Also Good Bets: Today-Feb. 3
Submitted photo by Luke Kavajecz.
MAKING WAVES
The Red Mug is hosting an artists reception for Luke Kavajecz, who has photographs inspired by surfing on Lake Superior. This is at 6 p.m. Friday at 916 Hammond Ave.
MUKLUK BALL
You don’t have to wear Mukluks. But why wouldn’t you wear them to the 12th annual Mukluk Ball, a benefit dance for the Will Steger Foundation for Global Environmental Education, and the Ely Winter Festival?
The casual event is from 7 p.m.-midnight on Saturday at Fortune Bay Resort Casino, 1430 Bois Forte Road, Tower and includes music by Lamont Cranston, door prizes and hors d’oeuvres. The evening is hosted by Dan Shelby of WCCO-TV, explorer Will Steger and Patti Steger, owner of the Steger Mukluk Company.
Tickets are $25, and are available at Steger Mukluks Retail Store, Fortune Bay Resort Casino, online at www.mukluks.com, or at (218) 365-6634.
ROSE ENSEMBLE PLUS FRIENDS
The St. Paul-based Rose Ensemble are bringing along special guests Voces8 for “Voices of Venice and Rome,” a performance at 7:30 p.m. today at the Cathedral of Christ the King, 1410 Baxter Ave., Superior. They will perform Italian Renaissance choral works, including movements from Palestrina’s “Missa Papae Marcelli,” and works by Tomas Luis de Victoria and Giovanni Gabrieli and more.
The Rose Ensemble is an internationally touring group that received the Chorus America Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, and took first prize in the 2007 Tolosa International Choral Competition in Spain.
Tickets for the concert are $23, $20 students, seniors and MPR members.
MORE HAITI HELP
Lake Superior College is hosting a fundraiser for Haiti "Rockin' Hearts for Haiti" with snacks, live music and an open mic starting at 11 a.m. Tuesday. Bands in the lineup include Amauros, Orley Francois, Katie Urbaniak, The Good Colonels, and Wyatt Famous. Donations go to the American Red Cross.
FISH HEADS
Your friendly rock and roll bluegrass hybrid The Fish Heads are playing at 10 p.m. Saturday night at the Brewhouse. They perform everything from the Doobie Brothers to Nickel Creek, with some originals thrown in, too. They've been doing this for more than 25 years.
LOOKING AHEAD
The Park Point Community Club is now taking submissions for the 40th annual Park Point Art Fair, a juried event. They are looking for original visual arts along the lines of clay, jewelry, glass, fiber, sculpture, photography, wood, painting, leather, and 2D and 3D mixed media. There are cash prizes, as well as the opportunity to exhibit your stuff June 26-27. For more info, go here.
And speaking of submitting your whatevers, Homegrown Music Festival is now accepting registration from bands with a local connection looking to play sometime between May 2-9. Last year there were about 140 bands that played at 22 venues in Duluth and Superior. Go here to sign up.
Also Good Bets, a companion to the Wave's Best Bets section, is a weekly feature that includes additional ways to fill your entertainment schedule for the next week.
Posted by: christa on Wednesday, February 03 at 5:31 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: also good bets, fish heads, lamont cranston, luke kavajecz, mukluk ball, rose ensemble, voces8
Instant replay of Zimmerman's live painting
If you missed "A Story In Three Parts" this past Friday at the Duluth Play Ground -- and you might have, I'm told the place was packed -- here is a chance to catch the rerun.
Recap: Local artist Lee Zimmerman painted three panels while Kathy McTavish provided the soundtrack with her cello. Zimmerman uses silks and dyes, and positioned himself behind the 8-foot panels, so that the audience would see the colors magically seeping into the silk.
According to Zimmerman, who passed along the link, the painting starts about 8 minutes into the video. The first panel took 34 minutes, the second took 54 minutes and the whole show clocks in at about an hour and 14 minutes.
If you missed it, you can catch him during the Duluth Playhouse's performances of "The Secret Garden." Zimmerman is providing the garden, a new spontaneous live painting every night of the show. His daughter Kier Zimmerman plays Mary. "The Secret Garden" runs Thur.-Sun. Feb. 18-March 7. For show times, go here.
Posted by: christa on Wednesday, February 03 at 11:52 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink
Tags: kathy mctavish, lee zimmerman, live music, painting
Ninneman going Shakespearean
News Tribune file photo of Chani Ninneman (left).
Local playwright/actor Chani Ninneman (you know her: For starters, she was in Rubber Chicken Theater's "Evil Dead," Renegade's "Wonder of the World,"; She wrote "Humpty Dumpty: The Musical" and "Snow White Ate the Apple") is in the process of building a Shakespeare company called Wise Fool Shakespeare, with her eye on a March 2011 date for producing "Hamlet." She already has a Hamlet, and a director (John Pokrzywinski will be both, Ninneman said), she's in negotiations with obtaining a space she is super familiar with ... Now she is looking for people who want to kick it old school with classic theater along the lines of Shakespeare, Moliere, Shaw ...
"This company has been a dream of mine for a long time," Ninneman said in a mass E-mail that went out on Tuesday to local theater people (and, well, me).
Questions? Interested? Contact Ninneman at wisefoolshakespeare@gmail.com.
Posted by: christa on Tuesday, February 02 at 6:32 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: chani ninneman, theater
Lit or Miss: Lethem, Moore, Murakami, Krauss, Ferris
Hold on to your hat, Molly. It has been a hard core couple of weeks filled with all sorts of crazy awesome books and one clunker. Here is what I have feasted my eyes on:
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem: A former child actor begins spending lazy, hazy afternoons and nights with a doped out former rock critic, eating burgers, watching flicks, and talking smart. Meanwhile, all sorts of crazy stuff is happening in Manhattan: A grey fog covers the city, there is a tiger on the loose, and everyone has gone nutso for these chaldrons. This book is crunk. One of the main characters is named Perkus Tooth. That helps. FICTION. Read it.
The Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore: Our hero is just a country girl suddenly introduced to college-town luxuries like Chinese food and Brazilian boyfriends. She takes a job as a babysitter for a family that curiously has no baby -- yet -- and becomes part of an ongoing dialog on race. Then, everything explodes around her. FICTION. Read it.
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami: This clinches it. Haruki Murakami will henceforth be referred to as my favorite writer. In this one, an almost-unnamed narrator tells the story of his unrequited love for Sumire, who is struggling with her own unrequited love for a much-older married woman. Then Murakami busts right past reality, like he does so well. FICTION. Read it.
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss: Here is a bit of weightlifting for the soul. A young girl whose father is dead tries to help her mother find happiness, and goes all Nancy Drew looking for more information about a little-known book that really affected her parents. Meanwhile, an old man is on his last legs, wandering the streets of New York, knocking stuff over and posing nude for an art class. FICTION. Read it.
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris: Whereas his first book had a bit of humor, this one has been stripped of anything remotely funny. It is the story of a lawyer who struggles with an undisagnosed disorder that causes him to walk and walk and walk until, exhausted, he passes out behind a gas station or in an abandoned vehicle or where ever. Another big idea that Ferris cannot pull off because he is immune to the effects of interesting words placed in a clever order. FICTION. Skip it.
Anyone out there reading anything good?
Lit or Miss is an irregular feature that runs whenever I have a handful of books I've recently finished. They are brief reviews with advice on whether you should read it or skip it.
Posted by: christa on Friday, January 29 at 1:18 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: haruki murakami, jonathan lethem, joshua ferris, lit or miss, lorrie moore, nicole krauss
Also Good Bets: Today-Feb. 3
Jeremy Messersmith and his Casio from his show at UMD in Dec. 2008. Photo by Barrett Chase.
Jeremy Messersmith returns to the Kirby Rafters for a show with Dave Mehling at 9 p.m. Saturday at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Here’s what happened last time Messersmith played the Rafters.
That was a good show. And those who follow Messersmith on Twitter know that he had a song featured on MTV’s reality show “Jersey Shore” — which is really about as famous as a person could get while that reality train wreck of awesome took over the universe. As for Dave Mehling … You never know what to expect. This is how he billed his show at the Twin’s Bar during last year’s Homegrown Music Festival: In addition to his new band, which was then unnamed and is now called the Fontanelles, Mehling said he was including “10 to 12 other Duluthians that will join us on stage playing tambourines and shakers and a choreographed dance for a tune that is like the Macarena, but a little more robotic and funky, and backup vocals.” This one is being billed as a solo show, but again, who knows. Free for UMD students; $5 for everyone else.
“Wilco: Ashes of American Flags,” is an 88-minute road trip with the Chicago band filmed in the spring of 2008 (and released to indie record stores in the spring of 2009) as they tour old-school Americana venues in Washington, D.C.; Mobile, Ala.; Tulsa, Okla.; Nashville, Tenn., and New Orleans.
If you’re looking for a little Wilco fix before they perform at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center in February, Zinema 2 will host a screening of this live performance documentary. It plays at 7:15 p.m. today, and tickets are $6.50. (Word on the street is that your friends at 222 E. Superior St. will be giving away two free concert tickets.) Michael Franco reviewed the film at PopMatters and liked the way Wilco keeps it real:
“In ‘Ashes of American Flags’ … we see what it really looks like for the band before and after the show, and it’s often lonesome. There are ample shots of the band emptily staring out the bus window, the evening sun flickering out across their faces. And during one sequence, the band is captured behind the stage after the show. There are no groupies, no bottles of alcohol and no glamour.
“Instead we see Nels Cline icing his neck, Glenn Kotche icing his hands, and Jeff Tweedy having his throat examined by a doctor.”
Reverend Raven and his Chain Smoking Altar Boys performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Hayward's Park Theater. The band is known for its Chicago-style of Blues. Tickets are $15 at the door and can be reserved by calling (715) 634-4596.
The Edge Center for the Arts is doing a staged reading of "The Laramie Project" at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday at 101 2nd Ave., Bigfork. After Saturday's show, there will be an audience talk-back. "The Laramine Project" is based on conversations that a New York City theater company had with the people of Laramie, Wyo., after Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was killed. The Edge Center's production is directed by Aaron Gabriel, and includes Barbra Berlovitz and Tod Petersen, from Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minneapolis, as well as Andrea Cole, Patricia Feld, Pastor John Hanson, Zachary Madsen, Gregg Peterson, and Kimberly Powell. Music by Jim Patrow, Mike Patrow, and Curt Snyder. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students.
The St. Paul folk/psychedelic/visual (visual?) band Emot plays at Beaner's Central at 8 p.m. Saturday. Also: Ian Alexy and Emily Hysulide. Emot cites among its influences as Low, Radiohead, Wilco, Bon Iver. Show starts at 8 p.m., $5 cover.
The Northern Lights Foundation wants more cowbell. The Celebrity Cowbell Competition from 6-9:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, at Grandma’s Sports Garden in Canal Park. Proceeds from the evening’s events will benefit the Northern Lights Foundation. Admission is $10 and you must be 21 or accompanied by a parent or guardian. There will be pizza, a live and silent auction, a raffle with prizes including sports tickets and a Canal Park vacation, and live music by the Lake City Smokin’ Section. The mission of the Northern Lights Foundation is to grant wishes and distribute money that address the needs and wishes of Northland children – and their families – with life threatening conditions.
Also Good Bets, a companion to the Wave's Best Bets section, is a weekly feature that includes additional ways to fill your entertainment schedule for the next week.
Posted by: christa on Wednesday, January 27 at 11:03 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Tags: also good bets, dave mehling, emot, jeremy messersmith, laramie project, reverend raven, wilco
