. 

Kira describes the show: A group of trick-or-treaters meet up on Halloween night, and they get taken on a magical Halloween adventure by a very mysterious character who takes them through time and to different locations to teach them about the origins of Halloween, how different cultures celebrate where the holiday come came from.

It is a very fun adventure story. Light tricks, some shadow puppetry. It’s really a good, magical time, so definitely appropriate for kids. But if you're anything like me and grew up on the story of “The Halloween Tree” by Ray Bradbury, or watched the movie when you were a kid, it definitely hits those nostalgia notes.  

I think the cast is just a ton of fun. A lot of very funny moments, a lot of really poignant, heartfelt moments. There will be trick-or-treating at some of the productions in the lobby, and there will be a place to light a candle to remember lost loved ones. So really, I think they’re really creating an environment in this space to celebrate the season.

— Kira Pontiff

Ellen Fenster-Gharib is a freelance director in the Twin Cities, and she had an opportunity to read in advance an original play that takes on mental health stigma and community pressures.

The world premiere of “Log Kya Kahenge (What will people say?)”, written by Aamera Siddiqui, is a co-production of Exposed Brick Theatre, Lyric Arts and South Asian Arts & Theatre House. (“Log Kya Kahenge” is a well-known Hindi and Urdu saying that translates to “What will people say?”)

The show runs at Lyric Arts in Anoka Oct. 18 – Nov. 3. The play is recommended for ages 16 and up and takes on themes of mental health and grief. 

Ellen says: I love Aamera’s playwriting voice and how she investigates her own history with such wit and sensitivity. The play is about a family, and specifically about some daughters who are trying to navigate their way in the U.S. with pressures put on them by their family and by their community.  

I loved what Aamera had to say about it. She said that in her particular South Asian culture, there is this sort of collective interest and investment in everyone’s personal business. And she said in her playwright’s notes [paraphrase]: Now this might be making some of you feel very uncomfortable, like, Get out of my business. Shouldn’t you live for yourself? This is what happens in collectivist cultures, cultures in which each individual is seen as being responsible for the reputation of the whole community, and it’s sort of for better and for worse.

Everybody has your best interest in mind and also has a lot of opinions about how you’re living your life and the decisions that you’re making. So everyone’s in this pressure cooker of achieving and then also you can’t display any weakness. So the play addresses the stigma around mental health issues.

 — Ellen Fenster-Gharib

Loren Niemi of Minneapolis is the founder of the American School of Storytelling. He’s heard Chris Vinsonhaler perform excerpts of her new translation of the old English epic “Beowulf: Monsters and Men,” and he’s looking forward to her bardic performance next Wednesday, Oct. 23 at 6 p.m. at the Episcopal Church of Saint John the Evangelist in St. Paul. 

Loren says: What is interesting to me about this performance is that A) it’s been a long time since there’s been a new translation that updates the language, and B) she is translating it with a slightly feminist view, so that her concerns, at least as I understand it, is that it's not “boys with swords” so much as the larger issues of politics and heredity and obligation.

So when I say heredity, I mean the who begat who, and who succeeded who, and how they arrived at power. One of the things I think I like about her performance is that she is very she is faithful to the rhythms of the material. The Beowulf text has a very rhythmic form to it.

— Loren Niemi

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the original submission.

Jeff Schmidt, owner of Lizzards Art Gallery & Framing in Duluth, recommends visiting a retrospective show for Duluth painter Oddio Nib. Nib is a prolific artist whose work includes still lifes as well as abstract and narrative paintings.

Over 100 of Nib’s paintings spanning more than 40 years of work will be in the exhibit, which opened this week at Zeitgeist’s Gallery Cafe and runs through July 30. The exhibit will expand to the Zeitgeist’s Atrium July 2–30, where some of Nib’s larger works will be hung. The paintings are for sale as well.

Amanda Helling is an improviser from Minneapolis, and she appreciates the musical improv abilities of Hannah Wydeven. Her ability to make up engaging songs on the spot is on full display in her show “Sad Songs for Happy People,” which runs Fridays in May at 9:30 p.m. at Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis.

It’s part of The Residency at the venue that pairs two 25-minute improv shows in an evening; Darth Hogbeef is the partnering act.

“Sad Songs” will also help kick off the Twin Cities Improv Festival, which runs June 5–8 at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis.

Amanda says: Hannah is an engaging musical improviser, and her show is very interactive. I'm always blown away by people who can improvise songs that sound almost preplanned, and Hannah is at the top of that game. Between the total 4th-wall break and the music that, despite being called “sad songs,” is often riotously funny.

Hannah's show is a tour de force. “Sad Songs” would be at the top of my list of suggested shows to introduce someone to long-form improvisational theater.

— Amanda Helling

Peter Bretl of Minneapolis calls himself an enthusiastic amateur storyteller, and he’s really been enjoying taking classes and attending open mic nights at the American School of Storytelling in Minneapolis.

He appreciates the coaching to help him tell stories more comfortably before a crowd, and he recommends that anyone who is interested show up at an open mic night and add their name to the list of speakers for an opportunity to tell a story of up to 10 minutes in length.

Open mic nights for storytelling are the third Monday of the month (next event: Monday, May 19 at 7 p.m.) and open mic nights for poetry are every fourth Monday (next event: Monday, May 26 at 7 p.m.)

Peter says: The venue itself is delightful. I think seating capacity is 36, so you feel almost surrounded by friends. There's an intimacy to it that I really, really like. And the crowds there are very supportive. Everyone wants you to succeed.

— Peter Bretl

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Actor Julie Ann Nevill of St Paul is looking forward to getting into the Halloween spirit when the play “Broomstick” opens Thursday at the Open Eye Theatre in Minneapolis. The one-woman play features Cheryl Willis as a witch telling the story of her long life. The show is recommended for ages 14 and up. It runs through Halloween night, with a mask-required performance Sunday. 

Julie Ann says: “It is billed as both a spooky and hilarious comedy. I am very intrigued by that. So many things around Halloween become kid-centric, and there are many of us adults, myself included, for whom this is our favorite holiday. And so we want something like this that speaks to us and not just to, you know, the small children or the family situation.” 

“The Open Eye space is so very intimate. And for a one-person show, I think that really gives you a chance to connect with the artist that you’re watching. Joel Sass is a wonderful director. Cheryl Willis is an amazing actor who is so intriguing and sucks you in and really connects with audience members.” 

— Julie Ann Nevill

Delia Bell, a potter in Lanesboro, recommends seeing the play “Doubt: A Parable” at the Commonweal Theatre. The play won a 2005 Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for Best Play. Performed by a local cast, the show explores both fact and faith, and Delia says it leaves the audience questioning. The play runs through Nov. 10. 

Delia explains: “I felt like I was thinking about it for days after. ‘Doubt’ is a story about two sisters, two nuns at a school, and a priest. They suspect that he’s done something inappropriate with one of the students. And so that’s how it stems: it’s this story of which side do you believe? And this nun is adamant about this, and the priest is adamant that he is innocent. It just creates doubt within the viewer. That’s the whole point; the story is never truly resolved.” 

As for the production, “It’s a simple set. There’s a huge window that’s very striking. And with the music, you really felt like you were in a church at times. It was just what the story needed.” 

— Delia Bell

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Theatermaker Kurt Engh saw The Moving Company’s performance of “SPEECHLESS” in 2017, and he’s thrilled the show is back again. The show opens Friday and runs through Nov. 10 at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis.

As the name implies, the play is entirely without words, but the emotions run deep. 

Kurt explains: Someone passes away in the play, and that person is ironically or symbolically named Hope. I think it’s intentionally left to be ambiguous.

The play is about five people going through grief in this very melodramatic but real way, and they find that the only way forward is to support themselves, but also support each other. The play shows how people are able to support each other when they don’t even know what to say, when they’re so upset and they’re so at a loss, truly, that they move forward through physical kindness to each other. 

The collaborators of this production have been working together for many years. They are my favorite theater company in the Twin Cities, and this was voted as a best play of the year in 2017 by the Star Tribune. There are performances on Wednesdays that are pay-as-you-are starting at $15.

— Kurt Engh

Rachel Coyne of Lindstrom is looking forward to seeing the Franconia 5 Minute Film Fest, a short film festival featuring works from Minnesota and Wisconsin artists. The top 15 judge-selected films will be screened at Franconia Sculpture Park this Saturday, Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. and at the Trylon Cinema in Minneapolis Thursday, Oct 10.

The Franconia screening is free with a suggested $10 donation. Seating on benches is limited, so Rachel recommends bringing a blanket or lawn chairs. 

Rachel adds: There’s a claymation artist, some live film, some animation. In the years in the past, when I’ve gone, you know, it’s kind of like eating like a really pungent spice. You’re just like, wow, that’s an idea, and it hits you over the head, and then before you know it, you’re onto the next film.

Given that the filmmakers are all from Minnesota and Wisconsin, Rachel adjusts her metaphor: It’s more hot dish. So there’s peas, there’s carrots, there’s tater tots and there’s probably even some mushroom soup in there.

 — Rachel Coyne

Anna Maher is a classically trained singer and actor living in the Twin Cities, and she’s glad that one of her favorite theater companies, Clevername Theatre, is remounting a fan-favorite from the 2022 Minnesota Fringe Festival.

“Connor’s gonna tell: The Tain Bo Cuailnge” is a one-person recounting of the “Táin Bó Cúailnge,” an old Irish epic tale about a cattle raid. See it at Bryant Lake Bowl & Theater in Minneapolis, Fridays, Oct. 4 and Oct. 11 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 13 at 3 p.m. 

Anna says: It’s kind of like the Irish Odyssey. It’s an epic, and it chronicles a war that was waged between two factions, and then there’s a hero. And the whole thing, the whole fight, revolves around a cow.

And so, Connor will tell the story. He uses different voices. There are some different outfits that happen. There’s a mask, there's a little bit of puppetry involved. And then he has a mandolin player who accompanies him for the entire show.” 

(Note: Anna Maher works for American Public Media Group, the parent company of MPR News.)

— Anna Maher

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Suzy Messerole, co-artistic director of Exposed Brick Theatre, is raving about the play “A Walless Church: The Black Woman’s Guide to Making God.”

The original play was written by AriDy Nox and developed at the Playwright Center, and it includes music by Queen Drea. The play runs through Oct. 13 at the Pillsbury House +Theatre. 

Suzy says: It is a beautiful combination of ritual and movement and storytelling. It is about three godlings that come back to Earth, and they are exploring how Black women experience divinity, so they are here searching for the divine. There is an incredible ritual that happens, really gorgeous movement, and there’s also three concrete storylines that you can really latch onto.

There’s all kinds of ways that this society tells Black women, explicitly and not explicitly, that they don’t deserve divinity, and this is a reclamation of the kind of faith and joy and beauty that Black women need and deserve and should have. 

The three actors drop in and out of multiple different characters, from a mom to a grandma to an auntie to a teenager and back to a godling. And the great thing about seeing a show at Pillsbury House + Theatre is that it’s an intimate setting, so you’re getting up close and personal with these powerhouse actors.

— Suzy Messerole 

Art lover Bill Adams of Erhard appreciates the arts scene around Fergus Falls. He wants people to know about a current show at the Kaddatz: “Scott Gunvaldson: Paintings, Drawings, Graphic Art,” which runs through Oct. 19. 

Bill says: Scott is a former student of [the late] Charles Beck, and like Charlie, he really captures the essence of west central Minnesota in his landscapes. Scott uses light in just an extraordinary way to bring out the heart and essence of the landscape. Scott is also just an extraordinary portrait painter.

He has several portraits in this show that I think are just amazing. When you stare at those portraits, the people really come alive. And again, he uses light in just an extraordinary way to bring life to those portraits.

— Bill Adams 

Artist and educator Marjorie Fedyszyn of Minneapolis recommends Annie Hejny’s multidisciplinary solo show about humanity's impact on Lake Superior. “Imminent Change/Rising Potential” runs through Oct. 26 at Kohlman & Reeb Gallery in the Northrup King Building in Minneapolis. 

Supported by the Kolhman & Reeb Project Space Grant, Hejny spent 24 days circumnavigating Lake Superior in 2023, during which time she took water samples that she incorporated into paints and gathered images and video. 

Marjorie describes the show: In the gallery, you will see large-scale acrylic paintings based on Superior’s vast shoreline, rusted steel wall sculptures in response to the years of taconite tailings running off into the lake, intimate watercolor works in a mesmerizing, layered video projection of water, highlighting the entanglement of personal, political and social aspects of our magnificent Lake Superior.

Humans have altered this highly revered and significant waterscape, and inevitably, more changes lay ahead as shoreline development, invasive species mining threats and water temperatures continue to increase. Annie’s care and interest in the stewardship of the environment inspired her solo journey and informed these new artworks, aligning her firsthand experience with imaginative experimentation, she reckons with the past and finds hope in the possibilities ahead.

This body of work is so surprisingly different from her former work that it feels like it’s a launching point for whatever’s coming next in her career.

— Marjorie Fedyszyn

Correction (Sept. 27, 2024): An earlier version of this story misstated the title of AriDy Nox's play. It has been corrected.

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Christine Wade of Elision Playhouse was able to see snippets of Bucket Brigade Theater’s original play “Survivors of the Fire” when it was at the Hinckley Fire Museum, and she’s looking forward to the full production at Art House North in St. Paul.

The play with music tells the stories of people who died and people who saved lives during the great Hinckley Fire of 1894, which was 130 years ago this month. The show runs Sept. 20-Oct. 12. 

Christine says:  This play tells the story of the tragedy and the people that died in the fire — anywhere from 400 to 600 people, they don’t really know for sure — and also the heroism of people who saved a lot of lives.

The show tells stories that you may have heard from the fire, but it also tells a lot of untold stories of people whose acts really didn’t get highlighted and celebrated in the way they should have at the time, including a Black porter who saved many, many lives by bringing the train back out of Hinckley with people on board.

The story is tragic, but there’s a lot of joy involved. There are multiple instrumentalists playing along. There’s singing; there's some dancing.

So it really is the whole gamut that we experience in a tragedy: we see the hope, we see the fear and the sadness and they tell it in a really all-encompassing way that leaves you ultimately hopeful, I think, at the end of the day.

— Christine Wade

Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento is chair and professor of Theater and Dance at Macalester College in St. Paul. She’s planning to take students this weekend to see “SOLO,” the performances of the McKnight Dancer Fellowships.

In this 20th anniversary event, six dancers — three fellowship recipients from 2022 and three from 2023 — will perform original solo dance pieces, choreographed by artists of their choosing. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the O'Shaughnessy, with an artist talk-back following Saturday’s performance. 

Cláudia says: One of the things that really is exciting to me is because you have six different dancers who have pieces commissioned for them by these very specific choreographers, then it’s an opportunity for the audience to see a really wide range of styles, and to also see dance as research because each one of these dancers have a particular way of connecting with dance.

If they choose a specific choreographer it’s because that other artist is going to help them with their research. 

This year, the six dancers will present solo pieces by international guest choreographers from Beirut, London, Amsterdam or affiliated with major U.S. organizations such as the José Limón Foundation. This is really a unique opportunity to view works executed by some of the strongest dancers in our community.

— Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento

Eli Hoehn of St. Peter is the executive director of the Minnesota Original Music Festival, and he’s happy to share about another event in his town: the St. Peter Art Stroll.

Local painting, sculpture, ceramics, fiber arts and more will be displayed in artist studios and local businesses. The event runs, rain or shine, this Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Find a map of artist locations in St Peter and nearby Kasota here. 

Eli says the Art Stroll is worth a visit to St. Peter, adding “I’ve been to these in years past, and it’s pretty much a full-day event.” 

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Theater artist and educator Kathy Welch of Minneapolis saw the multidisciplinary show “Legacy Dream Space” at the Owatonna Arts Center last year. She’s thrilled that the project has continued to expand and will now be on view at Modus Locus Expansion in Minneapolis.

Created by Craig Harris and Candy Kuehn in collaboration with Kym Longhi and Jim Peitzman, “Legacy Dream Space” opens Wednesday and runs through Sept. 25. 

Kathy says: This is an exhibition that evokes all of the senses. It’s an immersive and interactive exhibition that includes sound and lights and projections.

The theme is “legacy,” so the exhibition asks you to think about what sort of legacy we want to leave behind. The audience gets to interact with buttons, and they can record responses, and they can be captured on video, and all of that is incorporated into future iterations of the work.  

It was a way to think about the future with all of my senses. It does apply to your intellect, but also when you walk in there, the sounds and the colors and just the tactile [experience] — it was absolutely enlightening to me to see a way to think with your entire body, with all of your senses.

— Kathy Welch

Rebecca Damron of Lanesboro appreciates how History Alive Lanesboro looks to the past to draw connections to our present and our future. She’s looking forward to seeing their production this weekend, entitled, “Time for Women: 150 Years of Leadership.”

The original play highlights the roles of real women in southeast Minnesotan history who have worked for women’s rights and civil rights. The play also celebrates the centennial of Indigenous suffrage in 2024. The two acts span 1870 to 1970.

The show wraps up its tour, which has included Red Wing, St. Paul and historic Forestville, back in Lanesboro this weekend, with performances Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. at the St. Mane Theatre. Tickets are free for people under 18. 

Rebecca adds: Something really fun that will happen is that History Alive Lanesboro will invite the audience to take part in a suffrage rally during the intermission of the show, and then the show will end with a discussion that’s led by the League of Women Voters.

I’d really love for people to come see it, because women’s issues are still at the forefront, especially in this political year.

— Rebecca Damron

Doris Rubenstein of Richfield is the arts reporter for the American Jewish World newspaper. She recommends seeing the new show of equine portrait artist Nanci Fulmek. 

The opening date for the show is currently being revisited, but check with the ArtBarn52 Gallery for updates.

Doris tells it best: The State Fair is over, and since I fractured my ankle, I wasn’t able to go to my favorite place, the horse barns. The little girl who loved horses desperately still lives on inside me, and I need a horse fix badly as soon as possible. Looks like I’m going to get it, though.

Oil painter and instructor at the Atelier Studio Program of Fine Arts Nanci Fulmek will be exhibiting her fantastic portraits of beautiful horses, amongst other subjects, both serious and whimsical.

Please refrain from trying to feed the horses any carrots or sugar lumps. The paintings are so lifelike that you’ll be tempted! 

Nanci shares that same girlish adoration of horses of all breeds as me, and she went on to paint amazingly life-like portraits of horses. You can almost feel the breath escaping from those flaring equine nostrils, and you'll have to control yourself to keep from patting one of those velvety noise noses.

— Doris Rubenstein

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Maria Ghassemlou of Minneapolis is a longtime Minnesota Fringe house manager, and that’s where she saw the play “Moonwatchers” in 2022.

The two-person show won the Best in Venue and Underdog awards that year. Now, she’s delighted to share that the show is back at Open Eye Theatre in Minneapolis. The show is created and performed by Corey Farrell and Nigel Berkeley, who attended the University of Minnesota / Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training program together. The show opens tonight and runs through Sept 22.  

Maria says: “Moonwatchers” is a show where there's two office workers, and their job just happens to be watching the moon and making sure that things happen on time — just a normal office job — but something goes awry when somebody steals the moon. Now they have to go on an adventure to go find it.

This is a two-person show where they play multiple characters. There’s Space Cowboys, there’s aliens, cows, space Jane Austin and space grass. It’s just a lot of silly and fun.

— Maria Ghassemlou

Phil Schwarz of Minneapolis volunteers at Extreme Noise Records, and he wants people to know about Cloudland Theater, a 150-seat music venue on East Lake Street that celebrates its first anniversary this fall.

He describes Cloudland as filling a need for a small venue for DIY musicians (read: artist book gigs themselves) outside of a traditional bar setting. 

Phil says: There’s not a lot of smaller venues in town. And when venues came back [after pandemic closures], there was an explosion of new bands and stuff, and a lot of these venues were a lot harder to book shows in, so Cloudland came along at a perfect time. The shows are very intimate: you can converse with the musicians and stuff like that, and it’s very kind of communal.  

I’m super excited for Feast of Lanterns, which features Alan Sparhawk of the band Low and also Pete Biasi, who used to be in a great post-punk band from here called Signal to Trust. It’s kind of different than what Alan’s done with Low: I would say noise punk and more abrasive. They will be playing Saturday, September 21 at Cloudland.

— Phil Schwarz

Gabi Marmet is a senior at The Blake School in Minneapolis, where she works on the student journal, Spectrum. She had a chance to interview Blake alum Thea Traff, who has photographed portraits of President Joe Biden, the Rolling Stones, Rachel Weisz, Sofia Coppola and Jessica Chastain, among a host of other entertainers and newsmakers, for such publications as The New Yorker and New York Times Magazines.

A selection of her mostly black and white photography is on display at the Bennett Gallery at the Blake School, open to the public through early October. 

Gabi was struck by how Thea got her start as a Blake student taking photographs, and how her current schedule means sometimes she’ll get a call and have 48 hours to show up and photograph a subject.  

Gabi says: They’re all very different styles, depending on the person. The Rolling Stones looked like they were having such a fun time in their photo shoot; they were just like laughing or like smiling really big.

(Most impressive photography subject, in Gabi’s opinion? Actor and singer Ben Platt — Gabi’s a fan.) 

— Gabi Marmet

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Nanci Oleson describes herself as a visual artist, Montessori teacher and musician. She recommends the play “Five More Minutes” from Sod House Theater, which is currently on a tour of western Minnesota.

This moving play about an elderly couple facing dementia will be at the YES! House in Granite Falls Thursday, the Little Theater Auditorium in New London Friday and at the Madison Mercantile in Madison, Minn., on Saturday night. Social worker Adenike Ade provides a post-show talk-back about Alzheimer’s and dementia.  

Nanci says that show creators and performers Luverne Seifert and Joy Dolo are two of her favorite performers in the Twin Cities: You are watching an old couple who is playing” they’re imagining adventures under the sea, into space … this is a way that they escape from their sort of mundane older lives.

But as the show goes on, we see that one of them is starting to lose memory, starting to move into dementia, and the fear that accompanies this from both of them and the poignant way that they tell this story, the ups and the downs, [makes this play] just this really incredible, important piece.  

It provides everything I love, very good acting, amazing, delightful use of props and space, just gorgeous symphony between the two of them, as well as an educational experience and familiar experience of confronting dementia.

— Nanci Oleson

Singer and artist Sarah Lynn of Brooklyn Park admires the work of Rimon, the Minnesota Jewish Arts Council. She wants people to know about Rimon’s “Gallery of Dreams” Thursday night.

It’s the organization’s annual fundraiser and an immersive art experience, featuring five local visual artists. The event is at 6:30 p.m. at the Machine Shop in Minneapolis. 

Sarah says: Every single one [of these immersive fundraisers] that they’ve had has been incredible, and it will help support the broader arts community and start building some bridges of understanding.

 — Sarah Lynn

Elizabeth Millard is delighted to have the 210 Gallery & Art Center in her town of Sandstone located north of Hinckley. 

She recommends the current show “Deja Vu,” which features the work of two local artists, Jodie Briggs and TJ Rajala, who have created paintings in response to each other’s work. That show runs through Oct. 20. 

Elizabeth says: The gallery is just delightful. It’s in a former church, and it does have a kind of community-church kind of feel to it. They’ve brought a lot of cultural resources there: they have different types of shows, music and events.  

I’ve lived up here in the Northwoods for about 10 years and it’s very challenging to find a lot of kind of passionate, cultural, artistic community-oriented resources and I think that this is really leading the way in terms of showing people that it can be done up here.

— Elizabeth Millard 

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Musician and cultural organizer Sarah Larsson wants people to know about singer-songwriter Carlisle Evans Peck’s show “Iconoclasm,” which is touring in western Minnesota.

She describes the show as part cabaret, part ritual, where the audience travels back in time to re-imagine stories from Carlisle’s family through a queer and often trans lens.

The show, originally developed as a Cedar Commission, will be at the YES! House in Granite Falls on Thursday at the Little Theater Auditorium in New London on Friday, and at the Madison Mercantile in Madison (the one in Minnesota) on Saturday.  

Sarah says: So many of these stories are dramatic and amazing to begin with. Like, there’s a story of a great-grandfather who actually was hit by a train. But coming out of these kind of fantastic true stories, Carlisle is exploring, you know, in those times and places, maybe people’s queerness wouldn’t have been able to come out or be public in the same kind of way.

So what if there were some of these queer identities among these people, and they were just waiting to be told. Or maybe not! Maybe for these individuals, that’s not the way they would describe themselves. But there’s power in telling those stories and in seeing ourselves in these people from the past. 

It’s an all-musical production with an amazing five-piece band and two backup singers, and then Carlisle embodies each of these characters, kind of like a series of sung monologues. Carlisle is this amazing, amazing, totally stunning performer carrying on the music throughout the entire piece.

— Sarah Larsson

Folk musician Emily Wright recently traveled to Montevideo for an evening of poetry and music, and she’s thrilled that these western Minnesota artists are bringing their work to the MetroNOME Brewery in St. Paul, Saturday at 7 p.m.

Brendan Stermer will read from his new book of poetry “Forgotten Frequencies” with musical accompaniment by his brother Andy Stermer and their friend Malena Handeen. (Sidenote: Andy and Brendan also produce the “Interesting People Reading Poetry” podcast.) 

Emily says: Andy’s poems and their music are wide open and make me think about the prairie. They remind me of Montevideo, where they are all from.

Brendan’s book of poetry has this amazing section in it where he took the writings from the Journal of an explorer whose last name was Nicolet and turned them into poetry.

I think my favorite poem is this one called “Forgotten Frequencies,” which is the title of his of his book, and it’s talking about how the muse of poetry and the muse of art is there, you just have to turn your dial just a little bit to hear her voice.

— Emily Wright

Minneapolis puppeteer David Hanzal is looking forward to attending the Minneapolis Puppetry Palate: a Taste of Puppetry,” which is this year’s Midwest regional puppetry festival.

The four-day event promises to be a smorgasbord of puppetry performances and events. More than a dozen workshops held at St. Paul’s Church in Minneapolis encompass the craft and business of puppeteering and how to incorporate puppetry into classrooms and therapy settings.

The festival runs Thursday through Sunday at several Minneapolis venues. You can purchase passes for the whole festival, individual performances or for Saturday only.  

David says: Something that’s really exciting for me as a puppeteer is being able to see, you know, such a diverse array of performances from all across the region, and also artists from other parts of the country. [I enjoy] that really saturated three- or four-day window where you just get to see lots of different kinds of puppetry.

There’s a mix of puppet performances for the family as well as adult-only audiences. There’s a puppet slam. There’s a puppetry panel on education and therapy. There’s also the puppet flea market.

And there’s the community puppet build and performance workshop, which is immediately followed by the puppet parade in Stewart Park on Saturday, Aug. 17.

— David Hanzal

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Kate Saumur of White Bear Township is a freelance bassoonist, and she recommends seeing the Neoteric Chamber Winds Saturday, Aug. 10 at 7 p.m. at Roseville Lutheran Church in Roseville.

Kate says it’s a wonderful opportunity to see very contemporary, push-the-envelope compositions for winds. 

Kate offers this background: They started as an offshoot of a really wonderful group called Grand Symphonic Winds, which is an adult concert band. I would say it’s the best in the Twin Cities area.

They don’t have a summer season, so the folks who are involved in that group decided that they wanted to do something in the summer. And that’s how Neoteric Chamber Winds got started. It’s self-directed, self-run.

They specialize in contemporary music. I would say for sure everything from the 20th century on. And in fact, they really do focus intentionally on 21st-century music.

— Kate Saumur

Tina Burnside is the co-founder and curator of the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery in Minneapolis. She recommends seeing the art exhibition “Blak Grit,” opening at the Northrup King Building’s 3rd Floor Gallery in Minneapolis on Friday.

Tina says: They’ll be showing about 35 pieces in the exhibit, and the art ranges from abstract realism, Afro-futurism, sculptures and projection design.

And it’s a really powerful show because it shows a range of emotions reflected in these pieces, from love, violence, pain, heartache, beauty, joy and determination.

What I really like about this exhibit is that all of the artists are Black men, and I think that that’s really important, because in society and in the United States, men, in general and particularly Black men, are not allowed to show emotion.

So, this exhibit is a collective of Black men coming together to take space and to have the courage to express themselves and to show their emotions, show a range of emotions, and show their humanity.

— Tina Burnside

Art lover Lanny Hoff of Minneapolis is looking forward to A Tom Waits Revelry this Saturday. Hoff says he’s seen various versions of this performance, in which St. Paul artist Jake Endres embodies the spirit of musician Tom Waits.

This Saturday, Endres will be joined by a full band when he takes the Belvedere Stage at Crooners in Minneapolis. The show starts at 8 p.m., with dinner and cocktail seating 90 minutes before showtime. 

Tom Waits began his career as a mellow crooner, Lanny says, and his work evolved to include such off-the-beaten-path instruments as circular saws and car horns. "His songs range from, you know, crazy sort of demonic sounding celebrations to deeply heartfelt lyrics that will rip your heart out. It's beautiful music that rewards a lot of re-listening.”

Lanny says: Jake takes a deep dive into Tom Waits: his catalog from beginning to end. He uncovers a lot of gems we haven’t heard before, and he fully inhabits the spirit of Tom Waits.

It’s not a tribute band. He’s doing his own take on it, but it’s the spirit of the performance. And the show has an arc to it that is beautiful: it’s up and it’s down, it’s raucous. It’s a gospel meeting.

It’s also a therapy session. It’s a high-energy, high emotion, fantastically professionally done show that I have enjoyed greatly every time I’ve seen it.

— Lanny Hoff

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Ann Treacy of St. Paul has a radio show with Macalester College called “Mostly Minnesota Music.” Recently, took a drive with a friend to Detroit Lakes to see the new troll installation.

Created by Danish artist Thomas Dambo, these five enormous, playful trolls created from recycled materials are hidden in and around Detroit Lakes. Local Project 412 offers several map options to start you on the scavenger hunt, which begins with Alexa’s Elixir in accessible Detroit Lakes City Park.  

Ann says seeing the trolls was worth the day trip: The trolls are amazing. When I say they’re giant, they run between 15 and 20 feet tall. Although there is one, Long Lief, who is 36 feet tall!

I had childlike expectations of the trolls, and they were far exceeded. There’s a scavenger hunt that helps you find them, and each troll will have little tasks that you can do.

If I still had small children, we would have done each task, but as an adult, I felt less need to. There’s a clue that each troll has that will help you find the golden rabbit.

What we ended up doing was driving about 20 minutes to each location. And then it’s about a 30-minute walk there and back. Not all the trolls are accessible to all: some are stroller-friendly, some are not. It was a good four-and-a-half-hour day for us.

— Ann Traecy

Christian Novak of Minneapolis recently visited the Public Functionary Upstairs Gallery in the Northrup King Building in Minneapolis, where he saw BearBOI’s photography exhibit. Titled "Blackness in Transit (BGBM)," the portrait series focuses on two Black trans individuals.

The show runs through Aug. 17, with an event Aug. 8 at 7 p.m. that features BearBOI and Word M. Musinguzi in conversation. The gallery is open Wednesdays through Saturdays 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. 

Christian says: What I love about [this exhibit] is that it really challenges expectations, to think about what it means to be a man or a woman, and how these individuals have to navigate a society that really focuses on this binary idea of gender. And then on top of it, what it means to be Black.

Walking out of this exhibit, it reminded me that I need to understand my own expectations and I need to understand my own assumptions.

— Christian Novak

Derek Johnson is a bluegrass/folk musician who performs with Monroe Crossing and Gentleman Dreadnought and as a solo artist. He wants people to know about the Minnesota Bluegrass August Festival, a multi-day campout music festival that’s happening next weekend, Aug. 8-11 at El Rancho Mañana in Richmond, southwest of St. Cloud.  

Derek describes the scene: El Rancho Mañana is kind of a dude ranch and a camping ground, and they have one of the finest outdoor amphitheaters in the state because it’s in a shaded, wooded area. 

There will be a whole host of bluegrass entertainers and old-time music from local bands to national acts performing on multiple stages throughout the weekend.

It’s a very family-friendly event. People camp out and listen to music all day and into the evening. And not only that, they gathered around the campfires after the live shows on the stage and they pick all night long.

There’s also a dance tent, so there’s going to be a lot of square dancing and a lot of line dancing throughout the weekend.

— Derek Johnson 

A Bluegrass Jam Camp and Old Time Jam Camps run Aug. 6-8 before the start of the festival. 

Correction (Aug. 1, 2024): An earlier version of this article misspelled Ann Treacy. The post has been updated.

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Sabrin Nur is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Minneapolis, and they are excited to see “Dhaxal-suge: the Somali Museum Dance Troupe Showcase.” The Somali Museum has maintained a youth dance troupe since its inception, teaching young people the widely varying folk dances from across Somalia.

This will be the first performance by the museum’s dance group residency program. There are two upcoming performances: at the Paramount Center for the Arts in St. Cloud, Tuesday, May 13, at 6 p.m., and at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis next Sunday, May 18, at 7:30 p.m.

Sabrin reflects on the themes of the show: The storyline is “when a beloved leader falls, who carries the crown?” and I think the question they're asking is a big question for Gen Z and also the Somali millennials who have grown up in the wake of the war, right? I'm 25 years old. For people like me, we've never known a peaceful Somalia.

We've had a lot of our elders looking down to us and being like, “This is your history. This is what we used to be like. Now, what are you gonna do?” They've put a lot of responsibility on our shoulders, and a lot of us are ready to take it on, but it's like, what kind of future do we envision for ourselves? How do we carry that responsibility? How do we wear that crown?

— Sabrin Nur

Peggy Korsmo-Kennon of Eagan, a former museum and arts administrator, recommends that people see “Building/Books | Karen Wirth: A Retrospective Exhibition” at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts Main Gallery in Minneapolis.

The exhibition spans 40 years of Wirth’s work, and the pieces spread through the space include architecture, photography, sculpture, books, and the spaces where these disciplines meet. The exhibition is on view through June 8.

The exhibition also marks the 25th anniversary of the Open Book Building and the 40th anniversary of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

Peggy says: Karen has an extraordinary ability to think spatially and structurally, creating work with both conceptual depth and visually engaging images. Her projects range from small handheld artist books to major public artworks. Her art is playful, both thought-provoking, blends clever wordplay with striking visuals.

You'll see this in her handwritten text that spirals through the Gale See staircase and in the whimsical assemblages of the Grammar of Architecture. Upstairs there are more works: my favorite are her “Follies.” She takes books and found architectural objects and put them together in a really interesting way.

— Peggy Korsmo-Kennon

Gabriel Brito of Minneapolis is a graduating senior at the University of Minnesota and an Arts and Entertainment reporter for the Minnesota Daily.

He wants people to know about “No More Turning Away,” a photography exhibit about homelessness in the Twin Cities by photographer David Fallon. The exhibit is on view at the Kenwood Burroughs Gallery in Minneapolis through May 31.

This exhibit is a fundraiser for People Incorporated, a nonprofit mental health provider that also serves people experiencing homelessness.

Gabriel says: [David] spent months in the Twin Cities, photographing homelessness in a very raw, real, captivating way. His photographs are raw, unflinching depictions of life on the street meant to challenge our society's tendency to look away from homelessness.

— Gabriel Brito

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above.  

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Stephanie Lynn Rogers is the executive and artistic director of Anderson Center at Tower View in Red Wing, and a visual artist in her own right. Amid preparations for this weekend’s Red Wing Studio Tour, she pointed listeners to Winona to see Judy Ofronio’s exhibition “Deep Dive” at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum.  

Stephanie says: It’s an absolute must-see. Judy has had a phenomenal impact on Minnesota’s arts community over the past 50 years, and she’s one of the artists I respect most in our state.

She’s reinvented and reinvigorated her artistic style multiple times over a storied career, which takes guts and vision. This exhibition is not a retrospective, but it is definitely a very broad survey of the last two decades, going from colorful mosaic works from the early 2000s, through works that Judy made out of bones and bone castings that were more monochromatic in the 2010’s.

And in the last two years, her work has exploded back into this colorful three-dimensional collage that is one of her most known styles. 

I’m also really excited about the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in general. They’ve been through a leadership and programming transition in the past few years, and they’re really hitting their stride with top notch exhibitions. I also think they do family-friendly museum experiences better than any other museum I’ve seen that isn’t focused just on kids. 

For me, the expansion of their rotating exhibition program has changed MMAM from “must see when in Winona” to “Must plan to visit Winona so I make sure I see these shows.”

 — Stephanie Lynn Rogers

Visual artist Pete Driessen of Minneapolis recently traveled north to Park Rapids to see the new exhibits at the Nemeth Art Center, which he recommends.

The two solo shows each take a look at the natural world. Wayne Gudmundson’s exhibit “What Stillness Has to Offer” encompasses large-scale photographic prints that zoom in close on forest scenes. Gudmundson is a retired art professor from Moorhead State University. Madeleine Bialke’s exhibit “The Long View” consists of landscape paintings. Both exhibits run through Sept. 28. 

Pete says of Madeleine Bialke’s work: The vibrant acrylic works, recently created during her residency at the Nemeth, are highly energetic and expressive works, with brilliant use of color.

Her works have a unique idiosyncratic style, visually embracing the natural beauty within the gentle shapeshifting that occurs in our local ecosystems and environments.

Of particular interest to me as a viewer is how Madeleine captures the transitional glowing light qualities of sunrises, sunsets, moonscapes and how that light filters through flower petals, long grasses, tree leaves, or branches in a dense forest.

Whether it’s a becoming pinecone, wiggly birch or pine branch, the tipped Big Dipper, or night lights in cottage windows on side of lake, the body of work electrifies our innate and subtle connections with rural bucolic countryside.

— Pete Driessen

Theater artist Stephanie Kahle saw Jackdonkey Productions’ staging of “The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged)” when it was at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis, and she thought it was hilarious.

The show now heads to Stillwater, presented by the Zephyr Theater, July 25-27. The performance is at the Washington County Historic Courthouse at 7 p.m. 

Billed as London’s longest-running comedy, the high-energy show features three actors attempting to squash all of Shakespeare’s works into two hours. 

Stephanie says: It is so fun. It has three really talented actors who are very smart in their playfulness and very committed to the silliness of the show, and is just a treat to see new and young artists taking new approaches to the classic arts.

And I think that Zach Christensen, the director, has also given a lot of freedom to modernize and make it local and fresh, so not only is it really fun as a script, but I think their interpretation is also really fun.  

Not only is it completely local talent who are amazing actors, but they take a lot of of modern social media trends. For example, they have an entire bit featuring chamoy pickles [referencing a TikTok trend.]

— Stephanie Kahle

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above.  

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Food writer Amy Thielen of Park Rapids recommends a gallery space in Detroit Lakes with a show that opens Thursday for the peak summer season.

The gallery, run by ceramicist Ellen Moses, is called Art Project 605. Visitors can see the abstract landscape paintings and drawings of Jennie Ward of Lake Park. Entitled “Love Song in the Chaos,” the show will be up through Aug. 2.  

Thielen offers this background: Ellen moved back from New York City during the COVID time. I feel like we gained in the North Country — we gained a lot of very cool people who moved back up north, where they are now working remotely. She and her wife Lori O’Dea bought a storefront.

In the back, it’s Ellen’s studio: She makes plates, cups and 3D sculptures. In the front space of the storefront there’s a gallery, and [Thursday night] a show opens by Jennie Ward, an artist who lives a little bit further west in Lake Park.

Jennie’s paintings are really interesting. They’re very beautiful. They’re abstract expressionist landscapes. The colors are big, swaths of thick paint; she’s a great colorist. I’m very excited for this work. I think everybody in town will love it.  

It’s a beautifully renovated storefront: a beautiful, clean, minimalist working space. It reminds me of a corner in a bigger city, like New York or Chicago.

— Amy Thielen

Padma Wudali is an amateur musician who plays the veena, a South Indian classical carnatic instrument. She loves the band Maithree, whose work combines Indian and Western classical music styles and instruments.

Maithree will be performing this Saturday, July 13 at 6:30 p.m. at the Hindu Society of Minnesota’s campus in Maple Grove. The concert is a fundraiser for a new Cultural, Arts and Heritage Center.

Padma says: Maithree is a band of Minnesotans who collaborate with classical music, both Western and Indian. So it to me it’s not about them diluting any of their art forms, but rather stepping into each other spaces to create amazing music. The music that we will get to hear is Indian, classical Irish, Turkish melodies all seamlessly blended together and various compositions.

Shruthi Rajesekar is the youngest member, and I’m super excited to see her work be represented by this group. She is a Western classical music composer who very much grew up in Plymouth and how her work is just being admired by so many people in the United States and abroad.

— Padma Wudali

Amanda H. Malkin runs the PaperLoves Conservation in St. Peter, where she’s involved in the local arts scene. She’s looking forward to the 2024 Minnesota Original Music Festival, which starts next Wednesday, July 17 and culminates in two days of live, local music on July 20 and 21 at MN Square Park in St. Peter. 

Amanda describes the events leading up to next weekend: There are workshops and jam sessions. There’s also this really awesome event called the 48-Hour Band Challenge. They basically invite musicians who are interested to put their names in a hat.

New bands are formed by picking names out of the hat, and then those new bands have 48 hours to write a song together and then perform it. It’s a way for musicians to find each other, workshop together, learn, practice, vibe!

— Amanda H. Malkin

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above.  

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Rachel Coyne of Lindstrom is looking forward to heading to nearby Franconia Sculpture Park on July 27 to see Shakespeare in the park.

Classical Actors Ensemble will perform Shakespeare’s mistaken-identity comedy “Twelfth Night, or What You Will,” The show is free. Picnics are encouraged, as are patrons of all ages. 

This week’s performances include Friday at Newell Park in St. Paul, Saturday at Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis and Sunday at Vermillion Falls Park in Hastings. All shows start at 7 p.m. and run for two hours. “Twelfth Night” runs at various Twin Cities parks through July 14.  

The Franconia Sculpture Park is a particularly special location, Rachel says, because the actors move around the sculpture park and incorporate some of the art into their performance.

She still remembers the group’s performance of “The Tempest” last year, which staged the show’s happy ending with Franconia’s giant ring sculpture in the background, forming a literal full circle for the story.

She looks forward to seeing which sculptures the performers play around — and on — this year. 

Pro tip from Rachel: Bring a picnic, and don’t forget your bug spray. 

— Rachel Coyne

Claudia V. Garcia, who describes herself as a “paralegal by day, actor/singer/artist by soul,” loved Teatro del Pueblo’s adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” entitled “Love in a Time of Hate.”

Developed in association with the Bach Society of Minnesota, the show’s run continues tonight through June 30 at Luminary Arts Center in Minneapolis.  

Claudia says: I laughed, cheered, got butterflies cried and was very proud, mucho orgullo, to see our raza represented in such a beautiful production. 

The cast is excellent, represented by a plethora of talented local Latinx artists and people of color in the Twin Cities.

You hear hip hop, spoken word, little bit of bilingual Spanglish. A lot of connections to modernity. And that really resonated with younger crowds, bringing “Romeo and Juliet” into the now.

— Claudia V. Garcia 

Minneapolis musician Crystal Brinkman wants people to know about “The Seeker,” a self-led audio story with original music designed for Sugarloaf Cove in Schroeder on the North Shore.

Created and voiced by Diver Van Avery, “The Seeker” is a 45-minute story that unfolds along an easy, one-mile hiking trail. The story is available through October. 

Avery has been very connected to that specific location in their own life and got the opportunity to research and be at that site over many months, creating an immersive story experience to connect with the land. 

There are two upcoming events this summer. On July 27, there will be a free, family-friendly community concert featuring the musicians Crystal Myslajek and Peter Morrow, who contributed to “The Seeker” soundtrack. The concert is 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. 

On Aug. 18, Diver will conduct a free creative writing workshop at the Sugarloaf Cove Nature Center. Registration required.  

“The Seeker” is available through October. 

Crystal says: This story really brings you through Diver’s very gorgeous and poetic words through the headphones that you are wearing — which can either be your own or Sugarloaf Cove Visitor Center does have headphones to borrow. Their voice is leading you through spaces and places that very much have to do with where you are but then also is grounded in themes of love and connection. And it's all supported by this gorgeous original music.

— Crystal Brinkman

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above.   

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Minneapolis playwright Liqing Xu is looking forward to seeing the play “Only Ugly Guys” at Open Eye Theatre in Minneapolis. Written by local playwright Kurt Engh, the play coincides nicely with Twin Cities Pride this weekend. The show runs June 21 – 30 and is recommended for ages 17 and up. 

“I think so often a lot of queer media these days have to do with coming-out stories. But I think in Kurt's play ‘Only Ugly Guys,’ what’s really nice is that these characters are queer, but they’re just trying to look for love like everyone else in the world.  

“The play is about four queer men who are sort of entangled in these relationships with the with each other and are trying to find like love or romance or affection, but they’re doing it in all the wrong ways. And the play is sort of looking also at the way that technology nowadays allows us to find anything that we want, but we’re not really able to hold on to  important or genuine connections because there’s just so many options. 

“I think it’s an excellent choice for people who are celebrating Pride because it’s a really interesting, thought-provoking, raw, sexy play that will definitely get people talking and having conversations about intimacy and privilege.” 

• Liqing Xu 

Comedian and improviser Jex Arzayus of St. Paul is a big fan of the improv group Babe Train, and they recommend checking out Babe Train Presents: B24 Improvised Films. The final shows are Friday June 21 and 28 at 7:30 at the HUGE Improv Theater’s’ relatively new location at 2728 Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis  

“It’s a parody of the very artsy surreal films of A24 Production House. The audience gets to choose what they want, and what adventure they want. They’re gonna take a name of a movie and a word of inspiration, and then Babe Train — which is made up of Hannah, Laura, KQ, Nora and Shelby — they are going to play all of the characters, all of the scenes, and give you a narrative long-form improvised version. You can get horror; you could get a coming-of-age story; you can get a story about time travel! Every show is different.

“And then after the movie, they’re gonna have an actual art talkback where people can ask questions, just like if you were going to be in a film festival. There’s a different improv guest-interviewer each time.” 

• Jex Arzayus 

Eileen Moeller, director of the Frozen River Film Festival in Winona, is looking forward to attending an outdoor dance collaboration by two dancers as part of the McKnight International Choreographer Residency. The performances were co-created by local artist Sharon Mansur and visiting choreographer Meryl Zaytoun Murman. The free performances take place Tuesday, June 25 and Wednesday, June 26 at sunset at the Prairie Island Campground, located along the banks of the Mississippi River near Winona.  

“I think there’s something really spectacular about seeing a performance that has to do with a specific piece of nature and being in the nature at the time. These performances are going to be especially related to the river: the way it is right now, and the way that the artists relate with water. Meryl is typically based in Greece, and so a lot of her relationship with water had to do with the Mediterranean. Whereas Sharon is here, and so a lot of that has to do with the Mississippi River.

Sharon is a very active community members. She’s a very talented dancer and interdisciplinary artist and we have worked together on film related projects. Sharon’s pieces always feel really relatable. A lot of Sharon’s work is really grounded in community and accessibility. These performances are free.” 

• Eileen Moeller 

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above.  

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Laurie Byrne of Chatfield is looking forward to the opening artist talk and hike on Lost Creek Hiking Trail this Saturday. Fiber artist Lydia Hansen will discuss and lead people on a hike to see her life-sized crocheted models of native mushrooms tucked along the trail.

Lost Creek Hiking Trail is located 25 minutes south of Rochester. 

Laurie says: As a teen, Lydia started crocheting, and she has grown her crocheting into these very unique pieces of art. Last year, she made a sculpture garden — all out of fiber, crocheting and making those little pom poms. It was a lot of fun!

And this year, she’s doing mushrooms and she’s adding it to a hiking trail in Chatfield. They are very lifelike. She’s done her research. These are all mushrooms that are from Minnesota. She has signage up identifying these mushrooms. Just a very cool idea. 

The trail is just over six miles. And it goes through public and private lands. It’s a beautiful hiking trail, mostly through the woods.

— Laurie Byrne

Duluth musician Zack Baltich recommends Duluth-stämman, a gathering that includes Nordic folk music, dance and workshops. The event runs this weekend, June 8 and 9.

Friday’s events will be held at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and Saturday’s events are outside at Chester Bowl, with UMD as a rain contingency location. Saturday admission is free to youth 17 and under who bring an instrument, and non-performing youth get in for $5. 

Zack says: So much music is about an audience witnessing musicians play. What is interesting to me about this event is that it kind of removes that wall. A lot of these events are workshops where people can play. People are invited to dance — it’s a very community-oriented thing.  

It’s kind of mind-boggling if you go on their website. Like, 150 musicians are coming from all over North America to play. It’s a very accessible event. Tickets go from $5 to $35, depending on how much of it you want to see.

— Zack Baltich

Twin Cities theater maker Kurt Engh recommends the play “Devoured: Notes on Love and Enmeshment,” which explores codependency through three queer, intimate relationships.

Written by local playwright Liqing Xu, the show includes depictions of mental health issues and sexual situations. The 60-minute show runs this Friday, June 7, through Sunday, June 9, at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis.  

Kurt says: “Devoured” breaks down these three relationships whereby two people co-create this unhealthy dynamic. One starts to relate to these characters only to feel uncomfortable. When you realize how much you relate to this by the end of the play. It’s kind of scary.

The playwright’s writing unpacks these therapy buzzwords — codependency, trauma, triggering — and places them out to this granular level as people try to communicate with one another. How do you prove to someone you love them? How quickly does care turn to harm? And who’s right and who’s wrong in a relationship? 

I keep telling people that if you are in a relationship or you’re looking to be in a relationship, you should see the show. 

No spoilers (but) it’s not a super happy ending, but at least I think the characters start to realize their own patterns, especially by speaking about it and by recognizing their behavior. Then they can start moving forward with hopefully something that’s healthier and in the next iteration.  

I’m obsessed with the show “Couples Therapy” on Showtime, in which this psychologist — her name is Orna [Guralnik]. She’s iconic — she breaks down the psychology of how people have gotten to these really weird relationship dynamics where you’re going, “Why aren’t these people just breaking up?” And I think there’s this direct line between this play and “Couples Therapy,” where we’re seeing how people get enmeshed in these relationships.

— Kurt Engh 

On Art Hounds this week: 1) BALLS Cabaret is back every Sunday at 2 at Strike Theater! 2) the Minnesota Bach’s Society’s Mini Mobile Concerts in St Cloud and 3) Choir! Choir! Choir! teaches the audience to sing Prince, in harmony, at First Ave on June 1. 

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here. 

Denise Tennan of St. Louis Park is a musician, writer, visual artist and dancer. She recently saw the play “Flex” at Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, and now she’s singing from the rooftops to encourage others to see this in its final weekend. Shows are tonight (Thursday) and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. 

Denise says: I think it’s worth everyone’s time to go see this production. The show takes place in rural Arkansas. It’s about a girl’s high school basketball team and their coach. They’re practicing drills and shooting baskets right there on stage.

The play touches on themes of poverty, sexual abuse, sexual identity, religion and racism. But at its heart, the play explores a tension between the needs of a team and the needs of individual players.

I’ve never seen anything that addresses that specific tension before. And as the coach repeatedly tells them, they are only as strong as their weakest link.  

I was astonished. They are so good.  

There are no weak links in this cast of six. Renowned Twin Cities actress Regina Marie Williams shines as the kick-ass coach to five young women.

The versatility of these young actresses is remarkable. They can move, they can act and they can sing. I was astonished. They are so good.  

The set design is brilliantly minimalist, and it supports every scene with subtle changes to clearly indicate a new location. The relationship between team members is rich and it’s varied.

The depth of relationship the coach has with each of these girls is exactly what you’d want in a coach and it extends beyond the game.

And it reminds me of the vitally important role a coach can play in a young person’s life, even more so, because she has her own flaws and she’s able to admit them. What I took away from this performance is the importance of knowing each other and being deeply known.

— Denise Tennan

Troy Lanoux of St. Louis Park is a big fan of local music. He’ll be in the audience for the show Mama Hellcats at The Hook and Ladder in Minneapolis. Six singer/songwriters who are also mothers take the stage.

They are Nikki Lemire, Kashimana, Katy Tessman and the Turnbuckles, Annie and the Bang Bang, Samantha Grimes Band and Haley E Rydel. Hosted by Ann Treacy of Mostly Minnesota Music, the evening of music also includes resources from local organizations that provide support for survivors of domestic violence. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. 

Troy says: I’ve been a longtime fan of Katy Tessman and her band The Turnbuckles, and I’ve gotten to know many of these artists that she works with.

It’s a fantastic group of singer-songwriters, and they all support and uplift one another.

True to the theme of motherhood, Troy points out that Katy’s band includes her son, Louis Tessman Stanoch, who rocks on electric bass. 

— Troy Lanoux

Allyson Palmer is co-owner of Thesis Beer Project, which is a craft brewery and music venue in Rochester. She’s looking forward to the Divine Disco, a burlesque event produced by Out Rochester and Burly Bluffs, Saturday evening at the Chateau Theatre in Rochester. Doors open at 7 p.m. for this age 18+ event. 

Allyson says: This will be the perfect night out after attending the Rochester Pride, which is also happening on Saturday.

It’s a community-focused, body-positive queer-centered event that will feature eclectic performances including burlesque, drag and live music, featuring performers from across the country, as well as local performers.

I’ve been fortunate to attend several prior Burley Bluffs performances in Rochester and always find them to be entertaining, energizing and full of glitz and glam.

The producers create safe and inclusive spaces and most importantly know how to have fun. It’ll be the biggest event that Burly Bluffs has thrown in their history.

— Allyson Palmer

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above.

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Alanna Morris is a professional dancer-choreographer in St. Paul. She saw Minnesota Dance Theatre’s spring production, and she wants everyone to know about the Ensemble’s final weekend. Shows are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at The Southern Theater in Minneapolis. 

Alanna says: Minnesota Dance Theatre are a legacy intuition. Going back to its founder, Loyce Houlton, who in 1962 made innovative contributions to the performance of classical ballet and the Graham technique, which still sets the company’s dancers apart today, not only locally but nationally.

The company has undergone a lot of administrative changes in recent years, and yet the love of dance and performance is still so strong. They are presenting three world premieres.

They are actually closing their doors and celebrating this legacy this weekend.

They’ve had such a rich history of performance for decades, then carried through by Houlton’s daughter, Lise, and now directed by Elayna Waxse, who is the interim artistic director.

They are actually closing their doors and celebrating this legacy this weekend. This is the performing ensemble’s farewell concert and celebration concert. Minnesota Dance Theatre’s school will remain open and continue to thrive with training young students and young dancers. 

This performance features four choreographers. Three of them are local to the Minnesota dance community, and one of them (Nia-Amina Minor) is an artist that’s been commissioned; she’s a Black and female choreographer from Seattle.

And you’re going to see a range of works in the classical ballet idiom, also traversing into contemporary ballet. You’re gonna hear classics like Frederick Chopin to contemporary and experimental jazz music from Makaya McCraven. 

I went to the performance and I was amazed by the diversity of the musical selections there. It’s really worth seeing.

Over these long years, some of our most amazing dancers and teachers and arts leaders have come out of the Minnesota Dance school and company here. The Ensemble is taking their last bow this weekend, but the school will continue to thrive and train young students and young dancers.

— Alanna Morris

Theater maker Shanan Custer of White Bear Lake saw Four Humors Theater’s play “Rasputin” at the Twin Cities Horror Festival last fall, and she’s thrilled that the show is getting a second run at Open Eye Figure Theatre in Minneapolis.

“Rasputin” opens tonight and runs through May 18. The show runs 70 minutes without intermission. The May 12 matinee requires masks for all audience members. (All other shows are mask-optional.) 

Shanan says: The play is a dark comedy created by Four Humors Theater. It’s a very deeply hilarious investigation of all of the versions of Rasputin’s gruesome death. It’s brilliantly conceived, the actors are so strong and there are so many incredible physical comedy moments.

A very deeply hilarious investigation.

And yet while that’s happening, the play is dealing with this political nightmare: this greedy, horrifying zealot who’s getting all the attention.

It plays really well in 2024. It hit me so hard last year, and I’m really excited that they’re bringing it back.

— Shanan Custer

Dana Sikkila, director of the 410 Project Community Art Space in Mankato, is looking forward to the second annual Manifest event this Saturday. The free, all-day event (11 a.m. to 10 p.m.) celebrates the local arts scene and its vibrant history.

Put on by the Midwest Arts Catalyst and River Valley Makers, Manifest is a new, larger iteration of its (pre-COVID) Post-Holiday Extravaganza. Location: Kato Ballroom. 

Dana says: It’s our time in Mankato here — and really truly for anyone who wants to join us — to celebrate arts and culture. It also celebrates the history of the arts in the Mankato area, to reflect on the importance of keeping these things alive in our cities.  

It’s going to be an all-day event. There are art vendors. There’s going to be art raffles, a silent auction and food trucks. We have a huge community mural project that’s going to be happening on a building outside next door to the Kato Ballroom.

We’re going to have our Mankato community collage photo shoot happening 11 to 5 p.m., too.

And that’s where people can come to get a photo taken of themselves with their friends with their families. And that photo gets put into our big community collage that happens yearly. And then starting at 7 p.m., we’re having live music.

It is free to attend and everyone’s welcome. They are asking for a $20 suggested donation at the door. Any of the proceeds that come in at the door go back into the arts in our community throughout the year. It’s a great event all the way around.

— Dana Sikkila

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art.

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Dive into the captivating world of Stuart Loughridge, a local artist renowned for his mastery in etching, painting and drawing. Recommended by Gary Korlin, an independent fine artist in the Twin Cities.

Gary says: I’d like to introduce — or basically maybe reintroduce — Stuart Loughridge. He’s a local artist, and what I like about the guy is that he’s got three excellent elements working for him: education, talent and then it’s all run by his intuition.

He’s very interested in etching, which is sort of a lost art. And but he paints and draws. He paints in watercolor, he paints in oils. He does portraits, figures, still lifes — but, you know what, his passion is landscapes and a lot of them are very local.

This whole process is very exploratory. It’s definitely a show worth experiencing.

The show that Stewart is going to be having at the Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis is going to be a little bit of everything. But the main focus is going to be on landscapes.

But the interesting thing is that this is going to be sort-of a tracking, or a tour, of his history. He’s going to have sketchbooks there, he’s going to have his plein air sketches, which he calls just “fieldwork” and it’s going to be leading up to finished pieces. This whole process is very exploratory. It’s definitely a show worth experiencing, I would say.

Stuart Loughridge’s show runs through May 25. This Saturday, Stewart is going to be doing a portrait demonstration. So that might be fun for a lot of you who are interested in just expanding your knowledge

— Gary Korlin

Discover the profound and poignant narrative of “Ugly Lies the Bone,” a play that explores the themes of healing and resilience. Recommended by St. Paul visual artist Bebe Keith.

Bebe says: “Ugly Lies the Bone” is playing at the Commonweal Theatre in Lanesboro.

A friend actually recommended this to me. She said the excellent portrayals and important subject matter were so compelling that she has already seen it twice.

It’s moving and, most of all, it’s hopeful.

The story is about Jess, a soldier returning home from war with injuries both — visible and unseen. She finds some relief through something called “virtual reality therapy.” It plunges her into an Arctic setting that helps with her burnt skin. So she strives toward healing, and she’s also trying to restore her relationships, home and all that she’s lost.

I’ve read the script and it had me in tears. Jess is broken and in despair — and she’s got some grit. It’s moving and, most of all, it’s hopeful.

They are offering a free performance on May 5 for anyone who has served or is currently serving in any branch of the military and their families.

“Ugly Lies the Bone” is playing at the Commonweal Theatre in Lanesboro through July 6.

— Bebe Keith

Watch a unique collection of four short plays, penned by LGBTQ+ playwrights from across the country. Recommended by Minneapolis theater director Gretchen Weinrich.

Gretchen says: Threshold Theater’s new collection of plays is called “4Play.” It’s opening at the Bryant Lake Bowl on April 26. It’s a collection of four short plays written by LGBTQ+ playwrights that came from an open call for playwrights all across the country.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this show for a couple of reasons. First of all, Threshold has been holding staged readings of its place for a couple of years. But this is their first fully staged version with movement and sets and costumes. And they’re really excited to put that on and I’m really excited to see it.

These plays really look at things that are great about community or support — and joyful things about life.

The great thing about this collection, from what I understand, is that it shows LGBTQ+ folks in a bunch of different stages of life and experiences. And what I really like about it, from what I read about it, is that it’s really upbeat.

Oftentimes when we talk about groups that are quote-unquote marginalized sometimes the topic can be really depressing or sad. But these plays really look at things that are great about community or support — and joyful things about life.

— Gretchen Weinrich

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art.

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Full Circle Theater Company’s thought-provoking new production “They Wear Teal Ribbons Around Their Tongues” delves deep into the dynamics of a family grappling with the aftermath of their patriarch’s death.

St. Paul actor Chris Collier had a chance to read the script for Full Circle Theater Company’s current show, “They Wear Teal Ribbons Around Their Tongues,” and he’s looking forward to the staged production.

Written by Minnesota playwriter Siddeeqah Shabazz, the play follows a family reconciling with the loss of their patriarch and a burgeoning secret that threatens to shatter their long-held perfect image.  

Trigger warning: the play deals with sexual assault and mental health issues within the family dynamic.

“Especially as it pertains to communities of color and to black families, specifically, I think that there’s such a stigma surrounding mental health and sexual assault that just doesn’t get talked about,” said Collier. “And I think that this show does a great job of addressing a much-needed conversation.” 

“They Wear Teal Ribbons Around Their Tongues” runs through April 28 at the Gremlin Theatre in St Paul. 

Revel in the vibrant energy of the Guild of Middle Eastern Dance’s Spring Spectacular.

MJ Gernes is a St. Paul fiber artist and drummer who has had a chance to drum before with members of the Guild of Middle Eastern Dance.

For more than 40 years, the Guild has drawn dancers from around the Twin Cities and beyond to perform a variety of folk dance styles from across the Middle East as well as other American-fusion styles.

Gernes loves the high energy, the beautiful costumes and welcoming atmosphere of the Guild’s dance performances, and she’s looking forward to their Spring Spectacular, this Sunday, April 21 at 4 p.m. at the Elision Playhouse in Crystal.  

For those interested in learning new dance skills, the Guild is offering six workshops this weekend in St. Paul and Crystal. 

Experience a timeless tale of struggle and satire with An Opera Theatre’s production of “The Cradle Will Rock.”

Twin Cities illustrator and designer Jerrald Spencer Jr. had a chance to see a preview production of An Opera Theatre’s performance of “The Cradle Will Rock.”

Written in 1937 by Marc Blitzstein and billed as “The Working Man’s Musical,” the opera still feels relevant today; Spencer described it as “Succession meets The Producers.”  

The villainous Mr. Mister (whose wife, naturally, is Mrs. Mister) seeks to control the media and crush rising labor unions.

The opera is laced with some “very, very funny lines,” says Spencer, along with beautiful singing and shadow puppetry, which adds to the emotional depth of the story. 

The Cradle Will Rock runs April 18 – 21 at the Heart of the Beast Theatre in Minneapolis. The show is 90 minutes without intermission.  

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

It’s that time of the year when, for eight days, local music reigns in Duluth and Superior. The Homegrown Music Festival continues through Sunday.

Emily Lee of Duluth is attending Homegrown for her twelfth year, and like many music lovers, she’s studied up on the Field Guide to make sure she can see her favorite bands. Check out the schedule here.

Emily says: I’m going to see [Blues-rock band] The Adjustments Saturday night. Strikepoint is playing this year, which is kind of unique. They're an amazing hand bell choir here in town. My husband can't wait to see Bratwurst, and you have to watch out at that show, because Bratwurst throws raw meat off the stage. So a lot of people show up in ponchos.

Something new this year is the Homegrown Variety Showcase on Friday night at Studio Four, and it's kind of like a variety talent show with poets, comedians and dancers. So that's something cool this year to check out.

There's also different dress up nice each week for Homegrown, so that's kind of fun to see what everyone wears. Tonight is Eccentric Art Teacher & Gym Coach Night. Friday is Leather & Lace Night. Saturday is Pirates & Princesses Night. Sunday is Relaxation Sunday; they have a couple of daytime shows on Sunday because that's the last day of the festival.

— Emily Lee

Actor Silvestrey P’orantes of Minneapolis highly recommends checking out “Framed Differently,” an evening of four short films by local Native filmmakers with a Q&A to follow. Hosted by Sequoia Hauck, the event is Saturday, May 3 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Public Functionary’s Main Gallery 144 in Minneapolis.

The films are Ajuawak Kapashesit’s “The Comedian,” Rosy Simas’s “yödoishëndahgwa'geh (a place to rest),” Oogie Push’s “Hunting Morels: Mushroom Secrets” and Moira Villiard’s animated film “Love Lessons in a Time of Settler Colonialism.”

Silvestrey says: [They’re] all doing different films about Indigenous perspective outside of just the title of being Indigenous. There's a lot of pressure sometimes to fit into the stereotype of like, well, we got to talk about language and reclamation and what have you.

But sometimes, you know, we just want to talk about what we want to talk about. We're really emphasizing that we are artists who have things to say outside of just who we are.

— Silvestrey P’orantes

St. Paul musician Mary Adamek wants people to know about a musical opportunity in Marshall, Minn., this Saturday. Southwest Minnesota StringFest invites string players aged 13–18 to rehearse and perform alongside professional musicians on Saturday, May 3.

The event is free and sign-ups are still open for students in Minnesota and southeast South Dakota. The festival culminates in a free concert performance, open to the public, on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Fine Arts Theater of Southwest Minnesota State University.

Mary says: The festival is organized and funded through a partnership by three organizations: the St. Joseph School of Music, St. Paul Conservatory of Music, the Southwest Minnesota Orchestra and Southwest Minnesota State University.

This is the only string festival available to string students in southwestern Minnesota.

— Mary Adamek

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art.

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Experience the talent and dedication of tomorrow’s musical stars at the Schubert Club student scholarship competition winners' recital.

Aimée Baxter of St. Paul loves the arts, and one of her favorite concerts of the year is “Musicians on the Rise — Competition Winners Recital.”

Over 200 high school and college students compete in 15 categories that include piano, strings, voice, guitar, brass and woodwinds for scholarships to support their musical education. The winners (listed here) perform this Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Ordway in St Paul. The concert is free. 

“It is truly a gem,” says Baxter. “The wide range of musicians that are playing and the skill of these young people — it just blows you away, and you feel like you’re kind of finding out about somebody before they really hit it big.” 

“Making Climate Change Visible” by Carolyn Halliday uses the unique medium of knitted wire to create a powerful commentary on our environment and the impacts of climate change.

Twin Cities fiber artist Amy Usdin recommends a visit to the Kolman & Reeb Gallery in northeast Minneapolis for a textile exhibit, “Making Climate Change Visible.”

Halliday’s exhibit of knitted wire draws you in with a large, central piece of brilliant blue that recalls how blue the skies were without traffic during the pandemic lockdown.

Other pieces recall skies gray with wildfire smoke from the summer of 2023, as well as the paradoxically beautiful sunsets that occur on smokey evenings. Usdin calls Halliday’s use of color “exceptional and unique in wire knitting.” 

There is an artist reception Saturday at 7 p.m., and a music and dance performance in the space on Thursday, May 2 at 6 p.m., followed by an artist talk. The exhibit runs through May 11.

“Celebrating Native American Fashion” illuminates the rich tapestry of Indigenous design, featuring community members as models, many of whom will present their own creations.

Jill Doerfler is the department head of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. She says contemporary Native fashion is having a moment right now, and she’s thrilled that there will be a Native American fashion show at the Tweed Museum on campus this Saturday from 12-2 p.m.

The models include some 25-30 community members, many displaying clothing they have made, including jingle dresses, ribbons skirts, applique and bandolier bags.

Doerfler says it’s an inclusive show — all are welcome to attend and encouraged to wear their own Native American fashions that they have made or bought. The event is free, with refreshments to follow. A surprise special guest is scheduled to attend the event.

Doerfler highly recommends continuing your visit with a tour through the Tweed Museum’s art exhibits while you’re there.

The three co-sponsors for “Celebrating Native American Fashion” are the Tweed Museum of Art, the American Indian Housing Organization (AICHO) and the McKnight Foundation. Recently, AICHO held workshops teaching how to make ribbon skirts, and Doerfler expects some of those participants will be strutting down the runway.

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what's exciting in local art.

Want to be an Art Hound? Submit here.

Explore the vibrant legacy of Minnesota artist Jim Denomie in "Conversations with Jim," an exhibition at ArtsReach St. Croix in Stillwater. This showcase features 60 new works by artist Dougie Padilla, Denomie's longtime friend, who has created a series of pieces as a dialogue with Denomie posthumously.

Carleton College art professor and photographer Xavier Tavera wants people to know about an exhibition of new artwork memorializing Minnesota artist Jim Denomie (1955–2022).

His longtime friend artist Dougie Padilla began a series of works in response to — and in conversation with — Denomie after his death.

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Both artists, Tavera says, are masters of color whose paintings tell stories. He says Padilla’s bold, spiritual work shows characters with teeth, tails and antlers caught up in conversation with each other.

The longer you look at these works, Tavera says, the more deeply you see the narratives these paintings create. 

“Conversations with Jim,” which contains some 60 new works by Dougie Padilla, is on display ArtsReach St. Croix in Stillwater, which also housed Denomie’s final show.

The exhibit opens tonight with an artist reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Padilla will also host a gallery talk on April 14 and a poetry reading on April 28. The exhibit runs through May 11. 

Dive into the tumultuous and fascinating life of Zelda Fitzgerald in the one-woman play "The Last Flapper." Staged at Yellow Tree Theatre in Osseo, this compelling production opens its curtains on Friday, offering a unique portrayal drawn from Zelda’s real letters and stories.

Actress Sarah Dickson recommends the one-woman play “The Last Flapper” about Zelda Fitzgerald, which opens at Yellow Tree Theatre in Osseo on Friday.

Zelda inspired her husband, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, to create the character Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby.”

This show is drawn from Zelda’s real letters and stories, and it’s told on the last day of her life, which ended in an insane asylum. The show stars Broadway actor Monette McGrath of Marine on St. Croix. 

“The Last Flapper” is the first of two back-to-back shows mounted at Yellow Tree in partnership with Frosted Glass Creative, and it’s billed as a collaboration for Women’s Month: two theater companies led by woman artistic directors, mounting a one-woman show. (Dickson performs in the ensuing show, “Seven Keys,” which starts in May.) 

“The Last Flapper” runs April 5 – 14. 

Join the celestial journey as the Bakken Ensemble presents a performance inspired by the majesty of the cosmos. This Sunday's concert promises an auditory exploration of the stars and the sky, fueled by recent cosmic discoveries and celestial events.

Malinda Schmiechen, an amateur violinist and violist living in Excelsior, has been attending performances of the Bakken Ensemble for years, and she says they’re “always extraordinary.”

In particular, she loves watching violinist and artistic director Stephanie Arado. “I love how excited she gets when she performs. She’s so dynamic. She plays with so much emotion and energy.” Of cellist and artistic director Pitnarry Shin, “She has great expression, great intensity when she plays.” 

Schmiechen says she always encounters a new, diverse selection of music at their concerts. This Sunday’s performance focuses on music that celebrates the stars and the sky.

Inspired by recent photographs from the James Webb telescope as well as the solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, this performance contains five works that reach for the stars and the sky.

Two are by living composers (Max Vinetz’s “Stars on the Ground” for string quartet and Stephen Hartke’s “The King of the Sun: Tableau for Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano.” 

The concert is Sunday, April 7 at 4 p.m. at MacPhail Center for Music’s Antonello Hall in Minneapolis.  

Pro tip: Schmiechen recommends arriving early to the concert, as tickets are open seating. She loves to sit in the front to get a close-up look at the performers’ techniques.

From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what's exciting in local art.

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Discover the enchanting world of Norwegian folk tales reimagined through contemporary jewelry at the Nordic Center. Renowned artist Liz Bucheit's exhibition "Hand of Huldra" showcases the tradition of silver as protection against evil, blending myth and craftsmanship.

Alison Aune is a professor of art education at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and a former board member at the Nordic Center. She recommends a show currently at the Nordic Center, “Hand of Huldra” by Liz Bucheit of Lanesboro.

“What she specializes in is reimagining Norwegian folk tales, folk traditions, through her contemporary jewelry,” Aune explains.

“In Norway — and in a lot of the Nordic and Baltic countries — silver was thought to protect you against evil. So there’s a tradition with the bride wearing a bridal crown of silver, having all sorts of silver pendants so that she's protected.”

On display are crowns, as well as other silver objects, which Aune describes as “phenomenal. She's just really an expert on taking those Norwegian stories and finding their way to jewelry.”

“Hand of Huldra” is on display until April 27.

Join the Twin Cities Iranian Culture Collective for a vibrant celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, at the Ordway in St. Paul. Experience international and local musicians in a concert followed by a reception featuring tea and cookies.

Visual artist Katayoun Amjati says she’s been hearing from friends in the northeast Minneapolis arts and music scene about the concert “Voices Unveiled: A Nowruz Celebration and Community Gathering,” presented by the Twin Cities Iranian Culture Collective.

Nowruz is the Persian New Year, which was celebrated on March 19. The concert includes both international and local musicians and will be followed by a reception afterward that includes tea and cookies. 

Amjati says the concert will be a chance to celebrate and also to honor and mourn alongside those women struggling for rights in Iran. She notes that two of the singers recently moved from Iran to the U.S., and she looks forward to hearing their voices.  

“Voices Unveiled: A Nowruz Celebration and Community Gathering” is Saturday, March 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the Ordway in St. Paul. Tickets are limited. 

Embark on a poignant yet uplifting journey with "Phantom Loss," a puppet show by Oanh Vu, staged by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in Minneapolis. Join a Vietnamese American girl in a tale of haunting, friendship with ghosts and the struggles of generational trauma and deportation.

Anh-Thu Pham of Theater Mu has seen previous workshops of Oanh Vu’s puppet show “Phantom Loss,” and she’s looking forward to seeing the final version staged by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in Minneapolis.

It’s a tragicomedy about a Vietnamese American girl who moves to a new small town with her mother to run a nail salon. The house where she lives is haunted, and she becomes friends with the ghost.

It’s a refugee story about generational trauma and deportation, told with heart and humor. Pham, who grew up watching “Sesame Street” and “Mr. Rogers,” points out the power of puppetry to take on heavy subjects without losing sight of joy.  

“I think, for any of us that have dealt with generational trauma, or any hard things in our lives,” says Pham, “if you sit in the darkness, you won't be able to live, you won't be able to process through that. And I think that's when good art is done: you kind of see and experience life in its wholeness. I think this is what ‘Phantom Loss’ can do.” 

The show opens Friday with a preview show Thursday, and it runs through April 7. There is a pay-what-you-can performance on April 2. The show is rated PG/PG-13. 

Fiber and textile artist Shannon Twohy of Minneapolis recently saw the Northern Clay Centers exhibition “Edible,” which she found thought-provoking.

The show brings together works by five Asian American artists, including Anika Hsiung Schneider of Minneapolis, all investigating food and culture through clay.

Twohy appreciates that each artist explores the medium differently, creating sculptures that vary from stylistic representations to creations that look good enough to eat. 

“Edible” is on view through April 21 both in-person and online, here.  

Charlie Leftridge is the executive director of the Carnegie Art Center in Mankato, and he wants people to know about the vibrant local music scene. Leftridge served as director of operations of Mankato’s Symphony Orchestra heading into the pandemic, and he continues to enjoy their music from the audience.

He loves that MSO showcases a diverse mix of composers, presented in a friendly and accessible way.  

The MSO’s Chamber Music series, known as Music on the Hill, presents its next concert this Sunday, March 24 at 3 p.m. at Bethany Lutheran College’s Trinity Chapel in Mankato.

This performance’s theme is Bohemian Folk, and it includes Antonín Dvořák’s “Cypresses” for string quartet, among others. 

Minneapolis musician Dylan Hicks is looking forward to listening to some great jazz when the Chris Thompson Quartet perform next week at Berlin. The group is led by Chris Thompson on clarinet and saxophone, who also composes electronic music under the name Cedar Thoms.

Hicks has performed with Thompson in the past and calls him a creative, lyrical player with a great ear for improv.  

“He can pay to play very advanced harmony, but he always really draws you in melodically. And so I think he will appeal to people who are, hardcore jazz aficionados and maybe people who are exploring the music.” 

Thompson joins with Kavyest Kaviraj on piano, Jeff Bailey on bass, and Abinnet Berhanu on drums — all leaders in their own right. 

Hicks recommends checking out Berlin, an intimate, European-inspired jazz club in the North Loop of Minneapolis that he says fills a much-needed niche in the music scene. There is no cover charge for this show.