What’s happening this week
On the radar
After previewing and then sort of kind of opening, the new Cowles Center for the Performing Arts opens for really really real with a gala show on Saturday night featuring the area’s most distinguished performers. If you prefer to do your own dancing, hit the 331 on Thursday night for the one-year anniversary of the LOL/OMG social media meetups; headliners are Britney Spears cover boyband SPEARZ. Over in Lowertown, the fifth annual Concrete and Grass Music Festival hosts a much less frenetic, but almost as accomplished lineup including the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Opera.
In the Soap Factory’s much-anticipated annual fundraiser, you can buy an original work of art from a distinguished local artist for just $99. The catch? You don’t know who the artist is until after you make the buy.
The Books & Bars crowd will doubtless be out in force for Wednesday’s Fitzgerald Theater appearance by Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad.
Under the radar
“You can’t help rooting for a group like Eat Street Players,” wrote Matthew Everett in his review of the company’s production of The Red Tureen, noting that the company seems interested in producing new work. There’s certainly nothing new about The Sound of Music—but if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
In other big arts news this week, Monday is Barry Manilow’s birthday! Per usual, the Bryant-Lake Bowl is doing the occasion up right with a cabaret extravaganza. (Okay, it’s not actually his birthday—but he didn’t actually write the song, either, so what the hell.)
Finally, beloved local artists Jennifer Davis and Amy Rice are opening a one-weekend-only joint show at a “pop-up gallery” in downtown St. Paul’s Historic Minnesota Building.
Daily Planet arts roundup
• Lerner publishes books for older children (feature by Erin Elliott Bryan)
• Library and park design options to be presented (feature by Uptown Neighborhood News staff)
• A gift (blog post by Lisa Gray)
• Munqs drops an uneven but intriguing trial&era (review by Jay Gabler)
• Benefit helps to establish Korean Adoptee Youth Choir (feature by Maya Nishikawa)
• “They are talented beyond measure”: Hip Hop Camp connects performers and youth at the Capri Theater (feature by Sheila Regan)
• Irishmen of The Script charm Orpheum audience (review by Morgan Halaska)
• Reflections of New Minnesotans: Yohannes Tona—All things jazz and then some (feature by Nekessa Opoti)
• SoundTown: Your friendly neighborhood music festival (review by Becky Lang, with photos by Meredith Westin)
• Dwight Hobbes on Prof: Pulling no punches (blog post by Jay Gabler)
• Community singing at the Minnesota State Fair (feature by Frankie Barnhill)
• When your clock is striking heartfelt-thirty, Ellis is Right On Time (review by Jay Gabler)
• Weezer at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand (photos by Jeff Rutherford)
• Theatre Coup d’Etat ousts the Guthrie with a ferocious Macbeth (review by Bev Wolfe)
• Jungle Theater’s Hamlet: Guilty creatures sitting at a play (review by Matthew A. Everett)
• Zafira the Olive Oil Warrior imagines a dark future dystopia for Arab-Americans (preview by Sheila Regan)
• Czechs to Fitzgerald Theater: Siddown, whippersnapper! (blog post by Jay Gabler)
• Alcina’s Island brings post-modern operetta to the parks courtesy of Mixed Precipitation (feature by Margo Ashmore)
• A Mighty Fortress is Our Basement at Plymouth Playhouse: The Church Basement Ladies are back (review by Jean Gabler)
• Minnesota State Fair Art Show honors 100 years of Minnesota artists (feature by Barb Teed, with photos by Jeff Rutherford)
• Powderhorn community pitchs in to paint mural (feature by Eric Blom)
• MLK Park and Freedom Form #2 sculpture rededicated (feature by James L. Stroud, Jr.)
• IATP sends fair food delegation to Trader Joe’s (blog post by Mark Muller)
• Other things to put Minnesota State Fair food on besides a stick (blog post by Jay Gabler, Becky Lang, and Nicky Stein-Grohs)
• Get-healthier campaign focuses on Minneapolis neighborhoods (feature by Cynthia Boyd)
• Concrete Beet Urban Farm (feature by Tom Niemisto and Ben Hanson)
• Overflow Espresso Café owner: “The Central Corridor will kill us” (feature by Jeanette Fordyce)
• Distance learning: Viva Brazil, a culinary education on Rio (feature by Rich Reeder)
• Green beans sprout in Frogtown (feature by Cynthia Frost)
• Other Twin Cities investment opportunities for the private equity firm that just bought Pearson’s Candy (blog post by Jay Gabler, Betsy Gabler, and Jeff Rutherford)
• Belief addiction (blog post by Emilio DeGrazia)
• Split Rock Lighthouse: Of national importance (blog post by Amy Rea)
• New world of biking on Minneapolis’s Northside (feature by Bruce Johansen)
• St. Paul Frogtown bike shop reinvents itself (feature by Bruce Johansen)
• Seward efforts stir East African interest in biking (feature by Bruce Johansen)
• Biking: Individual and collective culture change in Minneapolis (feature by Bruce Johansen)
• Bike Walk Twin Cities: Transportation as platform for social change (feature by Bruce Johansen)
• Hitting the reset button on state bike and pedestrian policies (feature by Bruce Johansen)
• Scenes we do and don’t have in the Twin Cities (blog post by Jay Gabler, Becky Lang, Kelsey McDonough, Courtney Algeo, Bobby Kahn, Makula Dunbar, Stacy Schwartz, Jean Gabler, Mary Turck, Mandy Dwyer, and Betsy Gabler)
• For many, the Minnesota State Fair is all about the animals; new arena planned (feature by Barb Teed, with photos by Jeff Rutherford)
• Barking at art in Minneapolis (feature by Stephanie Fox)
• Downsides of having your head carved in butter at the Minnesota State Fair (blog post by Jay Gabler, Betsy Gabler, Morgan Halaska, and Tatiana Craine)
• Life beyond cars, from fringe to mainstream (feature by Bruce Johansen)
• Lantern Lighting Festival has special meaning for 2011 (feature by Maya Nishikawa)
• Minnesota State Fair’s Princess Kay of the Milky Way: From beauty to butter in six hours (feature by Barb Teed with photos by Jeff Rutherford)
• Connections, revisited (blog post by Erik Hare)
• Things to scream into the microphones as you’re going down the Giant Slide at the Minnesota State Fair (blog post by Jay Gabler, Courtney Algeo, Kelsey McDonough, and Betsy Gabler)
• Minnesota State Fair Giant Slide couple have mostly ups despite their downs (feature by Barb Teed with photos by Jeff Rutherford)
• Things a mother pig might be thinking as she gives birth at the Miracle of Birth barn at the Minnesota State Fair (blog post by Jay Gabler, Betsy Gabler, Kelsey McDonough, Tatiana Craine, and Jean Gabler)
• Minnesota State Fair Doggies of the Wild West show: Obscurity to fame (feature by Barb Teed with photos by Jeff Rutherford)
• What I did this weekend, Part 1: The Renaissance Festival (blog post by Amy Rea)
• Splat! (blog post by Melanie Danke)
• Goatroping girls hit Mankato’s Sibley Park Zoo (blog post by Sally Jo Sorensen)
• A Minnesota State Fair gallery: Going beyond the stick (photos by Debra Fisher Goldstein)
• Minnesota State Fair stock dog trials: Lass vs. lamb (feature by Barb Teed with photos by Jeff Rutherford)
• From malts to meditation: Finding faith at the Minnesota State Fair (feature by Andrea Parrott)
• September festivals around Minnesota (blog post by Amy Rea)
• It’s Greek to us: A Taste of Greece Festival (feature by Phyllis Stenerson)
• A triple play: Three bicycle events round out the summer (feature by Bruce Cochran)
• Better know Interstate State Park (blog post by Amy Rea)
• A gift (blog post by Lisa Gray)
• Luxury (blog post by Lisa Gray)
• The new carny code at the Minnesota State Fair: Don’t cheat (feature by Kristoffer Tigue)
• Minnesota State Fair: A butterrific reunion honors creator Linda Christensen (feature by Barb Teed with photos by Jeff Rutherford)
• At the pool (blog post by Ifrah Jimale)
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