On Monday, members of the Young Musicians of Minnesota held an impromptu concert on Nicollet Mall outside the U.S. Bancorp building to express their support for the locked-out musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. The location for the concert was no accident: the young performers hoped to send a message to U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis, who serves on the board of the Minnesota Orchestra.
(Video via MN2020.)
Last night’s community forum about the Minnesota Orchestra was what Orchestrate Excellence, the organizers, said it would be: a civil discourse about the seemingly endless lockout. There were partisan bursts of applause, but at least in the main gathering, no visible anger. The general mood was one of frustration tinged with sadness. As forum chair Kenneth Huber said in his opening remarks, “I wish we weren’t here tonight. I wish we were all across the street at Orchestra Hall.”
Held at Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Minneapolis, the forum drew a crowd that filled the main floor of the sanctuary. Orchestrate Excellence had received more than 450 RSVPs by Tuesday afternoon. Six hundred programs were printed, and all were handed out. It was a mostly white, silver-haired crowd, dotted with members of the Young Musicians of Minnesota, a student-run organization formed in May to express solidarity with the locked-out musicians. For many people, it was a chance to be heard, at least by each other.
Orchestrate Excellence doesn’t take sides, preferring to speak to the interests of the community. “We are the audience,” the organization’s co-founder Paula DeCosse told the crowd, “and we miss our orchestra.”
The night’s keynote speaker, Alan Fletcher, CEO and president of the Aspen Music Festival and School, was called in because he knows about long and bitter disputes; he survived one at Aspen, which is thriving today.
“Everyone in the world … cares very deeply about what is happening and will happen here,” Fletcher said. “If bad things can happen here, they can happen anywhere.” He stated his intent to “offer observations that I hope might be part of a conversation in which you affirm for each other what is to be done.” As an outsider, he said, it was not his place to tell us what to do.
Except for this: “I will go so far as to be definite about one thing I believe, and that is that the current lockout of musicians should end, and it should end unconditionally … This step would be dramatic testimony from the board to their commitment to a real process, because one of the things that must happen is that all sides speak to each other.” The musicians must then come to the table, Fletcher said, and deal with who is at the table – no more talk about getting rid of management and board leadership.
(Here’s where we briefly imagined Fletcher and Minnesota Orchestra president Michael Henson sitting down together and having a little chat. Has that happened? It has not, Fletcher told us afterward.)
After the keynote, during which Fletcher briefly and matter-of-factly covered other thorny issues – the orchestra’s operating deficit (many organizations run on deficits, and they can’t be wiped out overnight), its use of endowment money to balance the budget and look good to legislators (not unusual), the new building (probably a good idea), and the aging audience (most major arts organizations are supported by people in their 50s and beyond) – the crowd broke into dozens of small groups and spread out through the church, charged with coming up with ideas for ending the impasse and helping the orchestra get back on its feet. We listened in on several groups and heard people who were deeply concerned about the orchestra and glad to be sharing their thoughts.
The plan now is for Orchestrate Excellence to sift through the ideas generated during the breakout and prepare a report to share with the public and the MOA within 10 days.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and the corrosive effects of the 11-month lockout continue to be felt. Fourteen musicians have resigned or taken leaves of absence since the lockout began.
MinnPost photo by John WhitingMembers of Young Musicians of Minnesota played outside prior to the forum.
In Washington, former Sen. George Mitchell is working on ways to bring the two warring sides together while allowing both to save face; his first proposal was rejected last week by management. In Sweden, the record label Bis has postponed recording sessions with the orchestra planned for mid-September. And music director Osmo Vänskä has threatened to resign if the labor dispute isn’t over by Sept. 9, giving him time to prepare the orchestra to perform at Carnegie Hall in November.
We asked DeCosse, “What do you think was the main thing that happened tonight?”
“This was an opportunity for the community to come together and talk, because they haven’t been able to. We’ve all been individual voices trying to do something. But I think there’s a lot of energy in a gathering like this. Hopefully we can carry it forward.”
Dear Members of the Minnesota Orchestra Board of Directors,
In the beginning I was prepared to give you, the directors of the Minnesota Orchestra, the benefit of the doubt. After all, I understand the financial perils of deficit funding. However, you have now worsened the financial base of the Minnesota Orchestra with your duplicity and lack of ethics. You have deprived the musicians of a living and denied them health insurance for almost a year.
Even at this last Tuesday evening's community forum, on the advice of our eminent guest, Alan Fletcher, I was in a mind to grant you some further indulgence. Now it appears the Minnesota Orchestral Association bought 13 domain names on GoDaddy.com, such as "savetheminnesotaorchestra.com." These purchases were made May 24 of 2012. These purchases appear to have been intended to frustrate the advocacy of citizen groups. They are absolute proof of your lack of integrity and indicate malice aforethought.
The Minnesota Orchestra did not build its worldwide reputation in recent years. At the dawn of the stereo era in 1958/59, I was 10-11 years old. At that age I was already an avid music and audio enthusiast.
In those years in the UK we used to gather at the Grand Old Hotel Russell, on beautiful Russell Square in London, every April for the annual Audio Fair. The fine recordings of the [then-named] Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on the Mercury Living Presence label, recorded by Robert Fine, were at the top of the demonstration discs.
The orchestra's reputation was worldwide then as it is now. Now you have caused financial loss and problems across the oceans frustrating the BIS recording, and completing the Grammy nominated Sibelius symphony cycle under Osmo Vänskä. Given that this is coupled with appearances of the orchestra at the BBC Proms and Carnegie Hall, it should come as no surprise that the eyes of the nation and the world are on you. A mighty chorus is rising up questioning your actions and judgment.
Worse, at the time you were drawing up your infamous plans, the musicians of our orchestra were involved with A.C.M.E to bring El Sistema to the children of North Minneapolis. In addition to frustrating attempts to replace guns with instruments in North Minneapolis, your actions denied your organization funds from philanthropists looking for a social-justice element in their donations. This is now a big consideration in direction of philanthropic donations.
Your only recourse to salvage any personal honor is for you all to sincerely apologize and resign. If you think there are not competent individuals of probity and integrity to replace you, then you are additionally guilty of monumental conceit.
Your actions are far more likely than not to end in the destruction of the much-beloved Minnesota Orchestra, whom you have a sacred obligation to protect and nurture. In the event of the destruction of this orchestra, all your names will live in infamy down the ages.
Yours Faithfully, Mark Carter , M.D.
Dr. Mark Carter lives in Laporte, Minn.
If you're interested in joining the discussion, add your voice to the Comment section below — or consider writing a letter or a longer-form Community Voices commentary. (For more information about Community Voices, email Susan Albright at salbright@minnpost.com.)
Last week’s uproar over the Minnesota Orchestra’s preemptive buy-up of domain names was noticed by the Daily Kos (“Opponents of Minnesota Orchestra Lockout are ON FIRE!”), NPR, and the New Yorker’s Alex Ross, who also commented on Alan Fletcher’s speech to Tuesday’s Orchestrate Excellence forum (“I cannot bring myself to believe – despite mounting evidence – that they [the board and management] actually want a drastically reduced orchestra, its assets stripped, its ambitions narrowed, its activities no longer relevant to the outside world”). Blogger Emily Hogstad, who broke the “Domaingate” story, became an overnight celebrity. Even “Gustav Mahler” stepped into the fray, commenting on the Kos that “anything that prevents performances of my works is bad.”
The uproar turned out to be good for Save Our Symphony Minnesota, a brand-new group of self-described “locked-out patrons and donors of the Minnesota Orchestra whose input, advice, and questions have been ignored by the board and management of the Minnesota Orchestral Association.” SOSMN launched its website, blog, and Facebook page last Tuesday; in the first 48 hours, the Facebook page drew more than 3,700 “likes.” That number is fast approaching 6,000. SOSMN has also helped boost the “likes” count above 8,000 at the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Facebook page.
It might have been fortuitous that the MOA snapped up saveourminnesotaorchestra.org, saveourorchestra.com and other more obvious choices. SOMO and SOO don’t have the sinking-ship urgency of SOSMN, and SOSMN is a nod across the river at SOSPCO, the group of Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra fans who formed in frustration during that orchestra’s lockout.
There are now two large citizens’ groups making noise about the lockout: SOSMN and Orchestrate Excellence. Each has the same goal – ending the lockout – but they’re going about it differently. The former is pro-labor torches-and-pitchforks, the latter more measured and moderate; it wants a resolution, but it’s not taking sides. The two organizations are not at odds, nor are they mutually exclusive. You can “like” both.
On Thursday at the Fair, where he made an appearance at the Star Tribune booth,Gov. Mark Dayton said he believes the two sides of the labor dispute are in their “last window of opportunity … I’m hoping, and this is just my own assumption, that they both want to get it solved and they have until basically Labor Day to do so.” That’s six days from now. What are the chances? There’s always hope. In June, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra was saved just days before a foreclosure auction – by a large infusion of cash from a major donor.
If that’s what it takes, thenSOS: Save Osmo, yet another new group of Minnesota Orchestra supporters, may have more influence than anyone. Launched Saturday on Facebook, SOS: Save Osmo is a pledge campaign that promises financial support for the MOA when four conditions are met: 1) the MOA recommits to its original mission statement; 2) it ensures that Osmo Vänskä remains as music director; 3) the musicians are paid competitive salaries commensurate with the orchestra’s stature as one of the top 10 American orchestras; and 4) a new endowment campaign is launched to create long-term financial stability. We might add a fifth condition, based on Alan Fletcher’s speech last week to the Orchestrate Excellence community forum: 5) musicians are added to the board.
Early signatories to SOS: Save Osmo include Minneapolis attorney Lee Henderson, former Minnesota Orchestra cellist (and current Bakken Trio manager) Mina Fisher, former Minnesota Orchestra associate principal cellist Janet Horvath; Bill Slobotski, who describes himself as a passionate orchestra fan; and Nils Halker, Science Museum of Minnesota professional development specialist and SOSMN secretary. All have spoken out against the lockout.
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MPR has announced the fall 2013 series of “Wits,” plus a new Wits Social Club with bennies.“Wits,” if you don’t know, is a national radio program hosted by John Moe featuring comedians and indie musicians that airs weekly on MPR News and The Current. The show is recorded before a live audience at the Fitzgerald (just like “A Prairie Home Companion”), with stops and starts and occasional do-overs. It’s a party and a tweet fest. The line-up: Oct. 17: Chris Kluwe, Dave Hill, and Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek). Oct. 24: Paul F. Tompkins and Yo La Tengo. Oct. 25: Tompkins again, this time with Rhett Miller (the Old 97’s). Nov. 1: Aisha Taylor (“The Talk”) and Loudon Wainwright III. Nov. 7: Ellie Kemper (“The Office”) and Waxahatchee (Katie Crutchfield). Nov. 14: Margaret Cho and Josh Ritter. Nov. 21: Jim Gaffigan and Busdriver. Dec. 5: Tim Heidecker, Aimee Mann and Ted Leo. Dec. 13: David Cross (“Arrested Development”) and Har Mar Superstar. Dec. 20: Maria Bamford and Thao Nguyen. Tickets go on sale to the public Sept. 17. Wits Social Club members can buy tickets (at a discount) starting Sept. 4 at a special Happy Hour party.
Individual tickets are now on sale to the SPCO’s 2013–14 season, which begins with four weeks of music from Beethoven’s “heroic” period including Symphony No. 5 (on opening night) and the “Pastoral,” the Fourth and the “Emperor” Concerto, plus works by Bach, Mozart, Schoenberg and Dvorák and the world premiere of John Harbison’s “Crossroads.” Conductors are SPCO artistic partners Edo de Waart and Christian Zacharias. Here's the concert calendar; click an event FMI and tickets.
Common Good Books is starting a book club. The first meeting will be at 5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, giving you plenty of time to read the club’s first selection: Jess Walter’s “The Financial Lives of Poets.” A small-time reporter quits his job to write financial journalism in the form of blank verse. That can’t possibly turn out well. RSVP at the store or email colin@commongoodbooks.com. 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul; free. Wine and cheese are provided, as essential to book clubs as books themselves.
Authors, publishers and agents: Nominations are open for the 26th annual Minnesota Book Awards now through 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13. Here’s the 411. Nominations are open as well for the Minnesota Book Artist Award through 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 11. Anyone may nominate a candidate for the Artist Award, and candidates may nominate themselves. FMI.
The Minnesota Historical Society is offering the sort of student internship some of us would have died for in high school.“Design Diaries International” is a new project that explores the question, “How do clothes represent culture and who we are?” Through fashion, history, and culture, teens in St. Paul will connect with Palestinian teens in Jerusalem, create original garments, and hold their own fashion show at the Minnesota History Center to demonstrate what they’ve learned about American and Palestinian clothing. Plus they’ll earn $8/hour. Four will be selected to travel to Jerusalem in 2014. FMI. Applicants should have basic sewing skills.
Tonight (Tuesday, Aug. 27) at the Trylon: “Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.” Hot summer nights are made for Japanese monster movies. When Godzilla goes on the prowl, the daughter of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces calls upon Mothra, King Ghidorah and Baragon for help. (Not up on your daikaiju? Godzilla is a reptilian monster born of the nuclear age; Mothra is a humongous moth; King Ghidorah is a three-headed dragon; Baragon, not pictured, is a dinosaur with big ears and a horn who can fire a heat ray from his mouth.) In Japanese with English subtitles. 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., 3258 Minnehaha Ave., Minneapolis. Tickets here.
Wednesday at the Fair: Read & Ride Day. Show your valid library card at the gate for a discounted admission. Head to Carousel Park for free Minnesota Book Awards bookmarks, fans (worth their weight in gold), and the new literary map, “From Main Street to Your Street: Minnesota Writers on the Map.” Created by the Minnesota Historical Society and Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, the map features 112 Minnesota authors. Here’s Mary Ann Grossmann’s story about it. We want one for the car.
Thursday at the Dakota: Ben Sidran. Singer, pianist, composer (“Space Cowboy”), radio host (NPR’s Peabody-winning “Jazz Alive”), TV host (VH-1’s “New Visions”), author, and Ph.D. Sidran stops by the Dakota once each year or so for an evening of smart, cool and low-key entertainment. He’s touring behind his latest CD, “Don’t Cry for No Hipster.” He writes in the liner notes, “One must approach the hip experience with a lifetime of preparation,” and he should know; this is his 35th solo record. Here’s a preview by Mordecai Specktor, publisher and editor of The American Jewish World and long-time Sidran fan. 7 p.m., 1010 Nicollet Mall. FMI and tickets.
Thursday at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts: “It’s New/It’s Now: Recent Gifts of Contemporary Prints and Drawings.” This show of more than 120 original works on paper by Chuck Close, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Robert Motherwell, Ellsworth Kelly, Elizabeth Murray, David Hockney, and more closes Sept. 1. Catch it while you can. Public tours at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets here ($12/$10/$8, free to members). Thursday night is a great time to go to the MIA.
Correction: An earlier version of this story wrongly identified Bill Slobotski, a signatory to SOS: Save Osmo; the reference has been corrected.
Will there be a Minnesota Orchestra 2013-14 season? Will Osmo Vänskä stay on? Will the orchestra play Carnegie Hall in early November? Will the Symphony Ball on Sept. 20 be festive or, as some have suggested, picketed? Although the silence lifted briefly Thursday in the ongoing labor dispute, by the end of the day, none of these questions had been answered and a new one had been raised: Why isn’t management working with its negotiator, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell?
In a climate of increasing public pressure, management put out details of a play-and-talk offer on Thursday morning. Their offer called for the musicians to return to work by Sept. 30 at “previous contract rates” (their former salaries) for a two-month period, after which, if no agreement is reached, a new annual average salary of $102,200 would be imposed ($135,000 with benefits) for the 24 months of the contract. For most musicians, that would be a 24 percent pay cut. The offer came with a letter that said, “This offer is submitted outside the provisions of the Mediation Agreement between the parties and Senator Mitchell.”
The musicians responded swiftly with a strongly worded statement: “The board and management of the Minnesota Orchestra totally abandoned the mediator they recommended … The offer management presented is the same offer the Musicians unanimously rejected a few weeks ago.” That offer came from management, not Mitchell. In the interim, Mitchell made a proposal that the musicians accepted but management rejected. Mitchell’s proposal called for a two-month play-and-talk period, followed by two more months at a 6 percent salary cut, after which, if negotiations proved unsuccessful, things would revert to where they are now.
Management calls its proposal a way to “guarantee our concertgoers a full concert season.” Arts administration writer Drew McManus calls it a “trap door” for the musicians. “The offer removes all measure of risk for the MOA and they only need to run down the clock in order to achieve an agreement crafted without mutual stakeholder input.” The musicians maintain that “if management had accepted the mediator Mitchell’s independent proposal the Musicians would be back to work now.”
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O, Canada! The Canadian government has done something even more whack than our state Legislature did when it limited travel for artists receiving Minnesota State Arts Board grants. As of July 31, bars, restaurants, and coffee shops that book live music by international artists must pay an application fee of $275 per musician and those traveling with the band (tour manager, sound person, etc.), in addition to an extra $150 for each approved musician and crew member’s work permit. So booking a four-member American band, for example, at the Canadian equivalent of Cause Spirits and Soundbar would cost $1,700 Canadian – just for the band. Before paying the band or anyone else. Even worse, if the application is rejected, the money is nonrefundable. Music writer/video blogger Joel Friemark writes, “Supporters of the change state that it was a move to encourage Canadians to hire local workers as opposed to out-sourcing.”
Major “outsourcers” in the Twin Cities include the Cedar, the Schubert Club and its International Artist Series, and the Walker, whose upcoming Performing Arts Season features six international collaborations and artists from 13 countries. (Great infographic, Walker, BTW.) We asked the Cedar what they think of Canada’s new fees. Executive director Rob Simonds had this to say: “Many tours by artists from outside North American combine U.S. and Canadian dates. While Canadian festivals and performing arts centers are exempt from this huge fee increase, smaller presenters and clubs play an important role on a tour as fill-ins. The fewer opportunities there are for those fill-in dates in Canada, the less viable the economics of an entire tour can become. There is no question that this new Canadian law will potentially force some international artists to forgo a North American tour entirely.” Change.org has posted an online petition protesting the new fees. Simonds signed it Thursday.
Lawmakers who make laws confining artists to within their own borders and/or sealing those borders against artists from elsewhere aren’t seeing the big picture. Sheila Regan has been covering this topic well and without shouting for the Daily Planet. Take a look at her latest, “Travel grants for artists: Two talking points,” and her earlier piece, “Nude Fringe plays, travel grants and the conservative agenda.” (While you’re at it, read Vickie Benson’s “Open Road, Open Mind” on the McKnight Foundation’s blog.)
We spoke with Sen. Richard Cohen soon after the Minnesota Legislature imposed travel restrictions on artists receiving Minnesota State Arts Board grants. (Briefly: Artists may no longer use a portion of their grant money to travel outside of Minnesota for work related to their project, nor may they bring other artists into Minnesota from elsewhere.) We have great respect for Sen. Cohen, without whom we would not have the Legacy Amendment. We understand that when the travel grants fracas erupted, he was caught between the rock of a ticking clock and the hard place of public opinion, and he really does believe that state arts money should spread art across the state. But travel restrictions are not the answer. How can we work to get them lifted? Where can we start?
The Cedar, our own National Geographic of music venues, is launching its 25th anniversary season with a free concert Saturday by Zimbabwean musician and humanitarian Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi and the Black Spirits. Zimbabwe is not a city in Minnesota (that would be Zumbrota), so Mtukudzi must be one of those outsourced musicians. Standing show, doors at 7 p.m., music at 7:30, all ages. FMI. Here’s a video from a performance earlier this year at Globalfest in New York City. September at the Cedar continues with a parade of musicians Not From Around Here: Scotland’s Battlefield Band (Sept. 6), the British ska revival band the Selecter (Sept. 13), Australia's Colin Hay from Men at Work (Sept. 14 at the Pantages), India’s master slide guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya with his group Modern India (Sept. 15), Ethiopia’s Krar Collective (Sept. 18), Sweden’s folk music trio Väsen (Sept. 20), England’s barking Billy Bragg (Sept. 27), Germany’s singer/songwriter Herbert Grönemeyer (Sept. 23), and Finnish-Norwegian folkies Frigg (Sept. 29). And American artists, too, of course. See the complete September line-up here.
Non-musical artists, the Cedar could use your help. They’re looking for a local designer/artist to conceive and build a donation vessel to live on-site in the Cedar’s hall. Project budget: $3,000 to cover all expenses including materials and the commission fee. FMI and RFP. Deadline for submissions: Sept. 9.
Love the Film Society, hate the seats at its St. Anthony Main Theatre? The Business Journal reports that the $2 million renovation currently under way “will include digital projection technology, improved sound systems, new décor, new heating and air conditioning and new seating.” Theater co-owner John Rimarcik says the renovations should be complete by Thanksgiving. Our backs and butts thank you. The Film Society should save one of the worst seats and put it on display in a glass case in the lobby, as a reminder of our past suffering.
The Friends of the Institute of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, who need a shorter name, have announced their 2013-14 Mary and Mark Fiterman Lecture Series. Sept. 12: Nick Cave (the Chicago-based visual artist, not the Australian musician of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), “Body of Work.” Oct. 10: Henry John Drewal, “Making Sense of African Art: Yoruba Arts and Culture” (the MIA's redesigned African art galleries reopen Nov. 10). Nov. 14: David Lowe, “The Artists of Montmartre.” Dec. 12: Alain Gruber, “The Splendour of Table Decoration in the Period of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour” (ideas for your holiday table?). Jan. 9, 2014: Nobel Prize-winning neuropsychiatrist Eric Kandel, M.D., “The Age of Insight: the Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain from Vienna 1900 to Present.” Feb. 3: Deborah Pierce, “Art Theft and the FBI” (Pierce is a former FBI special agent). March 13: Emily Allchurch, “Tokyo Story: Journey in the Footsteps of a Master.” April 10: Elyse Karlin, “Jewelry of the First Ladies.” May 8: Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, “Michelangelo’s Genius: Nature vs. Nurture.” Thursdays at 11 a.m. in the museum’s Pillsbury Auditorium. Free and open to the public.
Rain Taxi Review of Books has announced the featured guest line-up for the Thirteenth Annual Twin Cities Book Festival. The actual festival takes place Saturday, Oct. 12, at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds; events kick off Thursday with a Pen Pals presentation in Hopkins by short story writer George Saunders and continues with the Friday Night Soiree, both ticketed events. The day-long festival of readings, panels, signings, the Used Book Sale, Lit Mag Fair, raffles, and more is free and open to the public. Participating authors include novelists Nicholson Baker (“The Anthologist”) and Mircea Cartarescu (“Nostalgia”); poets Rae Armantrout (“Just Saying”) and Minnesota native David Wojahn (“World Tree”); nonfiction authors Delia Ephron (“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”), Howard Mohr (“How to Talk Minnesotan”), and Ytasha L. Womack (“Post Black: How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity”); and three-time Caldecott Medal-winning artist David Wiesner (“Tuesday,” “The Three Pigs,” “Flotsam”). FMI.
The people have purred. On Wednesday night at the State Fair Grandstand, “The Original Grumpy Cat” won the Golden Kitty, the Internet Cat Video Festival’s People’s Choice Award. If you weren’t among the 10,000 in the audience for the screening, here’s a playlist of selected videos.
Tonight (Friday, Aug. 30) and tomorrow at the Artists’ Quarter: JazzMN Orchestra. How will the 17-member JazzMN squeeze onto the stage at the St. Paul basement jazz establishment? Watching that happen is one reason to be there for JazzMN’s first-ever club dates. Now in its 15th year, this is a first-class big band of top Twin Cities players. Seeing them at the AQ will be a thrill. 9 p.m., $20 at the door. 408 St. Peter St. in the historic Hamm Building.
Friday and Saturday at Public Functionary: “Sougwen Chung: Chiaro/Oscuro.” This is art best viewed at night, so the hours are 8 p.m. to midnight Friday, 8 to 11 p.m. Saturday. Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist Sougwen uses light and dark, dense and delicate line drawings, digital manipulations, projection mapping and dimension to create an immersive experience that leads you from one piece, one pause to another. Friday includes activities: collaborative art-making, henna artists, live models and screen printing. If you can’t make it this weekend, visit the exhibition page to learn what’s happening on future Friday nights.
Saturday at Stone’s Throw Urban Farm in south Minneapolis: “Agent Fidelio: A Picnic Operetta.” Now in its fifth year, the theater company Mixed Precipitation brings opera to gardens, orchards and parks, with snacks. This year’s offering: an adaptation of Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” a tale of whistle-blowers, media suppression, “hacktivists” and privatized prisons — sound familiar? Served with a sampling of locally sourced bites by chefs Nick Schneider (Café Brenda, Spoonriver) and Chris Roberts (Piccolo, Patisserie 46), it features a cast of 16 and music by Beethoven and Jimmy Cliff performed by a chamber orchestra. Suggested donation $10-$20. Reservations recommended; go here or call 1-800-838-3006. On Saturday it moves to the Alexis Bailly Vineyard in Hastings. Reserve here or by phone. Performances are at 4 p.m. See the schedule for more dates through Sept. 15.
Today through Monday: the Fair. The People’s Choice awards are in, and these are voters’ favorite vendors: Henna Art by Sole Shine (Best Product or Service), Carl’s Gizmo Sandwich (Best Food or Beverage), Eco Experience, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (Best Attraction), Hamline Church Dining Hall (Best Value), Mancini’s Al Fresco (Best Customer Service). Especially on Monday, the last day, there’s an air of melancholy, a lees-of-summer feel that leaves you wanting that last cheese curd, Pronto Pup and ride on the Ferris wheel.
Wednesday at the Dakota: Nancy Harms CD Release. Harms grew up in Clara City, started teaching school in Milaca, then realized she wanted to be a singer. She moved to the Twin Cities and was performing in public within the year. Today she lives in New York and sings in legendary clubs like Birdland and Smalls. She’s coming home to release her second CD, “Dreams in Apartments,” a mix of originals and standards that tell her story of restlessness, change and reinvention. Here's our CD review. 7 p.m., $10 at the door. FMI.
The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra will open its 2013-14 season tonight. After a contract dispute and lockout gutted the 2012-13 season, the SPCO is back – much changed by the loss of several musicians to retirement (the new contract included a special incentive for musicians over age 55), but still the SPCO. We have faith in this great orchestra. Bruce Coppock has returned as president, and the administration now includes two musicians, principal second violinist Kyu-Young Kim (who was talked into returning after taking a position at the New York Philharmonic) and retired violinist Tom Kornacker. Tonight and Saturday at the Ordway are sold out, but as of yesterday afternoon, there were still a few tickets available for Sunday at the Ted Mann at 2 p.m. The program: Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven’s Fifth, conducted by Edo de Waart. The SPCO has given the month of September to Beethoven; check the concert calendar for dates and program information.
On Thursday, the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra officially and unanimously rejected management’s latest contract offer. In a second vote, they unanimously urged management to reconsider and accept a proposal made earlier by mediator and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. In a statement issued later that day by the orchestra, president and CEO Michael Henson noted that “the mediator’s confidential proposal is not a contract proposal – it was only suggested as a means of getting musicians to come to the bargaining table.” Save Our Symphony Minnesota, a citizens’ group of audience members and donors, will hold a rally and media event starting tonight at 5 p.m. on Peavey Plaza at the corner of Nicollet Mall and 11th St. in Minneapolis, in front of Orchestra Hall. A press release says that the rally and media event will “precede the ‘Private Patron Party’ which will be held at Orchestra Hall following this event … The SOSMN event is to emphasize the point that now is no time for Minnesota Orchestra supporters to be partying.”
Macalester’s New Music Series is barely a series – concerts happen twice, maybe three times a year – but it’s a jewel. The main reason the artists are here is to work with Mac students in classes and master classes. The public performances are a gift to the rest of us. Past artists have included guitarist Bill Frisell (who played to a packed house in February), the genre-defying vocalist Theo Bleckmann and jazz composer/bandleader Maria Schneider. The series continues Tuesday, Sept. 10, with the pioneering New York-based string quartet ETHEL. They’ll play a program called “Grace” with music by area composer Mary Ellen Childs, jazz pianist/composer Vijay Iyer, singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley, film score composer Ennio Morricone (“The Mission”), contemporary classical music composer Nico Muhly, and ETHEL member, Berklee graduate and Minnesota native Kip Jones.
Some of us will remember Jones from nights at Studio Z, Barbette, the Black Dog, the Nomad, Café Maude, and other places around the Twin Cities. His performances are memorable for many reasons. He uses viola strings on his violin to more closely match his own voice, because he often sings along (sometimes in Korean). He describes his music as “experimental folk” — music from regions or people that don’t exist. Unpredictable, high-energy, sometimes otherworldly, it’s flavored with his extensive travels across the Americas and Asia with his wife, Noelle, a teacher in the Twin Cities; his encounters with nomads and migrant laborers; his performances in subway systems and a cave in Laos; and his studies at Berklee and in Mumbai with Hindustani violinist Kala Ramnath.
We’ve seen Jones play several times and took the chance to catch up before Tuesday’s concert.
MinnPost: When did you join ETHEL?
Kip Jones: July 2012. I found out I got the gig while traveling by horseback in Mongolia. We had celebratory bottles of Jalam Khar, the only good Mongolian beer.
MP: How has your life changed?
KJ: I’m not very good at being busy, but I’m figuring it out. I’m playing a lot more amazing music and meeting a lot of amazing people. There’s a toll and a workload, but the payoff is great.
MP: The hardest/most challenging part?
KJ: Being away from my wife and family without the satisfaction of international travel. Traveling for work is still work.
MP: The best/most satisfying part?
KJ: We play such unique, great music, and all the ETHELs are such great folks. I couldn’t imagine being in a band with better (or wackier) people.
MP: You’ve always been a traveler. Did that help to prepare you for life with ETHEL?
KJ: It certainly prepared me for the pleasures and discomforts of travel. I’ve had to do a lot of catching up on classical violin technique, and traveling for such long periods definitely allowed those specific skill areas to atrophy a bit.
MP: What’s happening with your own music?
KJ: I write a lot for the quartet and am working on a new solo violin outing. At the moment I can’t decide whether or not to incorporate electronic processing. I’ve been getting into looping and techno, using open-source software, and there is a real frontier in live electronics processing with acoustic instruments. Only a handful of folks are doing it in a meaningful way.
MP: Do you still consider yourself an artist “based in Minnesota”?
KJ: I am certainly still based in Minnesota.
MP: Are you still using viola strings on your violin?
KJ: Nope! On my Minnesota-made Folland/Soltis fiddle with my Minnesota-representing CodaBow, I am strung up classical as they come.
ETHEL plays Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 7:30 p.m. in the new Mairs Concert Hall in the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, 1600 Grand Ave. St. Paul. Free and open to the public. No tickets, no reservations. First come, first served. Doors at 7.
Tonight at the Jungle: “Fool for Love” opens. Sam Shepherd’s Obie-winning, Pulitzer-nominated play is one of the Jungle’s most-requested productions. Designed and directed by Bain Boehlke, set in a seedy motel on the edge of the Mojave desert, it’s a tale of transient lovers, doomed love and loss. Terry Hempleman reprises his role as Eddie, with Jennifer Blagen as May. This is probably not a great choice for a first date. 8 p.m. tonight, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S. Through Oct. 20. FMI and tickets.
Saturday, Sept. 7 at the Basilica of Saint Mary: The Rose Ensemble Season Opening Concert. An hour of medieval and Renaissance repertoire in a spectacular setting. Arrive early to peruse the silent auction; proceeds support the Rose Ensemble. 8 p.m., 88 No. 17th St., Minneapolis. Free, but donations are welcome.
Saturday, Sept. 7 at the Soap Factory: The 3rd Minnesota Biennial Exhibition opening reception. An immersive, interdisciplinary exhibit of emerging contemporary art made in Minnesota by 38 artists whose work spans visual and sonic art, performance, writing and interactivity. No title, no theme but “trust the platform.” And the artists. Reception 7-11 p.m., 514 Second St. SE, Minneapolis. Through Nov. 3. On Sept. 15, 22, and 29 and Oct. 13 and 20, MinnPost writer Andy Sturdevant (The Stroll) will lead artist panels.
Sunday, Sept. 8 at Plymouth Church: An exhibition of works by Eyenga Bokamba opens. Bokamba's works have been widely collected by public libraries, universities and collectors. An artist reception will be held at the church on the following Sunday, Sept. 15. 1900 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis.
Tuesday, Sept. 10 at Westminster Presbyterian Church: Cantus rehearsal. The stellar men’s vocal ensemble is opening some of its rehearsals to guests. Watch upcoming concerts “A Place for Us” (about the meaning of home), “Christmas With Cantus,” and “Dvorák: Going Home” take shape. Cantus rehearses and performs without a music director; their music is a true collaborative process. At the end of the hour, the singers take a break for introductions and questions. 5-6 p.m., 1200 Marquette Ave., Minneapolis. Free and open to the public, but reservations are recommended. Call 612-435-0046 or email info@cantussings.org. Go here FMI and a list of open rehearsals through Jan. 2014.
Thursday, Sept. 12 at Union Depot: “Station to Station: A Nomadic Happening.” Artist Douglas Aitken’s train-turned-kinetic-sculpture is traveling from New York to San Francisco, making ten stops along the way, and we’re one. The evening includes performances by Patti Smith and Jackson Smith, Eleanor Friedberger, No Age, BodyCartography, and more, plus sculptures, artworks, moving images, and printed matter by dozens of artists. FMI and tickets. One night, one chance to take this in.
The Minnesota Orchestra Managements full page ad in the Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune ominously said: “Eight days left….”
Today is Thursday. That must mean there are four days left, which means next Monday is the day.
According to the folks who approved the copy for the ad, anyway.
I wonder how I’d vote, if in the Orchestra, 11 months locked out, having had to subsist with other than Orchestra pay or benefits, faced with an offer which at this point can only be one to save face for Orchestra Management.
Sharks don’t do deals, other than to win….
There is less question how I’d vote as a locked out patron, who didn’t have an opportunity to use any of my 2012-13 season tickets.
Of course, we patrons (aka audience, listeners) appear to not much matter.
For this single listener, the end of the Orchestra as we knew it happened back in January, 2013; but the beginning of the end probably began over a small lunch or dinner at a fancy restaurant somewhere back around the near collapse of our economy in 2008, five Septembers ago, when a few powerful people shared some ideas about making the Big Dreams they had into reality. There is, after all, great profit to be made from adversity, if you know how to play the money game. And there are different definitions of “profit,” too.
There are probably some scribbled ideas on sheets of paper somewhere about
how to exploit a near economic catastrophe as an excuse, in other words.
Or, perhaps there is no definable “ground zero.” It just evolved.
I speak as a single audience member, simply a long term account number at the Minnesota Orchestra (who seems, to my knowledge, to have been ‘disappeared’ from the Orchestra managements ordinary communication network.)
For some time now I have said, including more than once in this and other blog posts, that I’ll return to Orchestra Hall if and only if the Musicians Union ratifies a new contract. (This does not mean a “kick the can down the road” temporary agreement.)
But even if I’m back, the reality remains: without major changes in how business is done at Orchestra Management level, including who is permitted to be on the Board, the new Orchestra Hall will be a monument to failure of management and not to success.
To me, the Minnesota Orchestra of 110 years has been killed.
There are many models (mindsets, I’ll call them) which could have been followed to avoid this pending Armageddon.
Just for perspective, here are a couple of examples, compared against the current apparent model:
A. Alan Fletcher, President and CEO of the Aspen Music School and Festival, said this on June 23, 2013: “Classical music in the United States depends on four groups working together: musicians, donors, administrators, and listeners.” Two months later he said similarly, across the street from Orchestra Hall.
There is at least an implication in his remarks that these four components have essentially equal value.
B. As those of us in the audience now know, the Minnesota Orchestra Management has (and may have always had) a different model:
with the administrators/large donors superior; and the listeners (it now appears) essentially irrelevant except to purchase tickets.
This model worked so long as there was a benevolent donor class which believed in great music for the greater community played by a top tier Orchestra conducted by a top tier music director.
Wealthy opportunists who like music but like power and control even more apparently saw their opportunity to take over the Orchestra, and have done so, and here we are.
C. And there’s a third model, which Board member Harvey Mackays “Swim with the Sharks” book caused me to revisit this week.
The alternative is in “A Man’s Reach” by Elmer L. Andersen (edited by Lori Sturdevant, University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
Mr. Andersen would be well known to any of the “players” on the current Orchestra Board: orphan who loved books and learning; well to do and very successful business owner, life-long Republican, MN political and civic leader, including Governor and UofM Board of Regents, philanthropist, on and on.
We were friends the last 12 years of his life.
In his book, pages 96-100, Mr. Andersen describes his “corporate philosophy” which “was built around four priorities in a definite order.”
Mr. Andersen died in 2004. It would be interesting to hear Mr. Andersen and Mr. Mackay et al discuss the word “customer” in context with the Minnesota Orchestra.
There is, in my opinion, a severe distinction and disconnect between Mr. Mackay’s “Shark” approach to business and Andersen’s “A Man’s Reach” philosophy, and the distinction is on display at 1111 Nicollet Avenue now.
Mr. Andersen can’t engage in this conversation, at least directly. I wonder what he and many of his other contemporaries – former pillars of this community – would have to say.
Four days. My best to the parties.
The Listeners will determine the future.
This post was written by Dick Bernard and originally published on Outside the Walls.
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I want to call attention to a recent statement from the Minnesota Orchestra's Board of Directors because I think it explains part of the problem surrounding this labor dispute.
In a recent Star Tribune ad the board ran this quote from the AKA/Strategy report: "It is unrealistic to think the Orchestra can fundraise its way out of its current financial difficulties." (Page 9)
Clearly the board is behind this statement since it paid good money to set it before the public.
I think there is a key flaw in the statement: Nowhere in the report does the author provide any support for it.
The closest support I can find is two statements found on Page 13.
The key word used in each sentence is the auxiliary verb MAY. "May" doesn't support any assertion as fact; it only suggests a possibility of a given outcome, i.e. might happen, might not happen, we don't really know.
Using the AKA/Strategy report's own words, there MAY be several other potential outcomes that deserve equal consideration and analysis.
The board has yet to realize that every word coming from it will be analyzed, parsed and picked over. The days of statements being handed down from Orchestra Hall like stone tablets are gone. Until the board gets this there is no chance for the situation to improve.
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Artcape as you usually know it is taking a bit of a break. But here are our top arts picks from today through Sept. 19. We'll have another set of picks next Friday before returning with fuller coverage on Sept. 27.
Tonight at Mount Olive Lutheran Church: Portland Cello Project. Imagine a band of 4-12 cellists playing music by Bach, Beck and Brubeck. The inventive and thrilling PCP will play a concert at Mount Olive as part of the church's Music and Fine Arts Program. 7:30 p.m., 3045 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis. Free and open to the public. Free will offerings accepted. A reception follows.
Friday and Saturday at the Ritz: Open Door Music #1. For fans of improvised music, this weekend is a very big deal. Two nights of conducted improvisation and free style music will celebrate Butch Morris, who passed away earlier this year. Morris created a unique form of large-ensemble music built on collective improvisation that he directed, shaped, named and trademarked “Conduction.” The Morris mini-festival will also feature the Twin Cities premier of the documentary film about Morris’s life, “Black February.” Friday: 7 p.m. “Black February,” 8 p.m. music by IMP ORK. Saturday: 7 p.m. “Black February,” 8 p.m. music by Cherry Spoon Collective, 9 p.m. Improvestra, 10 p.m. Coloring Time. FMI and tickets ($15 one night, $25 both nights). 345 13th Ave. NE, Minneapolis.
Friday through Sunday at Northern Clay Center: 2013 American Pottery Festival. Now in its 15th year, this annual pottery spectacular draws clay lovers from across the country to shop, talk, learn, and tour. For anyone who has fallen under the spell of handmade mugs, plates, bowls, pitchers, and tea pots, this weekend is the equivalent of dying, going to heaven, and returning to earth with new pots. 2424 East Franklin Ave., Minneapolis. Go here for information, a schedule of events, and tickets.
Saturday, Sept. 14, in St. Paul: Selby Avenue Jazz Fest. A full day of jazz from neighborhood, regional, national and international artists, artist demonstrations, family activities and food. With the Dick and Jane Brass Band, Ham Brass Band, Johannes Tona, Damon L. Brown, and Marcus Johnson. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the intersection of Selby Ave. and Milton St. in St. Paul. Free. FMI.
Saturday, Sept. 14, at Franconia Sculpture Park: Franconia Jazz Festival. An afternoon of cool and hot jazz with Trio Pika (featuring Adam Linz), Sophia Shorai, Atlantis Quartet, Lucia Newell and Debbie Duncan. Noon – 6 p.m. 29836 St. Croix Trail, Franconia, MN. Free (parking $5).
Saturday, Sept. 14, at Target Park across from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts: Dog Day at MIA. Rescheduled from June 22, the day after all hell broke loose in a storm that toppled trees all over the cities and knocked out power for days. Bring your pooch to an afternoon of dogs, art, and music outdoors. 1-4 p.m. FMI. Free.
Sunday, Sept. 15, at the Lake Harriet Bandshell: A free concert by the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. Principal trumpet Manny Laureano will conduct Weber’s Overture to “Der Freischutz” and Tchaikovsky’s triumphant Symphony No. 5. Last year’s Lake Harriet performance drew a crowd of nearly 4,000 people. 5 p.m., 4135 West Lake Harriet Parkway, Minneapolis.
Sunday, Sept. 15: Saint Paul Open Streets. The debut of a brand-new public street fair. Over two miles of University Ave. in St. Paul (from Hamline to Marion) will be closed to motorized traffic so people of all ages can come out and play. Three stages will feature live music, dance, and artistic performances. With activities, free dance and exercise lessons, cooking demonstrations, and the chance to sample unique foods and goods from more than 50 participating local merchants. 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. FMI and free bus pass.
Tuesday, Sept. 17, at the Children’s Theatre: “Charlotte’s Web” opens. Based on the book by E.B. White about a spider named Charlotte, a pig named Wilbur, friendship, devotion, and sacrifice. This is the play’s first time at CTC and we’re eager to see how it turns out. Greg Banks (“Pinocchio,” “A Wrinkle in Time”) directs Joseph Robinette’s stage play. 7 p.m., 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis. Grades K+. Go here for a calendar and tickets.
Wednesday, Sept. 18 at the Weisman: Words at WAM. Bring your fiction, poetry, nonfiction and spoken word to the literary open mic co-hosted by Hazel & Wren, the local online literary community, and the Weisman’s student group WAM Collective. Following a social hour and sign-up, wordsmiths of all genres will share their work with the crowd. Rockstar readers include fiction/nonfiction writer Ktie Sisneros (“The Tangential”) and poet Dobby Gibson, whose latest, “It Becomes You,” came out on Graywolf. 6-8:30 p.m., 333 East River Rd., Minneapolis.
Wednesday, Sept. 18 at the Orpheum: “Wicked” opens – again. This is the blockbuster Broadway musical’s fourth time in Minneapolis. The untold story of the witches of Oz, it has won 35 major awards including a Grammy and three Tonys. 910 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis. Through Oct. 28. Performance dates, times and tickets. Learn more about “Wicked” at the Broadway Confidential program on Monday, Sept. 23 at 5:30 at the New Century Theater, 615 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis. Free. FMI.
Thursday, Sept. 19 at the Dakota: Ravi Coltrane Quartet. Being the son of jazz icon John Coltrane and playing the saxophone could be a crushing double burden, but Ravi has his own voice, his own ideas, and his own stellar quartet with Luis Perdomo on piano, Drew Gress on bass and E.J. Strickland on drums. 7 and 9 p.m., 1010 Nicollet Mall. FMI and tickets ($35/$25).
The Minnesota Orchestra and Orchestra Hall play an important part in my life.
I first heard George Gershwin’s “Cuban Overture” at one of Leonard Slatkin’s“rug concerts” in the 1970s. My wife and I had season tickets while we were college students, putting us in the first row at Orchestra Hall, where we could see the member of the double-bass section who wore soft cloth shoes instead of dress shoes like his section-mates.
At Orchestra Hall I saw Van Cliburn in the 1970s, Maynard Ferguson in the 1980s, Tony Bennett in the 1990s and the Count Basie Orchestra in 2000s.
Over the last year I’ve observed the lockout and cancellation of the 2012-2013 season at Orchestra Hall and tried to make sense of it. Economic theory suggests two explanations: one that applies to the 2012-2013 lockout and season cancellation and one that illuminates the current contract negotiations, including the potential loss of music director Osmo Vänskä.
Have you ever gone to a restaurant and observed: “No one is here. How can this place stay in business?” If you think about it, it’s pretty clear what’s up: If a restaurateur signs a six-month lease, they might lose less money continuing to hire cooking and wait staff and open every day than by closing the doors and paying off the lease.
Economists call this the shutdown decision. A company must decide whether it will lose less money by operating and earning some revenue rather than by closing and earning no revenue.
My hunch is that the Minnesota Orchestra board made a similar decision. Faced with the choice of playing concerts away from Orchestra Hall while it was being refurbished, they figured they would incur smaller losses by locking out the musicians and canceling all concerts than by paying the musicians, renting alternative venues and holding performances.
Suppose you’re at a used car lot and find two cars that look exactly the same on the inside and outside, have the same number of miles and are priced the same. Which one should you buy? The dealer might know that one of them has a cracked cylinder head and the other doesn’t, but you can’t tell. In the absence of some kind of law requiring the dealer to completely disclose all problems with their cars, you’re stuck. You’ll have to take your chances and pick one of the cars and pay the same price regardless.
This is a situation in which the buyer and seller have asymmetric information. Economists observe this problem in markets ranging from used cars in the United States to milk quality in India to financial markets in developing economies.
I think that the orchestra's governing body, Minnesota Orchestral Association, understands the asymmetric information problem. Specifically, they are betting that a typical concert-goer cannot tell the difference between a top-flight orchestra (the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel) and a very good orchestra (the Minnesota Orchestra under Eiji Oue.) They also estimate that they can generate the same amount of revenue — sell the same number of tickets at the same prices — with a top-flight orchestra and a very good orchestra. So, in this scenario, it makes sense to field a very good ensemble that generates a smaller loss.
If I’m right, then Maestro Vänskä is on his way out and a lot of new musicians will be joining the Minnesota Orchestra. That will be fine with the board, as there are conductors and musicians of good quality who will be happy to come to Minnesota and play in Orchestra Hall. Season-ticket sales will stay about the same and, with a refurbished hall, a reduced orchestra schedule and more non-Minnesota Orchestra events, revenues will rise and costs will fall.
If this happens, it might be best if the board changes the orchestra’s name. I suggest that they call the new ensemble the Lake Wobegon Symphony — where the management is strong, the hall is good looking and the orchestra is above average.
“They can’t even agree on what day it is.”
The speaker, a prominent St. Paul arts administrator, was reflecting on the debate last Friday on Minnesota Public Radio’s "The Daily Circuit" concerning the contract battle between the management of the Minnesota Orchestra and the musicians, who have been locked out since last October, the longest lockout ever of a major American orchestra. Indeed, the two combatants on the show, orchestra President and CEO Michael Henson and, speaking for the musicians, percussionist Kevin Watkins, couldn’t agree on much of anything over the course of an increasingly tense 40 minutes of talk – not on finances, not on the reasons for the lockout, and certainly not on strategies to solve the crisis, not even on the role of the orchestra in the community.
The degree of their mutual frustration suggested that this was enmity with legs. Its roots went back further than the start of the lockout last October — and they would surely continue to poison the organism long after a new contract is signed, should that ever happen.
And there was extra pressure on all participants Friday that likely raised the emotional temperature. Music Director Osmo Vänskä, under whose artistic leadership the orchestra has enjoyed unprecedented popularity and critical acclaim, had said the musicians must be in rehearsal the week of Sept. 30 to be ready for two dates at Carnegie Hall in early November; he'd earlier said that, should the Carnegie Hall concerts be canceled he would have to resign. All this means the "deadline" is approaching fast since the musicians, some of them working elsewhere, would have to be given a reasonable amount of notice to return to work (in fact management had set Sept. 15 as a deadline because of this).
Vänskä’s situation here, needless to say, is becoming untenable. And yet his departure, especially under these dark circumstances, would be an irreparable loss to the orchestra, to the city and perhaps to the entire world of music-lovers, given the special chemistry that has evolved between this orchestra and conductor. One result of that chemistry is an award-winning series of recordings, the most recent of them a Sibelius set that will remain unfinished if Vänskä leaves.
Vänskä is much in demand as a guest conductor in this country and in Europe – he enjoys special favor in England. Should he seek another permanent post, he will easily find one. However, given the negative publicity this lockout has received around the world, it’s hard to imagine that a conductor of any renown or significance would be willing to take on the orchestra here, at least for a while. That suggests several seasons of guest conductors and an inevitable artistic incoherence; it takes time for even an outstanding conductor and orchestra to develop a relationship, a consistent level of excellence, and a distinctive sound.
Besides which, it won’t be the same orchestra. Many musicians have already left, have retired or are taking a year off to play in another orchestra. (Artscape writer Pamela Espeland provides a detailed count here.)
Moreover, looking at the board’s strategic plan and its revised mission statement, which eliminated (but then, after a brouhaha by musicians, reinstated) any reference to the orchestra itself, it’s clear that the board envisions the standard orchestral format and programming playing a lesser role in the future than they have in the past. The orchestra would share time with an increased number of pops concerts and “presentations,” meaning the booking of various kinds of outside musical acts. This is either a bad idea or an idea that’s ahead of its time, and it needs to be explained more fully. Either way, it has infuriated the musicians who, seeing all this plus plans for an orchestra reduced in size, were also asked to accept a salary reduction of 34 per cent on average — along with more than 200 changes in work rules. This is not a recipe for sustaining artistic excellence.
Henson’s public response to the exodus of so many musicians was characteristically cavalier. The New York Times quoted him: “When we get up and running again … I’m sure we will get an astonishing bunch of individuals who will want to perform and live in this great city.” This suggestion that orchestra musicians are easily exchanged one for the other and that experience doesn’t count for much was yet another insult to those musicians here who haven’t bailed out — especially since a number of those now departed, like Burt Hara and Stephanie Arado, were more than key players; they were stars of the orchestra.
Even more callous was the comment early this month by Richard Davis, chairman of the management’s negotiating team, to the Star Tribune. “Osmo may have to leave,” he said. “The board is resolved to know that this is a risk. Carnegie, the opening of the hall. All three may fall.”
One should grant the sincerity of Henson’s and Davis’ and current board chairman Jon Campbell’s efforts to manage the orchestra’s finances and solve its problems, among them the mounting deficits — reported as $2.9 million in fiscal 2011 and $6 million in 2012, to be followed, they say, by potentially larger ones, if there is no substantial drop in expenses or increase in revenues. And, of course, they aren’t to blame for the recession of 2008 and ’09, which caused a tumble in the value of many orchestra endowment funds around the country. However, many if not most of the biggest of those funds have gradually returned to their former value. This is not the case here.
To acknowledge their efforts isn’t to excuse the manner in which they have presented themselves and their dealings with the musicians in public. To an observable degree, they have become the villains of this 12-month scenario. The musicians, of course, have contributed to this, wasting no opportunity to denounce the management and the board at their self-managed concerts and creating in short order what is probably the liveliest and most informative musicians' website in cyber history.
It’s clear that a lockout, no matter who’s cast in the lead roles, creates an especially intense kind of drama. A lockout, one might argue, is a legitimate albeit drastic tactic in labor relations. It gets people’s attention, and it certainly did that here. The downside is that it severely disrupts lives — and in this case deprives audiences of music as it puts an outstanding ensemble in jeopardy. It also makes the employer look heartless, especially if the lockout continues for an extended period. It’s not unlike World War 1: a few skirmishes at the start, followed by agonizing and deadly years of stalemate in the trenches accompanied by ever-growing hatred for the enemy. One guesses that Henson and his people thought the lockout would be brief and effective, that, after a few offers and counteroffers, the musicians would be back onstage by December at the latest – back home for Christmas, 1914, as all the belligerents thought at the start of the war.
Which leads to the question: What if the musicians had accepted the management’s first salary offer: a cut in base pay down to $78,000 from $115,000? According to figures from the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ISCOM), this would drop the orchestra’s ranking by salary from No. 8 to 17, putting it right behind the Detroit Symphony, which is still in the recovery stage from a corrosive six-month strike that ended in 2011. The orchestra here, in other words, would drop from the top 10 to what is usually thought of as the category of regional orchestras.
From the musicians’ point of view, concern about salary rankings is more than the desire for a bigger paycheck. They speak of “feeder” orchestras and of “destination” orchestras — orchestras of artistic excellence where they're playing with the best musicians, under the best conductors, and are able to recruit the best new members. A musician in a feeder orchestra, so the argument goes, is often biding his time until he can audition for – and get – a position in a destination orchestra, that is, a top-10 ensemble. In a feeder orchestra the best players may be out the door shortly after they arrive, which gives the orchestra a feeling of impermanence and no cohesive style. (Of course some musicians in, let’s say, the Atlanta Symphony will say, “I love this city, this orchestra, the weather and the cute house I bought. Even though I just got an offer from the Boston Symphony, I’m staying here.”)
Nonetheless, both artistic rewards and salary rankings affect the way orchestra musicians view their work and their professional standing. Which is why it irks the musicians here no end that the management and the board never address this issue: Do we lose anything by becoming a regional orchestra?
Said flutist Wendy Williams in an e-mail, “We want to remain a destination orchestra so that we can serve our community as an arts leader and continue to offer the artistic excellence that our community has come to expect and deserves.”
According to Williams, the two orchestras she and her colleagues think of as peers of the one here are the Cleveland Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony. In the 2011-12 season, the salary ranking put the Minnesota Orchestra in eighth place, at $111,566, between the Cleveland Orchestra ($120,120) and the Philadelphia Orchestra ($108,750). Pittsburgh at that time was ranked in tenth place at $100,110. Closer to the present, Pittsburgh comes in at $102,104 and Cleveland at $123,864.
Artistic ranking, of course, is a different – and more subjective – matter. But orchestras with artistic excellence tend to also have larger budgets. In terms of artistry, Cleveland and Philadelphia traditionally have been listed in the Top 5 (along with Boston, Chicago and New York). Four or five decades ago, no one in the music business would have ranked the San Francisco Symphony or the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the top 5 or even the top 10. Now both are in everybody’s top 10, as are their budgets and salaries. San Francisco emerged from a brief strike last year with a base salary of $148,000. Question: With all due respect to Michael Tilson Thomas, a brilliant conductor, does any musically literate person think the San Francisco Symphony is the artistic equal of the orchestra here under Vänskä? Ten years from now, if the Minnesota Orchestra has dropped into the regional orchestra category, the answer to that question might be quite different from what it is today.
It’s been a tough year for American orchestras, a year of strikes and lockouts and teeth-gnashing. Even so, just about all the contracts have been settled, some with modest increases in salary for the musicians. (Musicians of the Atlanta Symphony signed a contract after a three-week lockout.) One, of course, a big one, is still unresolved. There are glimmers of hope (and things have been quiet this week) — but the prospects appear bleak, and frustration and anger abound. In just a few days, a cherished music director might pack up and leave.
The clock is ticking …
Michael Anthony, a former longtime music critic for the Star Tribune and the author of "Osmo Vänskä, Orchestra Builder," writes about classical music and other arts topics for MinnPost.
The authors, all members of the Minnesota Orchestra, submitted this commentary on behalf of the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra.
It is a universally acknowledged truth that every orchestra in possession of a time-honored reputation achieved that reputation through an astonishing chemistry between the musicians and one galvanizing conductor. The Cleveland Orchestra had this with George Szell. In Philadelphia it was Leopold Stokowski. It was Leonard Bernstein in New York, Serge Koussevitzky in Boston and Georg Solti in Chicago. We know these orchestras today by what they achieved during these fertile partnerships.
The Minnesota Orchestra can boast having had many renowned music directors over the last century: Eugene Ormandy, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Antal Doráti, to name just a few. Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, who still makes Minnesota his home when he is not conducting all over the world, embedded great music deeply into the fabric of Minnesota culture. When Sir Neville Marriner became music director, he was the most recorded conductor in the world. Eiji Oue brought an exuberance that made it possible for us to be the first American orchestra ever to play at Hiroshima. Edo de Waart put into place many of the vital pieces that made the Minnesota Orchestra the remarkable instrument that it is today, the instrument that Osmo Vänskä has since been able to tap to full advantage.
That brings us to the present and the marriage between Osmo and the current musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. It has taken decades for all the elements of greatness to come together: a culture of constant striving, an uncompromising work ethic, the right people in the right positions, and a conductor at the helm with the temperament and charisma to make all the elements coalesce.
In short, something clicked with Osmo.
Osmo’s disciplined approach to artistry has focused our ensemble in many ways. At this point in his tenure, we have gotten to know him well. After living and working with each other for nearly a decade, we have achieved a rapport that enables us to anticipate each other, to work quickly and accurately to produce tremendous results that have received rave reviews both here at home and from around the world.
But perhaps most notably, with Osmo, the Minnesota Orchestra has developed a unique, signature sound. This is a rare quality among orchestras anywhere in the world today. With Edo, we excelled at the large, complex Viennese repertoire. With Eiji, we honed our chamber music skills. Both are assets that have stood us in good stead, to be sure. But, a signature sound is a coveted distinction rarely achieved.
The recordings we have made together — the complete symphonies of Beethoven and the as-yet incomplete Sibelius cycle of symphonies for which we received our most recent Grammy nomination — are the most sustained, credible and widely recognized recording projects ever undertaken by the Minnesota Orchestra. And we have recorded extensively since the 1950s. Our unprecedented invitation to do four Carnegie Hall concerts in a given year, as well as the international profile of our appearances at numerous European festivals, have brought recognition to our community that would be impossible without Osmo.
His is the face of our orchestra. Patrons who have been attending concerts for decades recognize that the orchestra, under Osmo, is playing at its highest level ever.
Obviously if Osmo resigns, all this goes with him. Allowing a winning coach to leave his winning team makes no sense and will not lead to further success. Of course, the Minnesota Orchestra will continue on, but it will be different. Vastly different. Put simply, it will be greatly diminished.
The Cleveland-Szell “sound” is still much revered throughout the world so many years later, helping to sustain that orchestra and culturally inspire its community. That kind of renown only happens after years of building and the foresight to sustain it. We are just now achieving this same renown with Osmo. His premature departure would obviously bring that recognition to an abrupt halt just at the height of its potential.
While the MOA board leadership has stated publicly that they would be OK with Osmo’s resignation, it should be clear that the musicians would not. With his resignation, we would lose the ability to rebuild any of what we have lost over the course of this last tragic year. What qualified musician would choose to come to Minnesota with the knowledge that the musicians are viewed as interchangeable parts? What prospective, world-class conductor would be willing to lead the Minnesota Orchestra now, after seeing it demonstrated that the MOA’s commitment has veered from that of artistic excellence, grounded in works of genius, toward a mishmash of “entertainment” and increased beverage sales?
The orchestra we are fighting for is an orchestra of a quality and stature able to compete for the next great conductor, and the next one after that. For the sake of the community we serve, we need board and management leaders who understand that Osmo’s departure now would shatter the future reputation of the orchestra. We need the MOA to bring us back to the stage, together with Osmo, so that good-faith negotiations with our preeminent mediator can take place.
The musicians believe that Minnesotans want and deserve a great orchestra to be their cultural representative at home and abroad. We believe that it is fundamentally a financial win for Minnesota to maintain an orchestra capable of bringing to our state well-deserved recognition for being the farsighted, cultural mecca it has always been. It is the musicians’ profound dream that all Minnesotans have the opportunity to discover what is magnificent about the sound of the symphony orchestra and why it is essential to the richness of their lives.
Osmo Vänskä’s continued leadership is vital to the well-being of the orchestra, the cultural standing of our state, and the music we love.
This commentary was written on behalf of the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra by Minnesota Orchestra players Erin Keefe, Adam Kuenzel, Marcia Peck and Tony Ross.
If you're interested in joining the discussion, add your voice to the Comment section below — or consider writing a letter or a longer-form Community Voices commentary. (For more information about Community Voices, email Susan Albright at salbright@minnpost.com.)
It was a beautiful night for a high society ball at Orchestra Hall in downtown Minneapolis Friday night – unless you’re the sort of attendee who’s easily vexed by patches of rain, pesky protesters, and locked-out musicians.
Long a highlight of the Twin Cities social calendar, the Symphony Ball drew a few hundred Minnesota Orchestra patrons to the newly redone building inside, while outside on 11th Street, the Nicollet Mall, and Peavey Plaza, members of the orchestra and their supporters played music, sang songs, and Minnesota-nicely heckled attendees who scooted from their cars and into Orchestra Hall.
The rally was organized by SOSMN, which said in a press release beforehand, "It is not SOSMN's intention to vilify the donors who are attending the two ball events, but rather to celebrate music and musicians while asking ball attendees to use their influence to bring back the orchestra."
Some snapshots of people outside the hall:
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshEvy Olson, Minneapolis.
“I just moved here two and a half years ago, and I loved the Minnesota Orchestra. The first year I moved here I would join the coffee groups that would meet Thursday mornings here. The bus would pick me up at Southdale, and I would come here and listen to the wonderful music and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Then it stopped.”
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshWendy Williams, Minneapolis.
“I’m a musician. I’ve been locked out for 11 and-a-half months. I miss the magic chemistry I have with my colleagues and friends on stage; it’s a really intimate work we do together. I miss that camaraderie and sharing that with audiences. I love it when amazing musical moments happen that you don’t expect and you feel like you’re part of something much bigger than yourself.”
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshEmily Hogstad, Eau Claire.
“I’m a writer and freelance violinist and violist, and I write the Song of the Lark blog, which has been covering the lockout for the last year. I miss the emotional and spiritual fulfillment that I get from a live performance that I can’t get from a recording – especially with an orchestra the caliber of the Minnesota Orchestra, and especially when you get to know all the people who are on stage. You see their faces in program books, and you memorize their biographies, especially being a young musician growing up in this area, that was [impactful]. I still have my program from the first time I came here 10 years ago ... .”
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshLarry Gibson, Minneapolis.
“They told me I couldn’t stand under that awning to get out of the rain. I’ve got $10,000 in my will for the orchestra, and they won’t let me stand under there to keep dry. I’m 86 years old, I shouldn’t be standing out here in the rain, but I feel so angry about this situation. I care about music, I was the founding president of The Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, I’ve got a son who has written a college textbook on conducting. I care about serious symphonic music, and I miss it, but it’s never going to be as good in my lifetime as it was."
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshBall attendees begin arriving, escorted by umbrella-carrying valets and Minneapolis’ finest.
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshNo press was allowed inside the Symphony Ball. Here’s a picture of some attendees checking in for the silent auction, taken from outside the window.
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshTuxedos and gowns were in order for most gala attendees.
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshMusician Wendy Williams shares a special moment with a hurried arts patron.
MinnPost photo by Jim Walsh“Thank you for supporting the music! Thank you! Thanks for coming!,” shouted musicians and their supporters, as cars cruising past honked horns in support.
MinnPost photo by Jim Walsh“Have a good evening. Thanks for bringing the music back! Help bring our music back.”
MinnPost photo by Jim Walsh
For four hours, this group sang union songs on Peavey Plaza: “We shall not be moved/Fighting for the music/We shall not be moved/Just like a tree that’s standing by the water/We shall not be moved/We’re fighting for our culture/We shall not be moved/All of us together/We shall not be moved.”
MinnPost photo by Jim Walsh“I love your dress!,” yelled a non-attendee.
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshToward Champagne and the ball.
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshDavid Williamson, Minneapolis.
“I play bass in the orchestra. This is my home, I’m from here, and I hate to see this happening to the orchestra I grew up with.”
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshMara Anderson and Lucia Anderson, St. Paul.
Mara: “I’m a musician’s daughter. To not have music, to not have art, to not have creativity is to live a sad and empty and meaningless life. I’m here for the musicians and to tell the people going in that I wish them all well and hope they have a great time.”
Lucia: “It’s disrespectful. This is a Minnesota institution. I volunteer on many boards, how is it legal for a board to destroy a Minnesota institution?”
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshThis fellow’s job was to keep people off the sidewalk.
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshNadine Johnson Streit, Minneapolis.
“Something drastic has to happen. There’s got to be a way to lock ‘em all in a room until they come to an agreement.”
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshLinda K, Minneapolis.
“I hate to see us pour all kinds of money into a building, and then we can’t even do what the building is for. We have the same problem with the public library. We tore down the library, built a big new library, and then we had to cut back the hours because we couldn’t pay the librarians.”
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshMara Anderson: “I love your dress! Where did you get it? Have a great time!”
MinnPost photo by Jim Walsh
“What’s not in dispute is that we have a great orchestra, a great music director and great musicians,” retired Cargill executive Ben Jaffray told the Star Tribune Friday.
“But there are also the financial facts, that we had a $6 million deficit last year.”
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshWinding down.
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshJane Cooper, Minneapolis.
“I had season tickets. I miss the gorgeous classics. This orchestra is one of the most exceptional orchestras in the world, and we as a community cannot give them up. If we do lose them, you will lose an elation that is unsurpassed. Also, I will never put the members of the association down. These people are successful, and have put time and effort into this orchestra. I’m not putting them down, I respect what they’ve done, but I support the musicians.”
In May, 2001, when Osmo Vänskä got word in Finland that the board of the Minnesota Orchestra was offering him the position of music director, he burst into tears. His debut with the orchestra the prior October — in an all-Finnish program that included the premiere of a Rautavaara harp concerto — had been energizing and thought-provoking, the kind of music-making that had become rare at Orchestra Hall during the free-wheeling but haphazard reign of Eiji Oue.
Vänskä was the right man at the right time. He knew it, the musicians knew it, and so did audiences — not only here but those in New York and in Europe who heard the orchestra under Vänskä during tours and those who bought the orchestra’s honored recordings of Beethoven and Sibelius.
“This is a great orchestra,” the conductor said during his first press conference at Orchestra Hall, and he proceeded over the next decade to make it greater. He shaped it, in the often-quoted words of the New Yorker's Alex Ross, to sound like “the greatest orchestra in the world.”
But now it’s all over, abruptly. Vänskä resigned Tuesday morning, fulfilling a vow he made last spring that if the contract dispute between musicians and management wasn’t resolved in time to prepare for two dates at Carnegie Hall in November, he would resign. On Monday afternoon talks broke down and orchestra management canceled the Carnegie Hall concerts.
Vänskä's action is without precedent in the history of American orchestras: a music director leaving midcontract at the hoped-for start of a season. (Vänskä’s current contract runs through 2015.) And yet what was he to do? His situation here had become untenable.
It’s characteristic of Vänskä to do what he said he would to do. Though many hoped that he would extend the Sept. 30 deadline he had set down — in what now seems a vain wish that a new contract would be agreed upon — he stood by it, and now he’s gone. Some might recall that midway through his years here he turned down a last-minute offer to conduct the New York Philharmonic on tour in Europe, Kurt Masur having taken ill. His reason: Sometime earlier he had agreed on one of those dates to conduct the Minnesota Orchestra in a concert at a church in Minneapolis, a date that an assistant conductor could reasonably be expected to fill in. “No, I gave my word,” Vänskä said later.
I asked a fellow Finn, Kai Amberla, about this while in Helsinki in 2008 researching a biography of Vänskä. Amberla, a long-time Vänskä watcher, is the director of Finland Festivals, a lobbying organization for the festival business in Finland. Why would a conductor pass up a high-profile gig with the New York Philharmonic for an inconspicuous date in Minneapolis?
“This is a typically Finnish gesture: ‘I have to do it because I promised,’ ” Amberla said. “This is what we are famous for in this country. That’s why we are so boring.” He laughed. “But Osmo also knows what he’s doing. That mentality won’t be much help if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
It was clear here right from the start that Vänskä knew what he was doing. Probably the bottom line of his success here is his tenacity. He never gives up, neither in rehearsal nor in performance. It became a joke – a rueful joke, sometimes — among the musicians to quote him: “We must work, work, work,” which soon became “verk, verk, verk.” He did for the Lahti Symphony in Finland during his 23 years there what he did here. He built it up to a point of excellence higher than just about anyone, except Vänskä, had imagined, though with the Minnesota Orchestra he was starting on a much higher level.
Amberla again: “Osmo doesn’t fake it. He takes things seriously, even doing ABBA. He rehearses all the time. He’s interested in music, not in a career. He saw potential in Lahti, which when he arrived was a pitiful orchestra. And their hall was bad, too. I think it’s that he’s willing to put a lot of time and energy into things that other people wouldn’t do. Esa-Pekka, for instance, would never have gone to Lahti,” he said, referring to Esa-Pekka Salonen, a classmate of Vänskä s at the Sibelius Academy, who soon became the glamorous music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Salonen’s career skyrocketed while Vänskä s was a candle burning faintly but steadily. He was, as some said “stuck in Lahti.”
But when he began making an illuminating series of recordings with that orchestra for the Swedish BIS label, including the complete orchestral works of Sibelius, and those discs started winning international awards, he was on his way. People began to think that this upstart little orchestra from Lahti (with a population about the size of Duluth) had superceded the mighty Helsinki Philharmonic, where Vänskä had once served as co-principal clarinet. And the beautiful Sibelius Hall in Lahti, which without Vänskä's urging would never have been built, is an enduring monument to his achievement.
MinnPost photo by Susan AlbrightMinnesota Orchestra musicians and supporters rallying outside Orchestra Hall on Tuesday expressed their affection for Vänskä.
To be sure, some musicians have found his tenacity excessive. According to reports, that was the case at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of Glasgow, where Vänskä served as chief conductor from 1997 to 2002. There was grousing from time to time, and yet he was honored with a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his outstanding contribution to classical music in 2001, and he has continued to enjoy special popularity with audiences in England. In 2005, Musical America named him Conductor of the Year.
The situation at Orchestra Hall was different. The musicians here — most of them — were “hungry” to be asked to play at a higher level, according to then-concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis. “I think the thing that began to go sour with Eiji is that he couldn’t go past a certain point,” she said in an interview, “and then the rehearsals were just play-throughs – play-throughs to memorize the piece. ... Musicians who work together and work on details in chamber music and in their solo work, they know when they’re not working past 2 inches below the surface. It’s not a good feeling.”
In contrast, “Everything we’ve done with Osmo has been with the intention from the very beginning that this is a world-class orchestra and I believe in it, and I’m going to use my time here with the intention of setting the bar as high as I can. That was clear from the first rehearsal. Osmo has techniques of rehearsing I’ve never known anyone to use with an orchestra: repeating three of four bars over and over again, like a round-robin, like we’re at home practicing.” (Fleezanis is now a professor of music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.)
According to many of the musicians, Fleezanis included, what solidified the often precarious relationship between orchestra and conductor, what gave Vänskä confidence in these players, was the first European tour — which took place in early 2004, a gutsy move in a conductor’s first season. But it paid off. Most of the reviews were raves.
Said Fleezanis, “We needed that confidence, given the fact that we had just had a total jellyfish year. We didn’t have a music director. It was a year of guest conductors, and before that we had the last years with Eiji, where it was turning into very thin broth.”
The frequent concertgoer at Orchestra Hall heard intriguing performances during the Vänskä years, starting with that debut concert in 2000 that included a revelatory account of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with Joshua Bell. Familiar though this work was for many in the audience, it took on new colors, especially in the slow movement, which proceeded with a kind of sublime relaxation. And then there was the cogent reading of the same composer’s Symphony No. 6. Much has been written about Vänskä s Sibelius – “deep waters,” as Vänskä described the seven symphonies.
“There is a Godly presence in this music,” said Vänskä a devout Lutheran. Certainly he offered — and continues to offer — a new take on this seminal composer, a less Romantic view than is heard in recordings of the ‘60s and ‘70s by Bernstein, Karajan and Colin Davis who tend to slow the works down and stretch their tempos and soften their dissonances. With Vänskä the music hits the listener with a jolt. It’s unflinchingly Modernist in character – more detailed, with more contrast and yet with steadier tempos. And though presumably this approach took some getting used to, the musicians seemed to thrive on this close adherence to the score that Vänskä insisted on.
“I love playing Sibelius with him,” said flutist Wendy Williams after several years of working with Vänskä. “It’s like the music is in his soul. It’s so authentic and clean and spare. There’s no sentimentality.”
In time, Vänskä programmed the symphonies of Carl Nielsen and living Finns such as Kalevi Aho and more of Einojuhani Rautavaara, who said to me at his home in Finland, “Osmo is the one who always does exactly what the composer wants. He only does what’s in the score.”
In later years, Vänskä became more relaxed at the podium. He admitted to being a control freak, but he said there were precious moments onstage when he simply let the music flow — though he continued to be obsessive about pianissimi (playing softly) and getting a mellow, rounded sound from the brass. And certainly a major achievement each year, unparalleled around the country, was his careful and generous work with young composers during the Composer’s Institute run by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis. (Kernis’s resignation Tuesday in the wake of Vanska’s departure may put an end to that valuable program.)
Over the years, Vänskä became a visible member of the community. He could be seen shopping at Lunds and riding his motorcycle around town. (He once drove back from Thunder Bay, Wis., half of the trip in the rain. “That was tough,” he said. “The road got deeper and deeper.”) He and his wife, Pirkko, bought a condo by the Guthrie Theater. (Their marriage of 30 years ended in divorce in 2009.) And he took up the clarinet once again, playing his first public performance in 23 years at a Sommerfest concert in 2005.
His departure here is an irreparable loss. “I’m devastated,” said violist Sam Bergman at a musicians’ rally outside Orchestra Hall Tuesday. “It’s a very dark day,” said Williams. “My tears have been flowing.”
Osmo Vänskä is just 60 – young for a conductor. (Leopold Stokowski signed a record contract with RCA Victor at 95.) He will prosper. What will happen to what’s left of the orchestra is anybody’s guess.
Vänskä, as we said, greeted news of his appointment here 12 years ago with tears – of joy. Today, the tears are not of joy. To quote the late great San Francisco columnist Herb Caen in quite a different context, “A great city weeps.”
Michael Anthony, a former longtime music critic for the Star Tribune and the author of "Osmo Vänskä, Orchestra Builder," writes about classical music and other arts topics for MinnPost.
Tonight and Saturday, the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra will play three concerts at the Ted Mann Concert Hall– their self-produced fall season as the lockout enters its second year with no end in sight. At first, two concerts were scheduled, but a third was added after the musicians announced that Osmo Vänskä, who resigned as music director Tuesday, would conduct the concerts as a “thank you and farewell to the community and audience that have supported classical music so passionately.” Demand exploded. Tickets to the third concert, to be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Ted Mann Concert Hall, went on sale this morning at 8 a.m. They include special $15 tickets for students. If you go, bring lots of tissue, because there will not be a dry eye in the house. FMI and tickets. UPDATE: The third concert sold out almost immediately. The final concert at 8 p.m. Saturday will be broadcast live by Classical MPR. Tune in or listen to the live stream at classicalmpr.org.
The concerts at the Ted Mann will feature pianist Emanuel Ax, who was originally scheduled to launch the 2013-14 subscription season tonight with the musicians and Vänskä at the newly renovated Orchestra Hall.
Reactions to Vänskä’s resignation ranged from shock to dismay, anger and sadness. At the Star Tribune, columnist Jon Tevlin threw up his hands and wondered, “Orchestra, government: Is everything just breaking bad?” The New Yorker’s music critic Alex Ross wrote in his blog, The Rest Is Noise: “That the Minnesota Orchestra Association has allowed this conductor to depart strikes me as a management failure of historic proportions.” Chicago-based arts consultant Drew McManus wrote in his blog, Adaptistration: “The artistic entity known as the Minnesota Orchestra no longer exists.”
MinnPost’s Doug Grow wrote, “Blame whomever you want, but it seems that the wreck of the elite Minnesota Orchestra is now complete.” In his own letter of resignation, which followed Vänskä’s later that same day, Pulitzer Prize winner Aaron Jay Kernis, founder and director of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Composer Institute, laid it out: “I admit total bafflement and dismay at what has been done to allow the dismemberment of this superb orchestra at the height of its powers. … In all of this, the audience of music-lovers, who most appreciate the orchestra’s extraordinary gifts have been forgotten and their voices disregarded.”
Orchestrate Excellence, a community group of audience members heroically trying to walk the middle path between the two warring sides, issued a statement saying, in part: “While we have experienced a significant ending, it is important to remember that this is not the end. A contract must still be negotiated, musicians must play, and the community must have its orchestra.” Yes to the last two musts, maybe about the first. Lawrence Perelman, managing director of Semantix Creative Group, believes the musicians should also resign, then immediately form their own self-governing orchestra. “Make history by setting an example for other orchestras to follow,” he urged in the Star Tribune, “and end the labor-management paradigm that leads to these kinds of disputes.” Perelman’s admittedly radical plan sounds like a clarion call on a golden trumpet.
Stanislaw Skrowaczewski turned 90 in Tokyo yesterday. He was there to lead a concert by the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, where he is honorary conductor laureate. We hope he didn’t spend too much time thinking about the epic fail of the Minnesota Orchestra board and musicians to reach an agreement. If he thought at all about Orchestra Hall, perhaps he looked back at the opening of the original in 1974, when the maestro christened his dream with a performance of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D-minor.
***
We haven’t yet seen the renovated Orchestra Hall, but we did get a peek last week into the transformation of Northrop (they call it a “revitalization”) on the University of Minnesota campus. Inside the performance hall, now filled with a thicket of scaffolding, the massive balcony, which once ended somewhere in Iowa, has been replaced by three balconies, bringing 80 percent of the seating to within 100 feet of the stage. The number of seats has been reduced from 4,850 to 2,800. The proscenium arch is being restored; the massive chandelier is in storage, awaiting a new home (does anyone have a four-story entryway?). There’s room for Northrop’s 1932 Aeolian-Skinner organ and its nearly 7,000 pipes, once the money is found to restore it (does anyone have a few million dollars?).
A second, comparatively tiny, state-of-the-art digital theater has been tucked behind the third balcony, above Memorial Hall and the new atriums. Spaces have been created for the University Honors Program, the Institute for Advanced Study, and Innovation by Design. Other additions include a café, coffee bar, cushy Founder’s Room, rehearsal space, offices, dressing rooms, loading docks, a pass-through behind the stage (so dancers no longer have to run downstairs, through the basement, and up the stairs on the other side), new ticket offices (although the old one, a brass-and-glass jewel box, will remain in Memorial Hall), new elevators, and bathrooms. Lots of bathrooms. Supposedly we’ll be able to leave our seats during intermission, powder our noses, and still have time to make our way back. Northrop is scheduled to reopen on April 4, 2014.
The Minnesota Opera has received a $100,000 grant from the William Randolph Hearst foundation to help fund its education and outreach programs. Hearst Foundation grants are highly competitive and only fund cultural institutions that offer “meaningful programs in the arts.” The Opera’s Community Education Programs serve more than 20,000 youth and adults each season. Its Senior Outreach Initiative, a pilot program in creative aging for seniors 62+ and caregivers, will begin sometime in 2014.
The Singers, the Minnesota-based choral group founded in 2004, has announced its first-ever executive director. Aaron Wulff has been an arts manager in choral music and dance for the past 12 years, most recently serving as executive director of the Rose Ensemble. The Singers has premiered and commissioned over 50 new works by composers including Stephen Paulus, Abbie Betinis, and Craig Carnahan.
At the Park Square Theatre in St. Paul,“Good People,” David Lindsay-Abaire’s play about the class divide, has proved so popular that an additional matinee performance has been added for Saturday at 2 p.m. Joel Sass directs ; James Denton (“Desperate Housewives”) and Virginia Burke star. The play closes Sunday. Catch it while you can. FMI and tickets.
Smart, sassy, and always au courant, The Theater of Public Policy has announced its fall 2013 season. T2P2 is a civic affairs-inspired improv comedy show. Every Monday night in October and November at HUGE Theater in Uptown, the show’s host interviews a leading policy maker or thinker on a big issue of the day, after which the improvisers use that conversation as a jumping-off point for long-form improv comedy. In the second half of the show, the guest answers questions from the audience, and the show wraps up with more unscripted comedy. Trust us, it’s funny. Also revealing. And you’ll actually learn something. You’ll laugh and think, like you do when you watch Jon Stewart or “The Colbert Report.” Topics this season include guns, gay marriage, medical marijuana, mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, Internet comment trolls, and climate change. T2P2’s guest on Nov. 11: outgoing Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak.FMI.
Mark your calendar now and start planning what to wear. The night before the opening of its newest exhibit, “American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,” the Minnesota History Center is holding, what else, a cocktail party. Pose for a gangster mug shot, dance to live Dixieland jazz with the Southside Aces, learn the Charleston and the Shimmy, sample local beers from Summit and Lucid, learn how to make cocktails from pros, and visit the cash bar. Bootlegger’s Ball Preview Party, 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 8. 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul. $30/$25. FMI. Register online here.
Tonight (Friday, Oct. 4): Jerome Emerging Artists Exhibition at MCAD. New work by Susannah Bielak, Amanda Hankerson, Michael Joyt, Melissa Loop, and Lauren Roche, all recipients of the 2012-13 Jerome Foundation Fellowships for Emerging Artists. Artist reception 6-8 p.m., 2501 Stevens Ave., Minneapolis. On Wednesday, Oct. 9, 6:30 p.m., Daily Planet arts writer and editor Jay Gabler will moderate a panel discussion with the artists.
Friday and Saturday: Atlantis Quartet CD Release at the Artists’ Quarter.“Expansion,” the fourth album from the Minnesota modern jazz quartet, is a knockout. From the start, this group of four strong, passionate players has had its own distinct sound, something some bands take years to develop. And they just keep getting better. We’ve been listening to their recordings all along and everything seems to click on this one: energy, emotion, expression, maturity, and moments of luminous beauty. Zacc Harris (electric guitar), Brandon Wozniak (tenor sax), Chris Bates (bass), and Pete Hennig (drums). 9 p.m. both nights, $12 at the door. 408 St. Peter St., St. Paul, in the basement of the historic Hamm Bldg.
Friday-Sunday: St. Paul Art Crawl. Now in its 20th year, this highly anticipated event features 300 St. Paul artists showing and selling original artwork at 24 locations throughout the city, most in Lowertown. Start with a kickoff party at the Minnesota Museum of American Art from 4:30-6 p.m. Pick up a passport at any Crawl location, get it stamped as you go, and submit it for a chance at winning one of many prizes. Tour lofts and condos in the Rossmor and Cosmopolitan buildings, eat at food trucks, buy art. Friday 6-10 p.m., Saturday 12-8 p.m., Sunday 12-5 p.m. FMI and resources (catalog, map, parking and bus information).
Friday-Sunday: Robert Briscoe & Friends Fall Pottery Sale. Now in its 24th year, award-winning potter Briscoe’s fall sale is one of those journeys pottery lovers make annually and reverently. This year’s guests include Jo Severson, Jason Trebs and Matthew Krousey. Pots you can live with, use, give and simply enjoy. Friday 12-7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. 2785 Stark Road, Harris, MN.
Saturday: Ladyslipper at the Library. The classical music ensemble Ladyslipper specializes in spirited interpretations of lesser-known works from the 17th century to the 20th. Their 2013-14 concert season begins with a pair of Saturday morning concerts at area libraries. This Saturday at 11 a.m., find them at the Pierre Bottineau Library, 55 Broadway St. NE. Next Saturday, Oct. 12, at 10:30 a.m., they’re at the East Lake Library, 2727 E. Lake St., Minneapolis. Directed by mezzo-soprano Sahar Hassan, with guest artist Phil Rukavina on lute, the program includes music by Purcell, Blow, Ecles, Lambert and Viset. All concerts are free. FMI.
Sunday: Choral Showcase at Central Lutheran Church. The principal chorus of the Minnesota Orchestra since 2004, the Minnesota Chorale has been badly hurt by the lockout. But “our work goes on, no matter what,” the Chorale bravely says. Founded in 1972, the Chorale is part of an aural banquet that will also feature performances by Kantorei, National Lutheran Choir, Oratorio Society of MN, The Singers and VocalEssence. Free-will offering. 4 p.m., 333 S. 12th St., Minneapolis.
Monday: Opening night of T2P2’s fall 2013 season (see above). Tonight’s topic:“States’ Rights! Or … American Civil War 2.0?” Dale Carpenter, American legal commentator and Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law at the U of M, is in the hot seat. 6:30 p.m., 3037 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis. $5.
Finnish maestro Osmo Vänskä, who resigned as music director of the Minnesota Orchestra on Tuesday morning, hasn’t spoken with the press since. But he picked up the microphone after each of the three farewell concerts he led this weekend at the Ted Mann Concert Hall with the musicians he brought to international renown over the past decade.
Here’s what we heard at the final concert Saturday night – after “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the not-on-the-program “Egmont" Overture, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 (both featuring pianist Emanuel Ax), and Igor Stravinsky’s Suite from “The Firebird.” Visibly moved, Vänskä turned to the sold-out crowd and said:
Thank you very much. This might be the last time I have the chance to conduct this great orchestra. I don’t know what to say ... except for just that I’m going to miss you all very, very, very much.
I’m going to miss these great players so much that I don’t know even yet. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
I thought that I would like to leave you with one piece of — of course — Sibelius. He wrote it to one play, and there’s a story behind the piece.
A young woman is sleeping and is dreaming and is very happy to see that there is a guy who is inviting her to dance. She accepts, they start to dance, and it goes well, and then the tempo is getting faster and even faster, and then the young lady would like to stop. But at the time the guy is just getting faster and faster and doesn’t want her to leave. He’s squeezing more and more and more, and the tempo is getting faster and faster, wilder and wilder.
And then there’s a moment when this lady understands that she’s not dreaming anymore, that it's reality, and she’s dancing with Death. And at that moment, she understands that it's her time. She dies. After that, we need only three church bells coming from the violin at the end.
MinnPost photo by John WhitingOsmo Vänskä asking the crowd for silencefollowing the encore.So this is Sibelius’ “Valse Triste,” from the play “Death.”
And I would like to add one more thing. You have been a great audience tonight. You have given so many applause. Thank you for all of those.
I ask you to hold your applause after this encore. I have to say that the situation here is terrible, and the orchestra is in so terrible and ... and ... like almost hopeless situation right now, and that situation doesn’t need any applause.
As the final notes of “Valse Triste” faded, Vänskä and the musicians left the stage in silence, and the crowd left the concert hall in near silence.
On YouTube, you can hear Vänskä speak, “Valse Triste” in its entirety, and the sounds of Vänskä’s footsteps and those of Concertmaster Erin Keefe as they walk off the stage ahead of the other musicians.
Q: How much is the sight of Prince, sporting a feel-good freak flag freedom of ‘76 afro and blowing kisses to the crowd at midnight Saturday at a packed-to-the-airplane-hangar-rafters Paisley Park Studios worth? How much, to bear witness to the great little love god dancing, flowing, feinting, conducting, and playing with as good a funk-rock-blues-big band that has ever torched the planet, and whose healing molten funk flies in stark contrast to so much of the news feed of the day? How much? How much to hear him climax to “Purple Rain,” and preach the power of “Real music by real musicians, y’all!” as about a thousand of us purple sheep danced and made love?
A: After intermission at the Minnesota Orchestra musicians’ concert Friday night at the Ted Mann Concert Hall, principal trombonist Doug Wright took to the microphone to thank the audience for coming, for their donations and support during the yearlong lockout of the orchestra that ultimately led to last week’s breakdown of contract talks and the resignation of Music Director Osmo Vänskä.
“There’s no one more disappointed in the events earlier this week than we are,” said Wright, after the orchestra had turned in soul-stirring readings of Beethoven. “I want to assure you all that we did everything we could to avert this tragedy, and to keep a great orchestra here in Minnesota. Unfortunately, we were not successful. We’re going to keep working on it, but for tonight we’re going to set all of that aside. Tonight is about music. I can’t tell you how therapeutic it is for all of us on the stage to come together, come to you folks tonight. It helps us feel joy, it helps us feel sorrow, it helps us to feel. And we know that’s the same for you.”
Yes, please. Money matters be damned, the beleaguered but bad-ass orchestra then went into Mozart’s Concerto No. 27, written during the last year of the composer’s life. “When the year 1791 began, Mozart’s career seemed to be halted, his financial affairs were in disarray, and he was sunk in a serious depression,” read the concert program notes. “The composer and pianist who not so many years earlier had scarcely been able to keep up with public demand for compositions and concerts now paid the rent by writing music for ballroom dances and as background for waxworks.”
Hundreds of years later, on the first chilly autumn night of 2013, Mozart’s last notes rang and sang through the University of Minnesota concert hall as something of a clarion call to modern-day musicians who have been made to feel the squeeze of unstable careers, and as a reminder that their true riches and rewards must come from the music itself, no matter how much the world has devalued live music and musicians, which is what happened with the orchestra lockout and the silencing of so many elite musicians.
Historically, musicians have been among the most disposable of workers, starting with the court musicians of the Middle Ages. “The rich are often still signing our paychecks, they just aren’t giving us a room in the palace anymore,” writes David Hahn of MusiciansWages.com. “While court musicians were the highest paid musicians of their day, it was also one of the least stable jobs. Nobility were notoriously poor financial planners and it was not uncommon for courts to layoff all of their musicians at once without any warning.”
Such is the ages-old plight of the working musician. (Not for nothing were a couple of twentysomething orchestra fans and members of the World Socialist Web Site standing outside Ted Mann Friday night, distributing copies of their story “The Minnesota Orchestra lockout and the defense of culture in the US”). Still, over the weekend, as I traveled from concert hall to pub, club, and Paisley Park Studios, I chewed on a single question – “How much is live music worth?” – and, time and again, as player after player after player delivered sounds and performances that originated and erupted from deep within, I came up with the obvious answer: Priceless.
There was Vanska, the great maestro and his swan song, lurching, cajoling, imploring and guiding his troops in the expert playing of centuries-old music that has been the soundtrack of innumerable individual and collective people’s revolutions and evolutions.
Explosive. Expressive. Timeless. Urgent. Classic. What’s that worth? A tuppence? A letter grade? A Facebook like?
Or what about the bowing musicians, or the standing ovations, or the sight of pianist Emanuel Ax gazing up lovingly at his conductor, their matching tufts of white hair and balding heads suggesting an old world brotherhood in sacred song? Or, Ax playing his glistening Steinway grand piano with a heaven-sent feel and touch, his jowls billowing as he pounded and caressed the keys, spellbinding the room with sonic fairy dust and low-burn rapture.
Or the sight of music lovers at Ted Mann, perched in the box seats abutting the stage, holding their heads in their hands, studying, refueling, praying, wondering, dreaming, weeping, smiling, and listening, deeply, to cascades of sound, played with great drama and exuberance, great passion and dynamics, and super exquisite use of space, silence and ancient mysticism.
What’s that worth? Or what about the sound of songwriter Martin Devaney, who overcame a year of gut-wrenching and personal heartbreak to take to the Cedar Cultural Center stage just up the road from Ted Mann Friday night, and who, as the gobsmacked orchestra survivors strolled down Riverside Avenue to the strains of an Octoberfestive accordion player on the busk, delivered a grittily moving and romantic CD release party for his sixth independently-released CD, “House Of Rust.”
“You guys care about guitars being in tune?” Devaney asked his gathered friends and followers, as he tuned up his Telecaster, then lurched through a mature, confident set made up of one cool rock-pop song after another.
MinnPost photo by Jim WalshMartin Devaney performing at the Cedar Cultural Center on Friday night.
In that moment, Devaney was the epitome of the independent musician: laying it all on the line, playing with his friends and screaming for his supper, drink tickets, and a few more downloads. One of the true believers, in other words, a romantic for sure, who sings his guts out not for money but for magic, and because it’s what he was born to do. And if you’re looking for a better seat of the revolution, as led by a bunch of underworked and underpaid independent musicians who operate out of something Billy Bragg calls "a socialism of the heart,” you could do worse than Palmer’s Bar on the West Bank, where the Devaney after-party attracted a gang of musicians and songwriters, who drank and danced into the wee hours to the very swinging Drew Peterson and Friends, whose melodic rock was worth, according to the tip jar early Saturday morning, about 20 bucks.
Then there was the incomparable Prince and his bands, tearing it up yet again at Paisley like some latter day incarnation of Parliament Funkadelic and Jimi’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, with Prince time and again proving that Minnesota’s greatest conductor is still in the house, and that no government shut down or musician lockout can squelch the power of live music. For a $50 donation, the dearly beloved gathered to hear Prince deliver the hits and a smattering of dance-party favorites, with the only thing missing, given the times we’re living through, being “Money Don’t Matter Tonight.” Maybe next weekend. Maybe tonight …
It was a night of deep sadness and divine music. For scattered moments on Saturday at the Ted Mann Concert Hall, we were carried away and forgot this was almost certainly the last time Osmo Vänskä would lead a concert by the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. But then we’d see a cloud cross the face of violist Richard Marshall, or Sam Bergman, or bassist Matthew Frischman, or cellist Tony Ross, or violinist Sarah Kwak (now the concertmaster of the Oregon Symphony, she returned for the weekend to join her former colleagues) and remember.
The musicians and Vänskä and guest soloist Emanuel Ax – who waived his fee and played six piano concertos in three days, not counting rehearsals, as if he were a 24-year-old marathon runner and not a 64-year-old classical pianist – gave a performance that was part farewell, part fist in the air. It began with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture; named for a 16th-century Dutch nobleman who stood against oppression and was condemned to death, the “Egmont” was an addition to the program. With Ax at the Steinway, Beethoven’s Third and Mozart’s 27th stormed and sparkled. Stravinsky’s “Firebird” suite was the ideal closer: It featured the whole orchestra, many solos, and a wild ride through the dynamics the Minnesota Orchestra perfected under Vänskä’s baton, including the famed “Osmo pianissimo,” a sound quieter than a baby’s sigh. There were shouts and tears and standing ovations – until just before the encore, Sibelius' devastating “Valse Triste,” when Vänskä addressed the audience and asked for no more applause.
Death was the theme of the “Egmont” and the encore, and some are now saying the Minnesota Orchestra is dead, or might as well be. If so, this is a senseless, needless death of a living thing cut down in its robustly healthy prime, a death that could have been prevented. Or could it? Many believe that Vänskä’s departure was in the cards for years, or at least since management decided to retire the $6 million deficit all at once. What’s next for Vänskä? He’s not talking, but we can look for him to land on his feet at some other lucky orchestra with the potential for greatness, because greatness is what he does. And for the musicians? More self-produced concerts (the next two in November, led by Stanislav Skrowaczewski, with soloist Lydia Artymiw; tickets here), and the hint that going it alone is the direction they might take. What about Orchestra Hall, which stands in empty splendor on Nicollet Mall? It’s available to rent.
The New York Times’ James Oestreich attended the first farewell concert on Friday. Kristin Tillotson was there for the Star Tribune; Rob Hubbard for the Pioneer Press; Euan Kerr for MPR. Scott Chamberlain, who’s been blogging about the labor dispute since it began, has written an eloquent, very personal response to the weekend (he was at the Ted Mann both nights). MPR, which broadcast the final concert Saturday night, is seeking permission to rebroadcast and archive the audio. We’ll let you know what happens with that.
***
It’s a trying time to be a music lover in the Twin Cities, if your tastes extend beyond rock and pop. We learned Monday night that St. Paul’s iconic jazz club, the Artists’ Quarter, will close at the end of 2013. Owner Kenny Horst told the Star Tribune’s Chris Riemenschneider that his rent “literally doubled” after his former landlord passed away. (For a small basement club in a building on a neglected mall with lousy parking? Shame on you, landlord.) We’ll have more on this in the coming weeks, but for now, we’re going to crawl off and cry.
We went into “Carrie: The Musical” anticipating a night of camp. We came out happy campers. Almost everyone knows how Stephen King’s now-classic horror novel ends – bullied teen with telekinetic powers strikes back – so what matters in any adaptation is how we get there. A strong cast, good songs, fine singing, a simple but effective set, a live band and nonstop action made this a thoroughly enjoyable, even thought-provoking evening. If you’ve heard the story behind the musical – the original version was “the most expensive quick flop in Broadway history” – don’t worry in the least. This “reimagined” show (smaller cast, new songs) is a hit. Jill Iverson is a convincing Carrie, Rebecca Gebhart a deliciously bitchy Chris, Natalie Schleusner a sweet Sue, and Lori Maxwell a magnificent and terrifying Margaret White (Carrie’s uber-religious, abusive and fearful mother) in a production that’s mostly about the girls. Like, come to think of it, Cirque du Soleil’s “Amaluna,” now playing in the big tent at the Mall of America. Presented by Minneapolis Musical Theatre and Hennepin Theatre Trust at the New Century Theatre in City Center, “Carrie” ends Oct. 27. FMI and tickets.
Speaking of “Amaluna”: Until 11:59 a.m. today, you can buy three tickets and get one free for select show dates and times. The tent folds after Oct. 20. We saw this show and loved it.
Will our fascination with the Kennedy assassination ever end? As the 50th anniversary approaches (Nov. 22, for those who don’t have personal memories of that hideous day), here are three ways to indulge your curiosity. 1) Take a Learning Life class at the U of M called “The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: An Event That Changed the World.” Instructor and retired humanities professor James Norwood insists that we can know the truth by asking the right questions. Read more here about this evening class, which starts Thursday, Oct. 24, and ends Nov. 21 – four meetings (no class Thursday, Oct. 31). We’re guessing this is based on a semester-long course Norwood previously taught at the U. Go here to begin the registration process. 2) Read former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura’s new book, “They Killed Our President: 63 Reasons to Believe There Was a Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK.” Ventura will sign copies at the Mall of America starting at 1 p.m. this Sunday, Oct. 13. Look for hizzoner in the Rotunda. 3) Read “Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald” by Judyth Vary Baker. Once a promising science student, Baker fell in love with the wrong man, to put it mildly. She’ll be at SubText beginning at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 29.
Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs will curate this year’s Choreographers’ Evening, the Walker-hosted showcase for the Twin Cities independent dance community. Ten companies will each have seven minutes to strut their latest stuff. For dance fans, this highly anticipated annual event, now in its fourth decade, is a no-brainer; for the curious, it’s an appetite-whetting introduction. Mark your calendar for Saturday, Nov. 30, and what the heck, just order tickets now and get that out of the way. 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. in the Walker’s McGuire Theater.
Some days it seems the arts are collapsing around us and we’re becoming a nation of stupid-head reality-TV watchers. And then there are those arts organizations, presenters, and worker bees who are changing the game and shaping new markets. Tomorrow night, big thinkers and provocateurs will gather at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis for what’s being called “A Night of Social Wonder.” That’s a fancy name for a panel discussion among Maja Heuer of Sweden’s The Glass Factory, which is keeping Sweden’s glass artists viable in an outsourced market; Sarah Schultz of the Walker, who’ll talk about a crazy idea called the Internet Cat Video Festival; Steven Dietz of Northern Spark, which keeps us up all night; Kim Bartmann, whose Bryant-Lake Bowl, Red Stag Supper Club, and more are helping redefine the restaurant and entertaining business; and Caroline Casey of Coffee House Press, which gets people excited about books. The Current’s Mark Wheat moderates; the American Craft Council is co-presenter. We’ll report back Friday on our takeaways. 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Call 612-871-4907 for tickets ($10/$12) or order online.
Tonight (Tuesday, Oct. 8):Vinicius Cantuaria at the Dakota. Brazilian singer, singwriter, guitarist and percussionist Cantuaria is no stranger to the Twin Cities; he has played the Dakota before, and in February 2011 gave an unforgettable concert with Bill Frisell at the Cedar. Now living in New York City, Cantuaria has collaborated with other big names including Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Brian Eno and Caetano Veloso (Brazil’s Bob Dylan). Yet he probably won’t draw the crowd he deserves for his exquisitely expressive, sensitive and just plain beautiful music. Here’s a taste. 7 p.m. (one show only). FMI and tickets.
Tonight: Accordo at the Amsterdam. The top-tier chamber group opened its 2013-14 season last night at Christ Church Lutheran, its Saarinen-designed home in the Twin Cities. Tonight they cross the river to the St. Paul bar and music hall for a more casual evening. They’ll play the same program as last night – Mozart and Brahms viola quintets – in a hipster-friendlier setting. Accordo is SPCO and Minnesota Orchestra concertmasters Steven Copes and Erin Keefe, SPCO principal viola and cello Maiya Papach and Ronald Thomas, and special guest violinist Hsin-Yun Huang. 7 p.m., doors at 6:45. FMI and tickets.
Wednesday, Oct. 9: Type Directors Club Exhibition Opening Night Preview Party at Rat Race Studios. Heaven for type-o-philes, this traveling juried international exhibition features the winning entries from the Type Directors Club’s annual communication design and typeface competition – the most beautiful and ambitious work from today’s best designers and typographers. It also kicks off the annual AIGA design conference (AIGA is an American professional organization for design), being held this year in Minneapolis. Designer groupies, keep your eyes peeled for stars like Joe Duffy and Chank Diesel. 5 – 9 p.m. Free and open to the public. The exhibition ends Saturday, Oct. 12. FMI.
Thursday, Oct. 10:“Eurydice” at the Nolte Xperimental Theater in Minneapolis. The New York Times called Sarah Ruhl’s retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story “weird and wonderful.” Tonight’s performance is followed by a post-show discussion. Ages 12 and up. 7:30 p.m. at the Rarig Center on the U of M’s West Bank. Ends Sunday. FMI and reservation information.
Thursday, Oct. 10: Cocktails with Culture at the Landmark Center. Sponsored by the Schubert Club, this happy-hour event celebrates the renovation of a Wurlitzer piano built in 1935, one of the many treasures of the Schubert Club Museum. Pianist Laura Caviani and saxophonist Peter Whitman will play music composed around that time. 5 – 7 p.m. in the Art Gallery on the second floor. Cash bar. FMI.
Thursday night and Friday morning, Oct. 10 and 11: George Saunders at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. The masterful short story writer, New York Times best-selling author and MacArthur fellow comes to the Pen Pals reading series. His appearance is part of the 2013 Twin Cities Book Festival happening Saturday. Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 11 a.m. FMI and tickets.
It is criminally ironic that the supposed "executive" leadership of the Minnesota Orchestra Association is disenfranchising its own world-class talent and team: the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. Members of a top-tier orchestra are not "run of the mill" musicians. Instead, the enormously gifted musicians of world-class orchestras are disciplined, highly-trained and effective "executives," each in their own sphere of the orchestra.
Many players in wind and brass sections, as well as percussion and lead strings, are soloists, meaning that as individuals and as cooperating elements of a larger artistic mechanism, they are genuinely responsible for the success or failure of every musical endeavor in every concert, whether in Orchestra Hall or in New York’s Carnegie Hall, or great halls anywhere. The classical music business is tough — criticism and critical assessments are constant. Only genuinely and unusually high performing musical organizations receive the consistently lustrous praise that the Minnesota Orchestra has reaped under the baton of Osmo Vänskä.
The musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, whose compensations are well within industry standards, are a dynamic, first-class executive team who function and interact seamlessly to get "top of the world" results. It is brazenly ignorant for corporate leaders who profess expertise in executive management to trash such unique and effective talent. If they want to manage a B-level organization, there are many to choose from; let them go elsewhere.
I had the privilege of hearing the Minnesota Orchestra in Carnegie Hall not long after Osmo Vänskä began his leadership. After the final piece on a wonderful program, Vänskä and the orchestra were called back for FIVE encores — in New York City, a town saturated with great music. Five encores for Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra. May the people of Minnesota make it still be so.
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from LeftMN by Tony Petrangelo
Last week I covered a PPP poll sponsored by The House Majority PAC which showed John Kline trailing his 2012 opponent, DFLer Mike Obermueller, 42-38. That poll was what you might call a “shock poll.” A poll with numbers so different from anything seen before that it shocks the senses. But shock polls can sometimes be so shocking that it makes one question the validity of the poll itself.
Fortunately, for our purposes, PPP is back with another poll concerning congressman John Kline, and this one confirms the findings of the aforementioned “shock poll.”
from politics.mn by Michael Brodkorb
In the last few days, politics in Minnesota has seen two messaging blunders earn some unwanted attention for both Democrats and Republicans:
- The Chisago County Republican Party posted on their Facebook page a picture of a slave auction with the message: “Pro-Choice; Against slavery? Don’t buy one.”
- Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM) used Halloween as an opportunity to hit some of the Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate and governor with a movie-themed blog post. ABM suggested Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson dress as the serial killer from the movie American Psycho, because Johnson is “Seemingly ‘nice’ in public, but actually pretty evil on the inside…”
Two ugly incidents, but the reactions were different from the groups involved and it’s worth examining.
from Growth & Justice by Dane Smith
Greater MSP is a relatively new and ambitious effort to attract and retain economic development in the Twin Cities region, and the group's evolving theme has to be one of the most intelligent and expansive in the nation. This week's annual meeting featured speakers and a new mission statement that emphasized cultural connectedness and social collaboration in a way I've never quite seen before from a business group. Here's the new and improved theme, handed out on glossy cards to the hundreds of partners and supporters who attended the up-tempo event at the Guthrie Theater. It's a speech that might be coming soon to an elevator near you.
from streets.mn by Samuel Geer
Re-designing our cities to support local food production and healthy living has been a very popular topic of late, happening against a backdrop of grassroots efforts to create networks of growing, distribution and consumption. It is interesting to watch this process unfold, seeing how farmers, advocates, and urban design professionals are envisioning and (sometimes) working together to build a local food economy.
from Thoughts Toward a Better World by Dick Bernard
In my opinion, two continuing actions of the Orchestra Board led us to where we are now: 1) to the best of my knowledge, they refused to open to the Orchestra their financial records for independent review; 2) they hired a law firm known for expertise in union-busting lock outs (strikes in reverse, by management against labor).
Absent the two above actions, we may still have been going to the Orchestra while negotiations continued.
from MN70s by Dave Kenney
Monica Lash (left) and Molly Johnson (right) were among the hundreds of students who attended new schools under Minneapolis’s controversial Hale-Field desegregation plan during the early 1970s.
from My Northern Garden by Mary Schier
We’ve had such a late fall this year that even though it is almost Halloween, we seem to have finally hit peak color where I live, just south of Minneapolis and St. Paul. While walking downtown today, I couldn’t help but notice the vibrant colors of the plantings at our beautiful Northfield Public Library. Bright red burning bush provided a colorful background for seedheads from coneflowers, fading roses and other plants.
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