On the radar1. For substance, style, and sheer entertainment, there’s nothing like a Mozart opera. The Minnesota Opera begins its season with a bang: Così fan tutte opens Saturday.2. At the U’s Ted Mann Concert Hall, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra plays one of its most enticing programs of the season: Franz Schubert’s dark masterwork Death and the Maiden, Anna Clyne’s Within Her Arms, and Earl Kim’s Cornet, narrated by actor/writer Wallace Shawn (My Dinner with André, The Princess Bride, Vanya on 42nd Street) in a very rare local appearance.3. Continue Reading
I’m enormously proud of our strong arts coverage, and given that there are so many hours in a week, I’m changing the format of this weekly newsletter so that I can spend less time compiling it and more time bringing our coverage to you in a timely manner.Arts Orbit Radar will continue to feature “on the radar” and “under the radar” event picks—now in a pick-five format—but it won’t feature an arts news roundup any longer. You can see all our arts news compiled on our arts section page, along with the weekly event picks. In addition to our weekly columnists, our Arts Orbit Radar e-mail newsletter will now include teasers for some of our top arts stories of the week. If you’re not already a subscriber, you can sign up here to receive that weekly e-mail!On the radar1. When its cast was announced, I called Walking Shadow Theatre Company’s reasons to be pretty my most-anticipated show of the season. Continue Reading
What’s happening this weekOn the radarAfter 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 $99. The catch? Continue Reading
Curious as to who the most-followed tweeters were among local arts organizations, I went prospecting for the Twitter accounts of notable local arts-related in Continue Reading
What’s happening this weekOn the radar”We’re so sticky and glittery,” I overheard one teenage girl say to another last month at the sultry-hot Pitchfork Music Festival, “It’s like Ke$ha threw up on us.” Your best shot at having that actual experience is Tuesday at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium.After an itinerant year following the closure of Bedlam Theatre’s West Bank space, the infamous dance night Bomp lands a big-time Friday night slot at First Ave, with support from the merry wo/men (including me) of MTN’s Freaky Deeky.The Soap Factory’s exhibit of work by Guo Gai, Meng Tang, and Slinko “addresses issues of society, memory, language, and loss, while retaining an emphasis on the beauty and power of the object.” That means absolutely nothing, but the show—which opens this weekend—should still be worth checking out.Under the radarI usually try to do better than just reprinting promo text for events, but I think you really need to read this whole thing to understand what the Twin Cities EJ Festival is all about: “Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the EJ Midi Turntable, with VJ’s DJ’s and EJ’s performing Video – Music – New Media – Mapping – Software developers – iPad – Hardware – Mods – iPhone media apps, Circuit MODS, 3D graphics, video and projection, 2D computer raster graphics, computer simulations, VHS/DVD Mixes, keyframing, inverse kinematics, Computer vision, Image processing, 2D computer vector graphics, motion capture, glitch video, Anaglyph image processing, Modeling objects or environments, Laser mapping, artificial vision systems, augmented reality, Mobile Video performances and more!” All this for just three bucks! Saturday night at the Record Room.Jeremy Messersmith and Chastity Brown will perform at a fundraiser happy hour for the top-notch theater company Savage Umbrella, Thursday at Open Book.”Neoclassical” and “minimalist” are not tags often applied to shows at the Cedar, but they fit (well, kind of) Sunday’s bill featuring Brooklyn Rider, who will perform Philip Glass’s string quartets—for my money, the most profound and beautiful music in Glass’s entire oeuvre.Daily Planet arts roundupMovies• The Names of Love: Full frontal comedy, politics (feature by Michael Fox)• Passione and The Real American: Summer festival finds (feature by Al Milgrom)Music• Things Janet Jackson should do while she’s in Minnesota (blog post by Jay Gabler and Courtney Algeo)• I’d totally be at SoundTown right now if only… Continue Reading
What’s happening this weekOn the radarAny definition of “on the radar” this week has to begin and end with WAYNE NEWTON ON A BOAT.Okay, on with the countdown. Some of you may choose to spurn Mr. Vegas for the Flaming Lips, the New Pornographers, or Janet Jackson. That’s your personal choice. There’s also a three-day block party at the 1029 that will include not just one, but all of the following: karaoke, a lobster boil, a meat raffle, and professional wrestling. Wayne Newton may find it all just impossible to resist.For the internationally-minded in the St. Continue Reading
What’s happening this weekOn the radarThe State Fair opens in a couple of weeks, but if you close your eyes and ignore the fact that fall is coming, maybe it won’t! Dance blindly at the Pizza Lucé Block Party, or head up to Square Lake where—how cool is this?—the Orange Mighty Trio are performing a live original soundtrack to a 1962 French film best known as the Twilight Zone episode An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.You’ll have one less excuse to drive over to the proximity of the Blue Door Pub when Nick Krings closes the Nicademus Art and Framing Gallery on Snelling; the gallery’s final show opens with a Friday night blowout featuring music from BK One.Also: need more records? Obviously.Under the radarWhen Star Tribune film critic Colin Covert was the guest at a recent Twin Cities Media Alliance Brown Bag Lunch, he said that one of the biggest challenges of his job was doing justice to the profusion of film festivals that take place each year in the Twin Cities. This weekend’s offering: the Twin Cities Polish FilmFest. What, no Scarlett Johansson? Continue Reading
