PREVIEW: Minnesota Boychoir Returns to In-Person Performances Arts Music by Twin Cities Arts Reader - June 14, 2021June 20, 2021 Seventeen months after its last live, in-person performance, the Minnesota Boychoir returns to in-person concerts with a trio of free performances around the Twin Cities on June 16, 17, and 19. The hundred-voiced ensemble last performed together in January 2020, at St. Paul's Landmark Center. Virtual rehearsals kept the group together
PREVIEW: SPCO to Wind Up Virtual Season with Final Broadcast 6/12 and 6/17 Arts Music by Twin Cities Arts Reader - June 7, 2021June 7, 2021 Composers Clarice Assad and Michi Wiancko will each have a musical composition premiered in the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's final concert of the season. Photo courtesy of the SPCO. It's been four years since the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra launched its online Concert Library, which allows the general public to listen
REVIEW: Leslie Vincent Rocks the Belvedere in Sold-Out Show (Crooners) Arts Music by Basil Considine - June 6, 2021June 6, 2021 Singer-songwriter Leslie Vincent at her sold-out show at Crooners in Fridley, MN on Saturday, June 6. It was 95 degrees Fahrenheit in the open air in Fridley on Saturday evening. At Crooners, however, things were cooler, with a cooling breeze blowing off the lake and running under the tented canopy of
NEWS: The Return of the Northern Spark Festival, 6/12-6/27 Arts Dance Music Visual Arts by Twin Cities Arts Reader - June 4, 2021June 4, 2021 A promotional image for the Northern Spark festival, adorned with Ojibwe pictographs. The acclaimed Northern Spark festival returns to the Twin Cities from June 12-27. This year’s festival has a deliberate emphasis on healing, transformative art within the larger theme of Alchemy. The festival is designed to draw artists and the
INTERVIEW: Leslie Vincent on Jazzing Up the Return to Live Performance (Crooners/The Belvedere) Arts Music by Basil Considine - June 3, 2021June 3, 2021 White Bear Lake-based singer-songwriter Leslie Vincent (front left) with her band at Crooners on August 10, 2020. Photo by Darin Kamnetz. For some musicians, 2020-2021 has been a giant artistic blank spot – less a tabula rasa, more a vacant room. Not so for singer-songwriter Leslie Vincent, who is taking the
NEWS: Ordway to Throw Doors Open in September Arts Dance Music Opera Theatre by Twin Cities Arts Reader - June 3, 2021June 4, 2021 The facade of the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in Saint Paul, MN. Photo by Mike Boeckmann. The Arts Partnership announced today that the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Saint Paul will reopen for performances beginning this September. The September shows will be the Ordway's first in-person,
REVIEW: Jamecia Bennett and the New Tent in Town (Crooners) Arts Music by Basil Considine - April 25, 2021April 26, 2021 Jamecia Bennett headlined the opening of Crooners Supper Club's new outdoor space on Friday evening. If you had a brand-new outdoor venue to commission, who would you hire? Do you need a Grammy Award-winning local artist who can sing the blues, sing the soul, and scat through jazz? If so, call
REVIEW: Stirring The Planet – A Lament (PROTOTYPE Festival) Arts Dance Music Opera Theatre by Amy Donahue - January 15, 2021January 15, 2021 A video still from Garin Nugroho’s The Planet – A Lament, now playing in the 2021 virtual incarnation of the PROTOTYPE festival. It was with profound jealousy that I first learned of the PROTOTYPE festival of new music-theatre works. My editor had traveled to New York City to see the festival
NEWS: Hennepin Theatre Trust’s New 2021-2022 Season Arts Dance Music Theatre by Twin Cities Arts Reader - January 14, 2021January 14, 2021 The cast of Hamilton, one of 12 musicals in the redesigned 2021-2022 season announced today by the Hennepin Theatre Trust. Photo by Joan Marcus. The Hennepin Theatre Trust announced its 2021-2022 season today. After numerous cancellations due to COVID-19, 11 of the 12 planned Broadways shows – plus an addition –
NEWS: Crooners to Reopen Jan. 28 Arts Music by Twin Cities Arts Reader - January 14, 2021January 14, 2021 Cocktails sit on the bar in a summer promotional photo from Crooners Supper Club in Fridley, MN. The Fridley, MN-based Crooners Supper Club will reopen January 28. Like other dining entities across the state, Crooners has been closed since November 20; by the time it reopens two weeks from today, it