Jazz, pizza and fun at the Riverview Wine Bar

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My mother-in-law Elmarie loves jazz. Elmarie is 88 years old, and still lives on the family farm near Decorah, Iowa, but she is willing to travel a long ways to hear good jazz. A few years ago, Elmarie went all the way to Iowa City to hear the Glenn Miller Orchestra. So when Elmarie came to the Twin Cities over the Memorial Day weekend, we searched for a place where she could hear jazz on a Sunday night. Thanks to Pam Espeland’s excellent jazz calendar, Bebopified, we found some excellent options.

Moore by Four’s show at the Dakota was already sold out, so we opted instead for the Riverview Wine Bar, which features the Zacc Harris Trio on Sunday nights, (Zacc Harris on guitar, Matt Peterson on bass, Pete Hennig on drums) with no cover. Harris also plays with the Atlantis Quartet, which City Pages named the Best Jazz Artist of 2011. The music – mostly jazz standards – was great, though the place was packed and the ambient noise level was a little high for Elmarie. Continue Reading

FREE SPEECH ZONE | Dal Niente Plays Dillon

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Given James Dillon’s international stature in the world of contemporary music, the fact that he hangs his hat (pictured) in Minnesota has elicited remarkably little comment: You’re as likely in the foyer of Wigmore Hall as in the lobby of the Ordway Center to be met with a quizzical look if you claim to have spotted the eminent Scottish composer on the West Bank here in Minneapolis, the site of Dillon’s day gig as a Professor in the University of Minnesota School of Music. Dillon’s work, renowned for its vivid contrasts of the sensuous and the tempestuous, came to prominence in Europe in the early 1980s; his Nine Rivers, a large cycle of works composed over more than ten years, received its much-delayed premiere last year in his hometown of Glasgow. Performances of Dillon’s music by American ensembles have been relatively rare in the Twin Cities since he moved here in 2007; however, the Chicago-based new music group Dal Niente is presenting a portrait concert comprising five of Dillon’s chamber and solo pieces on April 3 at 7pm at the Southern Theater. Dal Niente is earning an international reputation of its own: The ensemble, founded in 2004 by composer and University of Minnesota alumna Kirsten Broberg, recently won a prestigious Kranichsteiner Stipendienpreise at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. One could hardly ask for more suitable navigators through Dillon’s famously elemental music than these fire-bellied young musicians. Continue Reading

Retail tonic: Hardware jazz

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In a tough retail environment, one hardware store springs for live music. Steve Blake plays jazz piano at the Midway Menards.Steve Blake has an impressive jazz career going. There was his decade long engagement at Nikki’s in the Minneapolis Warehouse District. Now, his main venue is a bit less hip. On Saturday mornings Steve puts on his tux and bikes the three miles to the store.Yet, he considers Menards a great gig. Continue Reading