News & Articles

I appreciate that you have chosen to read this column. After twenty years alongside the North Shore of Lake Superior, I am quite happy. The Arrowhead region of Minnesota is only eclipsed, artistically, by the Twin Cities region, although the population difference is a number northlanders cannot compete with. For better or worse, we have the second highest concentration of artists in Minnesota, who clearly want to be recognized for their writing, drama,  music, sculpture, painting, glass work, puppetry, etc.  The flip side of the coin will reveal that we have one twenty-fifth of the population base of the Twin Cities.

That means, as an individual, that I am faced with multiple artistic choices on any day of the week. The notion that I am a true Gemini, doesn’t alleviate the situation very much. I still can only fully be present in one place at any one time. C’est dommage!

Choosing An Opera  In Duluth!

 I did not attend the Minnesota Opera staging of Mozart’s Magic Flute. I personally felt like Wagner’s Tannhäuser, the Saturday matinee at the Metropolitan Opera, was a more powerful magnet. So for four hours and forty-five minutes (!) I left the world of Duluth, landed in Thuringia, and was surrounded by vocal and instrumental music for a highly sexual and dramatic afternoon. These HD Live televised matinees are powerful, and the next one, Alban Berg’s Lulu, will occur on Saturday, November 21, beginning at 11:30am at the Duluth Cinema in Canal Park.

Lulu, the story of a fifteen year old girl, struggling to live on the streets of Vienna, is one of the most modern operas ever created, even though it was originally performed in 1937. If you want to see opera on the cutting edge, join us for the November 21 matinee.

DSSO Bridges Session Competition

More to the moment, as you read this, the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra will reveal the next stage of the 2015 Bridge Sessions at 8pm, Friday, November 6, at the Clyde Iron Works on W. Michigan Ave. The four finalists will be up for votes, in hopes of being the first local group to perform live with the  DSSO in February.

November 10,1975 and 2015:  Remembering The Gales

In the Lake Superior country, November 10 will always be a haunting day to remember. Up at Split Rock Lighthouse, the light will be on, and the bell will be sounded 29 times at sundown to commemorate the mariners who went down with the Edmund Fitzgerald in a powerful November storm forty years ago. The Steven Seitz drama, Ten November, opened November 5, plays on November 10 as a special event, and continues through November 14 at The Underground stage of The Duluth Playhouse.

Simultaneously, on Tuesday, November 10, the DSSO will host its second chamber concert at The Duluth Depot, featuring works by five different composers, in five different sections of the Depot. This ‘strolling’ concert features Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Richard Wagner and others, starting at 5:30pm.

If that’s not enough, Matinee Musicale continues its 116th concert season on Tuesday, November 10, with a performance by The Tempest Trio, three powerfully independent musicians, Alon Goldstein, piano, Ilya Kaler, violin, and Amit Peled, cello, joining forces to share music by L. Bernstein, L. Beethoven, and A. Dvorak. The program begins at 7:30 at Mitchell Auditorium on The College of St. Scholastica campus.
http://www.tempesttrio.com/uploads/2/1/3/7/21373166/1342373_orig.jpg

I have my choices to make, and you can read about them next week. Meanwhile, I have yet to make up my mind completely. Enjoy the arts in our Duluth-Superior late autumn.