What does a conductor really do? If you asked middle and high school students, they’d probably say a few different things. For example, the conductor helps the orchestra keep time, tells the musicians when to come in, and helps interpret the music — but that’s not everything. Conducting uses life skills, like listening and collaboration, to approach tasks like working with many different people and interpreting an ensemble’s sound.

YourClassical Fellow Anna Tessman, a lifelong violinist, was amazed to learn just how much work goes into conducting after taking a college conducting class with instructor and conductor Hannah Schendel. “I think I’d seen an orchestral score a few times before and always knew there was more to conducting than what we as musicians see,” Tessman says, “but after that class, and working with Hannah, I think understanding this as a younger musician can help students better understand the music as they play. It can also be inspiring to young women, seeing a woman lead an orchestra with a simple flick of her baton.”

It was because of this experience that Tessman decided to help younger students learn about a conductor’s job as part of her final outreach project at Minnesota Public Radio.

Tessman collaborated with Schendel to bring conducting master classes to students around the Twin Cities. Schendel is an active professional in the Twin Cities who works as the Cover Conductor for the Minnesota Orchestra, the Music Director for the Wayzata Symphony Orchestra, and conductor of the Carleton College Orchestra.

Tessman and Schendel went to three schools — South Washington County Park High School, Park Center High School and Maple Grove Middle School — to put on a conducting series that showed students what the many aspects of a conductor’s job looks like. “There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work and there’s also in-the-moment rehearsal decisions that conductors have to make,” Schendel says. “[This project] gives the students a chance to know what a conductor does on and off the podium.”

Schendel encouraged each class to get up and move their bodies to slow and fast-paced pieces, and she taught the history and importance of conducting. The students then looked at an orchestral score and discovered what it was like to stand on the podium and conduct their peers.

Schendel says, “I believe that music is for everyone, and it has the power to transform our lives.”

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To learn more about Hannah Schendel, visit her website.

Minneapolis’ Augsburg/Mirandola Chamber Collective recently had the privilege of recording with British vocal powerhouse Voces8 and its Voces8 U.S. Scholars, a stupendous event captured by YourClassical MPR. Listen now as they perform Paul Smith’s breathtaking “The Day Sky” and Charles Wood’s majestic “Hail, Gladdening Light.”

"I was so happy seeing my students experience their full preparedness to join accomplished musicians in these gorgeous choral performances,” said Kristina Boerger, who directs the Augsburg/Mirandola singers. “It was a tremendous reinforcement of all that they are learning about the requirements of the discipline: If they answer those requirements, they will be rewarded with that transcendence of communication that only vocal harmonizing can bring! I am grateful to the Voces8 community and to MPR for such a rare and precious opportunity."

Smith’s piece was conceived for the happiest of occasions: the wedding of his brother (and Voces8's artistic director), Barney Smith. Making this recording extra special, Barney Smith leads the massed choir in the work.

“The wedding took place in Cambridge just after Christmas and was a moving, joyous and beautiful occasion," Paul Smith says. "This piece is very much written as a ‘miniature,' a moment for thought, reflection and beauty. I presented Barney and [his now-wife] Libby with a number of choices for the text and was thrilled when they chose this beautiful poem by Hafiz.”

This performance of “The Day Sky” also was meaningful for the Augsburg/Mirandola singers, Boerger said, because a major benefactor was able to observe from the studio booth.

"This remarkable session was significantly underwritten by John N. Schwartz, Augsburg alumnus and peripatetic benefactor of choral study and performance,” she said. “John passed three months later, having lived valiantly and well for years in defiance of a threatening diagnosis. On this day, he was present in the sound booth, raptly attentive to the process and suffused with joy. We thank MPR for hosting this opportunity for him to experience fulfillment of his fervent wish: to ensure life-changing involvement in the choral arts for Augsburg's students of today."

The singers would later go on to perform the song at Schwartz’s memorial service.

Barney Smith also leads the choral forces in Wood's classic hymn, which was translated from its original Greek into English by John Keble, from the ancient Christian hymn “Phos Hilaron.”

The Voces8 U.S. Scholars, under the direction of Erik Jacobson and Paul Smith, are the U.S.-based training ensemble of the Voces8 Foundation and include up-and-coming professional singers who seek to hone their vocal craft. Their curriculum includes a recording residency at Minnesota Public Radio each fall with Minnesota-based composers and performers.

Credits

“The Day Sky”
Composed by Paul Smith
Music © 2023 by Voces8 Publishing. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Sheet music: https://voces8.com/publishing

“Hail, Gladdening Light”
Composed by Charles Wood; lyrics translated from the original Greek by John Keble
This performance © 2023 by Minnesota Public Radio. All rights reserved.

Recorded Oct. 31, 2023, in the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser studio at Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Serving as a 13-piece “one-man band,” Victor Zupanc, longtime resident music director and composer, will add to the zany antics of the Children’s Theatre Company’s production of Alice in Wonderland.

Zupanc will variously play keyboard, violin, guitar, accordion, kazoo and “lots percussion things that I’m playing with my feet” to complement the wacky doings of Alice, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter and other characters. CTC’s version of Lewis Carroll’s beloved classic runs Feb. 13 to March 31.

Zupanc will perform some 40 “micro songs,” most only four to eight bars long. He composed the songs while rehearsing all day, every day — “not a normal practice for composers or sound designers,” he said.

“The story of Alice in Wonderland is so absurd,” he added. “One thought was, let’s put a bunch of songs into this production and make them really tiny, which adds to the frantic nature of the play. It’s a lot of fun for the cast to just be jumping from one thing to another to another and have these little tiny bursts of song.”

Performing in costume and visible from a pit at the side of the stage, Zupanc will punctuate characters’ head bumps and foot stomps and other action with siren whistles, slide whistles and cowbells. He has pedals hooked up to a bass drum, a cymbal, a hi-hat and tambourine.

“We’re doing this kind of like a vaudeville troupe of clowns that puts on this production,” he said. “I thought, that would have been one musician, a piano player off to the side. So, there’s a lot of piano, and the basic sound of what I’m doing is a lot of 1920s ragtime piano with a lot of sound effects and bells and whistles.”

Taking advantage of technology, Zupanc has keyboard patches that put the sounds of trumpets, strings, timpani and brass at his fingertips to, for example, to create a “big and royal” fanfare when the Queen of Hearts enters.

Zupanc, who grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, has been CTC’s resident music director and composer since 1989. He has worked on more than 300 plays and composed for orchestras, choirs and films. In addition to CTC, he has worked on shows at the Guthrie Theater and Mixed Blood Theatre and on the coasts.

“I think my favorite ones are always the plays where I am the musician, where I'm either on stage or in a pit, but where it's just me creating everything, doing Foley sound effects, playing the music, singing, acting or whatever need be,” he said.

Zupanc typically stays in the pit during intermissions or after shows so that audience members can see how he creates the songs and sounds they hear.

“I love to share that, when people come down and go, ‘Wait, it’s just you? How do you do all this?’” Zupanc said. “And I’m able to show them all these pedals and instruments and how I do this stuff. I love that part and seeing the kids’ faces and asking them if they play instruments.”

With every show, Zupanc’s goal is to learn something new. That’s how he’s picked up the flute and the tuba, although neither are part of his lineup for Alice in Wonderland.

“I’ve written pieces for symphony orchestras; I’ve written pieces for choirs,” Zupanc said. “And all of that informs what I do when I’m just a one-man band. I’ve done this in probably a dozen shows over the years. Directors see that and go, ‘Whoa, that’s fun; I’d like you to do that for my show.’ So, it’s just taken on a little bit of a life.”

More info

What: Alice in Wonderland
When: Feb. 13-March 31
Where: Children’s Theatre Company, 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis
Tickets: $15 and up
More info

Sigrid Johnson often said, “God gave me two beautiful sons, and every year I’m blessed with 100 daughters.”

She conducted St. Olaf College’s 100-voice first-year women’s chorus, the Manitou Singers, for decades.

And on Oct. 29 at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, the Minnesota choral legend will be remembered just the way she would have wanted it: with beautiful new music for women to sing. 

Johnson — “Sig” to everyone who knew her — taught at St. Olaf for 32 years before retiring in 2015; she died in March 2022. The combined soprano and alto voices of the St. Olaf Choir and VocalEssence will premiere Song in My Heart, by Jocelyn Hagen. She’ll also be at the piano for the performance, as she was for two years while a St. Olaf student, accompanying the Manitou Singers in rehearsal and concert.

“I thought the world of Sig,” Hagen said. “She was brilliant and had amazing ears, and also was quite demanding and intimidating sometimes. She knew what she wanted, and she didn’t hide her emotions. She made music with such passion.”

That passion wasn’t confined to music-making with her 18- and 19-year-old “daughters.” She conducted all-state high school choirs in 30 states and prepared 150-voice symphonic choruses for Neville Marriner, Edo de Waart, Leonard Slatkin and many other conductors. She served as the conductor of the Dale Warland Symphonic Chorus and was associate conductor of VocalEssence, working closely with artistic director Philip Brunelle, who organized the concert as a launch for VocalEssence’s 55th season.

In an unconventional note above the first bar of her new piece, Hagen tells the singers that the music is “to be sung in tune.” This will make every Manitou Singer, or anyone who ever sang under Johnson, smile, as Johnson was obsessive about in-tune singing.

“Tuning chords was her specialty,” said Hagen, who sang soprano in Manitou her first year. “She taught us to sing in unison really well. You come in your freshman year and you don’t know anybody. This was a great way to feel the music together, and to feel as one. She built her choir’s sound from unison singing.”

Hagen’s Song in My Heart features soaring unison lines on a beautiful text by a Catholic nun, Sister Marie Therese:

Now is a moment between birth and death
That I must fill with song; infinity
Trembles upon my lips with every breath
And must cry for beauty endlessly

“In the months before Sig died, we knew she was getting very sick and did not have much more time with us,” Hagen said. “I knew even then that I wanted to write something for her. And as I wrote this piece, I felt she was with me.”

Here’s hoping that Johnson’s one-of-a-kind ears are tuned to Central Lutheran Church on Oct. 29, as Anton Armstrong conducts the women of his St. Olaf Choir and VocalEssence in the performance.

More info: VocalEssence and the St. Olaf Choir, 4 p.m. Oct. 29, Central Lutheran Church, 333 S. 12th St., Minneapolis. Tickets: $25-$45.

The scholastic marching arts were on full display Saturday, Oct. 14, as 34 of the top high school marching bands from Minnesota and beyond competed at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis as part of the Youth in Music Championships. It was one of the biggest lineups for the annual event.

Rosemount, which has ruled the largest class of bands (AAAA) for years and was the defending champion, won again.

“Rosemount has won all but two YIM Championships,” Youth in Music founder Brent Turner said. “One was the first year of YIM, when they were not able to attend. The last time Rosemount did not win the contest was in 2015, when they were outscored by Eden Prairie High School.”

All of the bands competed during the day, in various classes based on size. Then the top 10 bands return to compete in the finals at night. Minnesota’s Rosemount High School won the championship once again, capping a day and night filled with outstanding performances and musicianship. (Check out the scores from prelims and finals.)

Relive the excitement and pageantry of the Youth in Music Championships through our huge photo gallery below.

Bands are presented in alphabetical order from their daytime performances. The full band names and their scheduled performance order are listed below the gallery.

All photos by Dack Nehring of BrenRose Photos, exclusively for YourClassical MPR, which does not make reprints available. To order official photos from the event, go to Ceremony Photos.

Youth in Music schedule

Youth in Music Marching Band Championships at U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, Oct. 14

Note: All are Minnesota high schools unless noted otherwise.

• Osseo: 7:15 a.m.

• Hutchinson: 7:30 a.m.

• Maple Grove: 7:45 a.m.

• Eisenhower (Blue Island, Illinois): 8 a.m.

• Mankato Area 77 Lancers: 8:15 a.m.

• Andover: 8:30 a.m.

• Harrisburg (South Dakota): 8:45 a.m.

• Lourdes (Rochester): 9 a.m.

• Blaine: 9:15 a.m.

• Minnetonka: 9:30 a.m.

• Anoka: 9:45 p.m.

• Coon Rapids: 10 a.m.

• Hastings: 10:15 a.m.

• St. Croix Central (Hammond, Wisconsin), exhibition: 10:30 a.m.

• Mitchell (South Dakota): 10:45 a.m.

• Sioux Falls O'Gorman (South Dakota): 11 a.m.

• Onalaska (Wisconsin): 11:15 a.m.

• Brookings (South Dakota): 11:30 a.m.

• Waseca: 11:45 a.m.

• Champlin Park: noon

• Lakeville South: 12:15 p.m.

• Worthington, exhibition: 12:30 p.m.

• Papillion-La Vista South (Nebraska): 1:30 p.m.

• Grand Rapids: 1:45 p.m.

• Farmington: 2 p.m.

• Irondale: 2:15 p.m.

• Marshall: 2:30 p.m.

• Millard West (Omaha, Nebraska): 2:45 p.m.

• Brandon Valley (South Dakota): 3 p.m.

• Millard North (Omaha, Nebraska): 3:15 p.m.

• Sioux Falls Lincoln (South Dakota): 3:30 p.m.

• Eden Prairie: 3:45 p.m.

• Eastview (Apple Valley): 4 p.m.

• Rosemount: 4:15 p.m.

• Iowa State University, exhibition: 4:30 p.m.

Finals: The top 10 bands returned to compete in a finals competition starting at 7:15 p.m., including an exhibition performance by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Musicians are gathering from around the country this week, Aug. 15-18, for the second year of the Duluth Chamber Musical Festival.

At 7 p.m. Thursday at the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Weber Music Hall, a mainstage concert features Franz Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 20, No. 5, written in 1772, as well as Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, written in 2001 by Gabriela Lena Frank, a 31-year-old American composer with Peruvian, Chinese and Jewish heritage. Adding to the lush music on the program are Dimitri Shostakovich’s Five Pieces for Violin, Viola and Piano and Antonin Dvořák’s Romantic-era Piano Quintet No. 2.

Co-artistic directors Sayaka Tanikawa and Matt Young hope their shared excitement and commitment to making great music will resonate with audience members as they express their joy in collaborating with friends and colleagues whom they love and respect. In a recent interview, Tanikawa and Young said this “keeps chamber music endlessly rewarding.”

Pianist Tanikawa and violist Young will be joined by violinist Yun-Ting Lee, violinist Felicity James and cellist Dane Johansen.

“Some of our closest friends live in Duluth, and we have often gathered here to make music informally in their homes,” Tanikawa said. “The DCMF was a natural outgrowth of these meaningful and happy times we have spent in Duluth over the many years.”

Young was a member of the Minnesota Orchestra for almost a decade before the lockout of 2012. During those years, Sayaka was a regular guest on the orchestra’s Chamber Music Series at Orchestra Hall, as well as the Minnesota Sommerfest.

“We have been coming here since a performance at FinnFest in Duluth in 2008,” they said. “We particularly love the people and food, not to mention the breathtaking beauty of the North Shore.”

During the week, there will be performances at the new chapel in Essentia Hospital at noon Tuesday, a concert at the Sinclair Lewis House on Wednesday (this event is full) and an outreach performance at 10 a.m. Friday at the Duluth YMCA Day Camp Northstar for kids 5 to 16.

Anticipation is high for the debut of Duluth-raised luthier Marinos Glitsos’ handcrafted Duluth viola at this year’s festival. He and fellow luthier Peter Bingen have created “a truly unique viola inspired by Lake Superior and the city of Duluth,” the organizers said. The viola has a ruby-red color, a reflection of “the breathtaking fall colors along the shores of Lake Superior.” Mimicking the lake’s cracking ice sheets, the shiny surface of the viola has a crackled texture. The arch of the instrument is higher than usual, “reminiscent of the powerful gales of November.” Young will set aside his 250-year-old Italian viola in favor of this specially made instrument during the festival.

Glitsos and Bingen were inspired by the inaugural performance of the Duluth Chamber Music Festival in 2022.

“It’s important to me to support Duluth as a destination for great music and the enjoyment of the arts, and the DCMF is a wonderful addition to the already strong scene,” Glitsos said.

After the festival, Glitsos and Bergen plan to donate some of the proceeds from the new instrument’s sale to help the event continue to serve Duluth audiences for years to come. Sayaka and Young say they “love how the instrument is inspired by the North Shore’s beautiful landscape and that it is a direct product of Glitsos’ generosity, creativity and vision to support DCMF.”

The festival contributes to Duluth’s presence on the world stage.

“When I was attending a concert in Berlin’s Philharmonic late last summer, I sat directly next to a gentleman,” Tanikawa said. “As we spoke, we realized that we had both just traveled to Germany from Duluth — and that he, in fact, had been in attendance for DCMF’s inaugural Weber Hall performance! The world felt small at that moment, in the most delightful way!”

Tickets are required for Thursday’s concert. There is no admission charge, but a donation of $20 per person is suggested. You can reserve your tickets online. Tickets also will be available at the door of Weber Music Hall (1151 University Drive, Duluth), where you can make a donation if you choose.

In 2003, as part of Minnesota’s Aurora Centennial, Veda Zuponcic was invited to play a piano recital in her high school auditorium. She was surprised by the strong attendance at that concert. It inspired her to bring her piano students from Rowan University in New Jersey to study in Aurora at a small summer camp, have some fun and bring some income to the community. That’s how the Northern Lights Music Festival started.

From July 1 to 21, the Northern Lights Music Festival will celebrate its 20th year of classical music on the Iron Range. It has evolved to include a professional opera performance, Young Artists Program and Opera Apprentice Program, for which performers, faculty and students travel from all over the world.

Opera is at the heart of the festival

This year, Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème will be on stage at 7 p.m. July 14 in Aurora and at 3 p.m. July 16 in Chisholm. The opera is set in Paris during the 1920s.

“Our opera productions are completely professional,” artistic director Zuponcic says. “Our principal cast is usually under management, with many successful years of performances to their credit. As we prepare, the orchestra rehearses separately for a number of days, and then the cast joins in what is called a ‘sitzprobe’ — they stand or sit on the stage in Chisholm, and the orchestra is in the pit. After that, there is a ‘wandelprobe,’ where they move around the stage, finding their positions. That is followed by a dress rehearsal. Our costumes this year are rented from Portland Oregon Opera.

“We build sets on site, because they have to fit into little Veda Zuponcic Auditorium at Mesabi East, and the much bigger Chisholm Auditorium. We truck the set from Aurora to Chisholm, and extra components are added for the larger space. Local carpenters work together with the technical director and set designer to make it all come together. 

“We have professional technical directors, lighting directors, stage directors, stage managers and so on to help. Local carpenters help build sets; and high school students work as crew. Local seamstresses serve as wardrobe mistresses; again, assisted by high school students.”

Opera Apprentice Program

Always looking for opportunities to involve children, the Northern Lights Music Festival will offer a one-hour presentation of La Bohème for tweens and teens at 3 p.m. July 13 in Aurora. Zuponcic explains how this part of the festival began.

“Two years ago, we produced La Cenerentola — Cinderella — by Gioachino Rossini. We are always looking for opportunities to involve children, and that seemed like a no-brainer. We have an Opera Apprentice Program, so we recruited specific voices to sing the abridged version, giving the apprentices a rich experience: learning a role, and singing it with full orchestra on the sets, and with good costumes.

“We started these productions during COVID, so that has an impact on attendance. By the way, we were the only opera company in the country that produced during that first summer, at the Discovery Center’s Amphitheater in Chisholm. It was an education — lighting is impossible because the sun doesn’t go down until 9 pm, and then the mosquitos and the cold arrive. Northern Minnesota isn’t a place for outdoor opera! But it was a great Tosca.“

The Opera Apprentice Program takes place from June 24 to July 19, offering students an opportunity to add a professional performance to their résumé so they can move upward in their careers. Students from Nigeria, Japan, China, Germany, Canada and the United States have taken part.

Music director Gavriel Heine

The festival’s music director is renowned worldwide. Gavriel Heine had been the staff conductor for the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the past 15 years, until the war in Ukraine. He also happens to be Zuponcic’s son.

“When we started doing opera at NLMF, I like to say I looked for the cheapest conductor I could find — my son!” she says. “He is hugely experienced, with hundreds of opera and ballet performances at the Mariinsky. He is making his way into a new life after having left Russia and is looking forward to many engagements in the U.S. and Europe. In fact, he just did a short tour with the State Ballet of Georgia, including a performance at Northrop Auditorium in April.

“We’re looking forward to a month of his performances at Paris Opera next season. It is such a good reason to go to France!”

At home on the Range

Zuponcic has good memories and deep ties to the people and environs of Aurora.

“I was born and raised in the town of Aurora, to parents who were born in Aurora, and to Slovene grandparents who arrived around 1900 and were among the first settlers,” she says. “Our families were educated in the great public schools there, and the festival is still coasting on the coattails of the memories of great orchestra programs and cultural benefits we derived from the Range schools.

“My father was highly educated, but not a college graduate. He was the superintendent of public utilities in our little town, and he could recite Chaucer in Middle English from memory into his old age. Everyone had a grandmother who spoke a foreign language. It was a cosmopolitan place. We actually knew where places were on the globe, and we weren’t frightened by ‘furriners.’

“Everyone’s families were dropped into the woods there from someplace else. It was one of the country’s greatest social experiments, one that could be duplicated elsewhere today to benefit many communities … but there probably isn’t enough money to do it!”

Community involvement

As the festival has needed support, Zuponcic has “approached the citizens who are successful financially and happy to support a local venture like the festival,” she says.

“In my case, Thomas Gillach, from an old Aurora family, and a teacher and athletic coach, was my guide to sourcing funding. He spent his life doing good deeds, knowing everyone. Without that help, we never would have had the longevity we have thus far achieved.

“The state of Minnesota has been exceptionally generous and when the Legacy Fund — the Arts and Cultural Heritage grants — were established, we learned how to access those troughs of funding, and we have been grateful for that major support. Senator David Tomassoni, may he rest in peace, was a major force for anything on the Range and helped to secure funding.”

In this anniversary year, Zuponcic remembers the summer the School Board named the Mesabi East auditorium after her.

“I have rarely been so touched by a kind gesture as I was by this,” she says. “The honor was partially because of bringing the festival to the community, but also because I had a small hand in helping to save the auditorium from demolition. It is an exquisite space, originally built in the 1920s, and as these buildings are more and more visited by the wrecking ball, I feel pride and satisfaction that this perfect chamber music space is still ringing with music.”

Another fond memory occurred when the Friends of the B’nai Abraham Synagogue in Virginia, Minnesota, called to ask if Northern Lights Music Festival would take possession of the building in which it had played concerts annually. In March 2020, as the pandemic began its grip on the nation, the festival assumed operation of the facility with the help of contributions that support this project.

“It is an absolutely gorgeous building, and we do many events there, bringing in a good Steinway,” Zuponcic says. “It is an intimate, bright and light space, and many people in the region who come to concerts there love to sit and bask in the pale-yellow light that comes through the stained-glass windows. 

“It is, along with Chisholm Auditorium (the only place on the Range that still has an orchestra pit big enough to seat an opera orchestra), the Buhl Library, Hibbing’s magnificent auditorium, and Mesabi East’s auditorium, one of the historic buildings we use frequently. 

“Essentially, if you plan your trip well, you can hear a performance in any number of the most important venues built in the early part of the 20th century on the Iron Range, when oligarchs were outdoing themselves to build facilities and the local politicians were doing a good job of extracting schools and buildings of quality from the mining companies.

“Administrators and communities are happy we are producing things of quality in their schools and that we involved the local students in both the musical and the technical sides of the projects. Iron Range students receive free tuition for the three-week Young Artists Program.”

Benefitting from diversity

Addressing diversity, as every facet of the arts world must, Zuponcic says, “I’ve been a Jersey girl for 55 years: New Jersey is one of the most diverse states in the U.S., and one scarcely notices ethnicities; they are so embedded in our society. Northern Minnesota is probably the least so. We are 98.5% white in Aurora. So when we consistently cast African Americans and Latinos in major roles, and bring about 20 Asian pianists and violinists to the Range, we bring diversity to town for a month or more each year.

“Our very first opera was Britten’s Noye’s Fludde — and Noah was African American. We choose fine artists. Period. Our Flora in Traviata was Mexican; Olga in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was Black. Both major roles in Rossini’s Barber of Seville were African American. Major roles in La Cenerentola were taken by African American and Latino singers. Our Opera Apprentice Program also benefits from the fine work of many diverse student artists.”

Young Artists Program

In session from June 30 to July 22, musicians at the collegiate level who have auditioned and been recommended by their teachers join the Young Artists Program to play in trios, quartets and quintets alongside members of the Minnesota Orchestra and Duluth Symphony. Their performances are part of the plentiful schedule of concerts across the Iron Range in Hibbing, Ely, Virginia, Buhl, Aurora, Duluth, Vermillion and Gilbert.

“A significant percentage of students come back year after year,” Zuponcic says. “The Iron Range is not a glamour destination — no rolling hills in the Berkshires, no lofty mountaintops like Aspen. But we have a very prestigious faculty, and because we are smaller and, indeed, less prestigious, there is a good likelihood that a fine young soloist can study with a very impressive teacher, play many recitals and can play a concerto with our professional orchestra in Hibbing High School. It is a great place to prepare a big program for competitions that happen in the fall. One of our students has performed four times: Kabalevsky’s Concerto No. 3 when he was a little guy; Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 3, Stravinsky’s Capriccio and this year Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2. 

Concerts, lectures and more

The Northern Lights Music Festival schedule is jam-packed with opportunities to immerse yourself in music as well as the region’s history. The Opening Chamber Music Concert takes place July 1. The Festive Fourth! Concert will be held July 4. Mary Palcich Keyes will deliver a lecture on “The Schools That Did It All: The History of Iron Range Schools” on July 7. That’s a brief sampling of what’s available.

To attend the Northern Lights Music Festival, tickets can be purchased online or in person. Most cost $15 or $20 for adults ($50 for the opera), with student tickets at $5.

"No one has ever wanted to record these traditional songs before," Nomvula Maneli said as tears streamed down her face.

But this was different. The composer, arranger and vocalist had just finished a marathon recording session with 29:11 International Exchange in the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser studio at Minnesota Public Radio’s headquarters in St. Paul. It was a long day. It was a productive day. It was an exuberant day.

The Minnesota-based ensemble, co-founded by husband and wife Brendon and Gaylene Adams, is made up of nine singers and four instrumentalists, most of whom hail from South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their songs tap into their African roots to, as Brendon Adams says, “spread love and reconciliation through our music.”

Enjoy the results of their time with YourClassical MPR.

Akhonto

"Akhonto," sung completely in Zulu, celebrates God’s creation. In the repeated chorus, featured singer Ayanda Nxumalo sings, “Akhonto efana,” and the ensemble responds, “Neswe” — which translates roughly as “Nothing like” (singer), “this world” (ensemble). Nxumalo co-wrote the song with Dillon April.

Angiwanaki

"Angiwanaki" is a traditional Zulu song, arranged here by featured singer Maneli as an homage to her parents, her father being Xhosa and her mother being Zulu. The lyrics of the opening verse — “Angiwanaki amanxeba ami uzowapholis’ ubaba” in Zulu — translate as “I pay no heed to all my scars for my Father will heal me.”

Hope

“Hope,” also written by and featuring Maneli, is inspired by Christmastime and reflection on what has happened in your life throughout the year. “It's the time to really show kindness, to really show joy,” she says. “You share the little that you have with your neighbors. And so how appropriate is it that we are also able to share the hope, the love and the joy with those that might not be feeling in a jovial mood. But we are comforted by knowing that this time God has sustained us throughout.”

Jabulani

"Jabulani" was popularized by white South African singer P.J. Powers, who was marginalized and even banned from radio and TV by the South African government over her activism against apartheid. “But she stood next to her African brothers and sisters and continued to perform with them,” says Gaylene Adams, who is the featured singer here. The song simply celebrates the joy of life — epitomized by its title, which translates as “Rejoice.”

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika

"Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika," which translates as “God Bless Africa,” is a traditional South African hymn that has been arranged here by 29:11 artistic director Brendon Adams. First composed in 1897 by Enoch Sontonga, the song gained stature over the decades and in 1997 was combined with another song to form the new South African national anthem.

Senzeni Na

“Senzeni Na," featuring Maneli in a plaintive solo vocal, is a traditional Xhosa/Zulu protest song that goes back to at least the 1950s. It expresses the pain and suffering of Black people during apartheid, including this heartbreaking plea: “What have we done? Our only sin is the color of our skin!”

Lift Every Voice and Sing

"Lift Every Voice and Sing," written in 1900 by brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson, has come to be known in the United States as the Black national anthem. 29:11’s version adds a layer of beauty through the use of Zulu lyrics, as well as English, in an uplifting arrangement by Brendon Adams. “We are so proud and feel so good to relate with our African-American brothers and sisters as we sing this song,” he says.

Still Love

"Still Love" is an autobiographical song by Brendon Adams. It’s about living in South Africa, where he grew up thinking something was wrong with him because of his skin color. He eventually got married and moved to Minnesota, only to find that the color of his skin never changed. “But in spite of what people think or say about him,” Adams says, “he's gonna still love, still have his peace, still dream about his hope, but, most of all, keep his joy.”

Credits

29:11 International Exchange

Singers:
Brendon Adams
Gaylene Adams
Megan Charles 
Cheryl Lottering
Nomvula Maneli 
Duduzile Nisa Mlondleni
Ayanda Nxumalo
Baetile Sebata
Roshane Solomons 

Piano: Xolisa Ngculu
Guitar: Manasse Kaoma
Bass: Ellijah Ilaba
Percussion: Gilmore van Rooyen

YourClassical MPR

Audio: Cameron Wiley

Video editor: Eric Xu Romani

Cameras: Guillermo Bonilla, Ana Freeberg, Eric Xu Romani

Video editor: Evan Clark

Social media: Inés Gunachez

Producer: Randy Salas

Photo gallery

29:11 International Exchange

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On Saturday, May 20, a storied concert venue on the Iron Range, Goodman Auditorium in Virginia, will host a final celebratory concert before it is decommissioned and razed. Opened in 1917, the ornate Goodman dates from a time when miners were able to keep a significant slice of iron ore revenues — and they built opulent auditoriums and schools as testament to their belief in education and culture. But time has been hard on the Goodman and it fell into disrepair. So it’ll close after this weekend’s premiere of a new concert-length choral and orchestral work, Mesabi: The Sleeping Giant.

The music is by Rene Clausen, a celebrated American composer and for many years the director of choral activities at Concordia College, Moorhead. (“Mesabi” translates from the Ojibwe as “sleeping giant.”) The music, in four sections, unfolds over about 40 minutes.

The first section, “The Land Awakens,” paints a picture of the Range as a pastoral landscape well before the miners arrived, the chorus singing “neutral” vowels that Clausen brushes across the music like a landscape painter.

The second, “The Settling Years,” taps northern and eastern European folksong to evoke the people who left hardscrabble homes hoping for prosperity here, most never to return. It uses tunes from Norway, Romania, Hungary and Scotland, each about leaving home.

Clausen stretched himself as a composer in the third section, “The Mines,” creating what he calls “some of the craziest music I’ve ever written.” Best-known for composing elegant and soaringly lyrical music, he wanted to bring to life the sheer cacophony, “the drama of the day” for a miner.

“I saw old pictures of the size of Iron Range mining machines, with tires taller than a human,” he says. “I listened to sound samples of what mining was like.”

Clausen’s music turns raucous, clashing and mechanical.

After that, how to wrap it all up? The concluding section, "Forging a New Way Forward," brings us to today – the mines largely silent, and Iron Rangers asking profound questions of their future. Clausen found his solution through the work of another artist.

“Bob Dylan was from Hibbing, so he’s a son of the Range,” Clausen says. “I heard a beautiful choral-and-piano version of his ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’,’ arranged by New York composer Adam Podd. I got permission from Adam to score his piano accompaniment for full orchestra; so that’s how it ends, with Dylan’s perfect text asking, in effect, ‘Where do we go from here? What’s our future?’ His words gave me chills.”

Mesabi: The Sleeping Giant will feature members of vocal groups the Choralaires, Range of Voices, the Sectionals, Voices of Reason, the Virginia High School Choir and various alumni vocalists accompanied by the Mesabi Symphony Orchestra and Rock Ridge High School Orchestra members.

Editor’s note: On May 10, the Paper Clips trombone quartet, a Class Notes Artist, took a break from its tour of Minnesota schools to play for a big crowd at Harold’s on Main in Moorhead as part of an MPR event. We asked the ensemble’s Ben Bussey, who also teaches at Concordia University and the MacPhail Center for Music, to write about the experience of going from the educational circuit to a bar gig. Regional director Kristi Booth was there to take photos.

It’s Wednesday morning, May 10. I awake to the sound of rain on the roof of the La Quinta in Fargo and to a notification on our Discord channel. It’s one of our bass trombonists, Chris tagging us all to let us know: “I think the stomach bug hit last last night.”

As both a great musician and the most popular member of the Paper Clips (he’s the one students most ask for autographs), the rest of us — Brooklynne Audette, Lauren Husting and me — all know we suddenly have much to do before our school visit to Hawley today and our show at Harold’s on Main in Moorhead in the evening.

And while it doesn’t all go smoothly or exactly to plan, everything happens: Brooklynne comes up with an entirely new segment for our school program, Lauren contacts a friend of ours in the Fargo-Moorhead area to fill in for the evening (the incredible bass trombonist Amber Love, who also finds us a rehearsal space for a quick run-through of our set), and I drive. Somehow, our community helps carry us through the day, to a sunny and humid outdoor patio at Harold’s, to do our favorite thing — to play and talk about music that we love.

Music scenes exist in nested Venn diagrams of connections — a constellation of folks who share a passion for writing, arranging, performing, or just listening to and supporting live music. Even within our little four-piece band, our community includes brass musicians all over the world in many musical styles, every Minnesota college, about a zillion K-12 music teachers and Twin Cities musicians, actor John C. Reilly, singer Josh Groban and the digital experience team at Caribou Coffee, as well as our friends and families. It’s a deep — and deeply appreciated — support system that allows us to do what we do best as musicians and teaching artists.

As a group, the Paper Clips have been fortunate to perform for students throughout Minnesota (80 schools and counting over the past two years) through participation in YourClassical MPR’s Class Notes program. Through dollars from the Minnesota Legacy Amendment’s Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund, Class Notes sponsors our school concerts and provides free educational resources to teachers that complement those concerts — supporting artists, students and teachers all at once. With shrinking budgets for transportation and field trips, bringing music to students is more necessary than ever. In spring 2022, we even had a teacher let slip that, for many of the younger students at our elementary school visit that day, it would be their first concert — ever!

Our current show takes audiences through a brief tour of the trombone family before diving into the heart of our program — music from the height of the Motown records label in the 1960s and a discussion of Motown as a cultural institution that continues to influence the artists and listeners of today. The impact Motown had as the first Black American-owned and -operated record label — and, for a time, the largest and most profitable Black-owned company in the world — really can’t be overstated. Motown signed and supported Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and many other artists, pioneering the now-ubiquitous concept of all-around artist management that includes training in on-stage performance and off-stage etiquette, songwriting, recording and more.

Motown insisted on booking shows with integrated audiences and supported the Detroit jazz scene with steady session musician work. The studio band, eventually known as the Funk Brothers, would combine to record more No. 1 hit singles than the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and the Beatles combined.

Artists such as Gladys Knight and the Jacksons were discovered by Motown, only to leave and thrive with other labels. And, in perhaps my favorite story from the era, artists such as George Clinton (who auditioned for Motown with the Parliaments in 1962 but was turned away!) later filled the space in Detroit left by Motown’s departure for Los Angeles in 1972 with the sound of funk and the artistic flair of early Afrofuturism.

It’s fascinating to play these Motown songs for young people. A few recognize them immediately; many do not. In our playlist-ified era, students pick up on lyrics much faster than song titles — something of a challenge for a band playing popular music that usually has words, but without the words! Younger kids get the urge to move or dance, and we make sure to include moments in our set where they can do so. Older students draw connections between the music they hear out in the world and what we perform. A high school student in Rochester picked out the connection between Portugal, the Man’s “Feel It Still” and “Please Mr. Postman” — they share the same chorus melody — providing us an opportunity to rewrite our arrangement to include both songs.

Kids also make the darndest connections on their own, and they are rarely ones we can predict. One younger student in Hills, Minnesota, after learning about Detroit as the Motor City and clearly (in retrospect) having an interest in cars, excitedly shared with us after the show that he “was gonna go work in that garage!” An older student in Perham wanted to share what he thought the colors of our auras looked like to him. Often, we hear of students inspired to play trombone or bass trombone after our performances.

But the two questions we get asked most often, by kids of all ages, are how we met and how we became a group — questions rooted in that urge to play music with and for others, rooted in building communities that share a common love of music, rooted in learning how to be a part of those communities. We hope that, through our visits to schools, we are showing students ways of building their own music communities. Simply through the act of being an audience, we feel they are already included in ours.

The Paper Clips at Harold's on Main

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YourClassical MPR recently hosted the Voces8 Scholars in our flagship recording studio — and what an endeavor it turned out to be. Among the highlights of the three-day session by the U.S.-based training ensemble for the U.K.’s esteemed Voces8 was a recording of Paul Smith’s ‘Nunc Dimittis’ performed with the Minneapolis-based Augsburg/Mirandola Chamber Collective.

Nunc Dimittis is a contemplative setting of the traditional sacred text taken from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke and was originally recorded by Voces8. British composer Smith explains how the work came about.

“Growing up singing in the choir of Westminster Abbey, I used to sing the beautiful service of evensong every day,” he says. “Each service would include a setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, so the words and music formed a part of my daily life from a very young age. I’ve always loved the Nunc Dimittis, in particular. The text has such a soft, gentle sense of peace and hope.

“Having lived with so many settings by composers across history, I feel like my version is simply a part of a musical journey reaching back hundreds of years, and it was all the versions that I’ve grown up with that inspired my approach to the work. If I had to single out a few composers in particular, I’d probably reference Herbert Howells and Gustav Holst and, from further afield, Arvo Pärt.”

Smith directed the recording sessions at MPR’s headquarters in St. Paul. Augmenting the Voces8 Scholars’ small ensemble with the choral forces of the Augsburg/Mirandola Chamber Collective — made up of members of the Augsburg Choir, which hails from Augsburg University, and the Mirandola Ensemble — turned out to be a special treat for the composer.

“Working with Kristina Boerger and her students at Augsburg was a real joy,” Smith says. “The program for these students is wonderfully relevant for singers contemplating a career in the choral world. As part of that, they sing regularly alongside the professional singers from the Mirandola Ensemble, based in the Twin Cities and run by Nick Chalmers. Adding these forces to the current lineup of the Voces8 Scholars was a treat, and we are looking forward to building long-lasting collaborations with both Augsburg and Mirandola in the years ahead.”

Watch the results of their wonderful collaboration now!

‘Nunc Dimittis’

Look for more from the Voces8 Scholars’ recording session soon.

Meet the singers

The Voces8 U.S. Scholars perform and record under the direction of Voces8 co-founder Smith and managing director Erik Jacobson. Kirby Richards is the Voces8 Foundation’s development director.

The 2022-23 singers include:

Carley DeFranco
Caroline LeGrand
Motomi Tanaka
Ingrid Johnson
Sandy Sharis
Veronica Roan
Aaron Cates
Michael Martin
Maximillian Macias
Christopher Short
Peter Schoellkopff

The Augsburg/Mirandola Chamber Collective includes Augsburg Choir students Sammie Balint, Thomas Farrell, Emma Kirkpatrick, Emily Larson, Olivia Lee, Ashley Litzinger, Bethany Mears, John Retterath, Samuel Ryden, Jaime Vincent Rosa-Chavez, Bernadette Spray, Dylan Taylor-Brunell, Jacky Thao, Destiny Uttecht and Tess Zastrow; as well as artists-in-residence from the Mirandola Ensemble, Alyssa Anderson, Nicholas Chalmers, Andrew Kane and Jenny Ubl.

Choir director Courtland Pickens is focused on lifting youth up by teaching them how to use their singing voices to create harmony — in and among themselves, their neighborhood and the wider community.

“Music heals,” he says, “and it is my hope that, through our music, our community can be healed.” 

In the summer of 2019, the nonprofit Voicez Inc. was created to develop the next generation of singers and songwriters in north Minneapolis. Founder Pickens is the choir teacher at Henry High School (from which he graduated) and Fair High School, as well as being the worship leader at Epiphany Covenant Church in south Minneapolis, so he has a great deal of experience working with young singers.

Known MPLS at MPR Day

Members of the Voicez team put out a call on Facebook for auditions for a youth community choir. From 162 hopeful singers, they selected 48 between 12 and 25 to become Known MPLS, performing locally.

Students leave for sports or they graduate, so auditions continue to be held regularly. There are now 35 active choir members. Students are asked to submit a one-minute video of themselves singing a favorite song, along with an essay explaining why they wish to join the choir and how they believe their membership will benefit themselves and the wider community.

“Known MPLS first and foremost exists to consistently provide a safe space for youth to thrive,” Pickens says. “We intend to continue making a positive impact on the lives of youth and the community through song. 

“We will record and release original music, as well as allowing opportunities for choir members to develop as solo vocalists.

“We will continue coming alongside our choir members in furthering their education, and plan to create a scholarship fund for choir members who are pursuing postsecondary education, as well as expanding upon the resources we currently use to support youth.”

Why does Pickens devote his time to this mission?

“As an educator and a worship leader, I have witnessed the power and potential of music to lift spirits, give purpose and transform the lives of young people who raise their voices in song,” he says.

“A choir’s work begins long before the concert and continues after the applause. I want our members to recognize themselves as agents of change by promoting self-esteem, leadership skills, cultural awareness, discipline and commitment to excellence.”

The COVID-19 pandemic provided tough challenges for the newly formed choir.

“We shut down in-person rehearsals for a season and held our rehearsals via Zoom,” Pickens recalls. “This was hard on our choir logistically, emotionally and socially. I came to realize that my youth were struggling with all the idle time, lack of in-person community and the modified form of engagement. We made the challenging decision to hold in-person choir rehearsals again, with precautions in place.

“I am grateful to say that, even through the thick of the pandemic, we stayed booked and busy. We were able to continue to thrive and persevere by finding creative ways to participate in performances, many of which required prerecorded video submissions or live performances in venues without physical audiences present.” 

How is a choir director made?

“Growing up, I loved singing in church and how it brings a community of people together,” he says. “It’s actually kind of funny because I was not what some would call a ‘natural-born singer.’ I had to work hard to hone my craft by studying recordings of the church services in which I led worship. I continued to learn and develop over time. I am an extrovert of extroverts. I find refreshment and solace around others, so it’s life-giving to be in a musical space with others who are also passionate and talented in this way.” 

To date, Known MPLS has opened for gospel artists such as Grammy winners Jonathan McReynolds and Le'Andria Johnson, as well as seven-time Grammy nominee Vanessa Bell Armstrong. Last summer, the singers performed on MPR Day at the Minnesota State Fair. (See the video above.)

“We had a blast!” Pickens says. “To share in concert with all those who stopped and enjoyed, as well as having the amazing Tesfa Wondemagegnehu as our host, was an honor. We want to keep illustrating the fact that there are no limits on where our choir members can go professionally, should they continue to strive for excellence and press in when things get challenging.”

During the Voces8 Scholars’ recent recording residency with YourClassical MPR, the young singers enjoyed the privilege of working with Minnesota composer Shruthi Rajasekar and recording the Midwestern premiere of her vibrant new piece Sat on the Shore, which urges listeners to “put away your mobile devices” and enjoy the beauty of the world around you.

Before heading from the Twin Cities to London recently to have one of her works performed at Royal Albert Hall, Rajasekar shared her program notes for Sat on the Shore.

“I started composing and writing the text of this piece while watching the waves of the Indian Ocean in Pondicherry (Puducherry), India,” she says. “The atmosphere there is sublime; closed off to motor vehicles, the beach road is only accessible by foot, and there's a tacit communal agreement among the residents, tourists and devotees at the nearby Sri Aurobindo Ashram to respect and preserve the sanctity of this special place.

“Upon returning to my snowy, landlocked home, I listened to the recordings that I had made while sat on the shore — and was taken right back to the peace, energy and possibility found on the border of land and sea.”

In mid-November, the Voces8 Scholars — the U.S.-based training ensemble for the U.K.’s acclaimed Voces8 vocal group — spent several hours rehearsing Sat on the Shore with Rajasekar at Minnesota Public Radio’s headquarters in St. Paul. Then the piece was recorded the next day in MPR’s Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser studio.

“It was wonderful to collaborate with the extremely gifted Voces8 scholars, and a double pleasure to do so for the second year in a row at MPR!” Rajasekar says. “The Voces8 Foundation does incredible work in music education and access, and it's been an honor to work with them.”

Watch and listen now.

Meet the singers

The Voces8 U.S. Scholars perform and record under the direction of Voces8 co-founder Paul Smith and managing director Erik Jacobson. Kirby Richards is the Voces8 Foundation’s development director.

The 2022-23 singers include:

Carley DeFranco
Caroline LeGrand
Motomi Tanaka
Ingrid Johnson
Sandy Sharis
Veronica Roan
Aaron Cates
Michael Martin
Maximillian Macias
Christopher Short
Peter Schoellkopff

For the first time since 2015, the North Dakota State University Challey School of Music performed its annual holiday tradition Messiah at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Minneapolis in late 2022. Listen now to that performance for Easter.

The annual performance of Messiah combines NDSU's Concert Choir, Tenor/Bass and Soprano/Alto Choirs, as well as soloists and an orchestra, performing Handel's masterpiece.

Editor’s note: On Thursday, March 30, YourClassical MPR presented a broadcast of Minnesota Opera’s production of Edward Tulane, based on a novel by Kate DiCamillo. Find out more about the making of this incredible opera from the people behind it, including audio interviews by YourClassical MPR hosts John Birge and Steve Staruch below this informative article about the opera’s long-delayed debut, and listen to on-demand audio of the performance available now!

It was all going so well – until it wasn’t. A new opera based on Minnesota author Kate DiCamillo’s novel The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane was in the final weeks of rehearsal by the Minnesota Opera. Paola Prestini’s score was memorized by a superb cast headed by the young international tenor (and Stillwater native) Jack Swanson. After a series of rigorous workshops and tech run-throughs, the lights, costumes and orchestra were ready to go. Then COVID happened. 

Like so much of the world in late-winter 2020, the premiere of the opera Edward Tulane, the brainchild of Minnesota Opera’s former artistic director, Dale Johnson, was canceled. But on Oct. 8, Swanson finally takes the stage in the title role, and Prestini’s setting of Mark Campbell’s libretto will come to life at Ordway Center in St. Paul. 

If you’re new to DiCamillo’s remarkable story, it’s about a 3-foot-tall toy rabbit named Edward Tulane. He never speaks aloud in the book, but we hear every one of his thoughts — including how splendid he thinks himself to be. Edward loves to be loved by his owner, 10-year-old Abilene. But he does not love. His heart, if he had one, might be made of cold, brittle china. 

His miraculous journey begins. On a trans-Atlantic trip with Abilene and her family, Edward is lost overboard. Lying on the seafloor, he feels his first emotion: fear. After months alone, a storm coughs him up and tosses him into a fisherman’s net and eventually into the fisherman’s cozy home. But over and over, Edward is thrown aside, landing in a new owner’s arms, only to be lost again. And each time — through abandonment, betrayal and even death — Edward’s soaring ego shrinks and his hard, little heart softens. 

“Kate’s book is fanciful, humorous, and it goes right to the heart,” says librettist Mark Campbell, author of about 40 librettos, six of them for Minnesota Opera, including Silent Night and The Shining. “My job was to ‘operatize’ it — to take the book’s essential elements and distill them into language that Paola could turn into music. Kate approved the libretto, understanding that I need to make changes for the book to come alive onstage.”

DiCamillo’s story is one of silver linings. The making of this opera had plenty, too.

“When the pandemic hit, we all had to regroup,” composer Paola Prestini says. “But then we asked, ‘Well, what can we do?’ All of us suddenly had time.”

Working largely by text, email and an occasional phone call in the lockdown days of the pandemic, Prestini and Campbell reshaped and polished their creation. As glimmers of a post-pandemic world began to show, Minnesota Opera rescheduled the premiere.

Edward Tulane stars Jack Swanson, 30, who, like the character he’s singing, is on his own restless journey.

“I don’t have a physical home at the moment. My wife and I are traveling out of big suitcases. The last couple years, I’ve been performing all over Europe, and next year I’ll be in a lot of American opera houses. I pop in and out of Stillwater for Thanksgivings and Christmases.”  

Swanson’s two-year wait to sing this role is finally over. After such a long journey, Edward finally comes home to the Ordway. Performances run Oct. 8 to 16. 

For more information and tickets, visit the Minnesota Opera’s official website.

John Birge chats with Minnesota Opera

Listen to host John Birge’s interview with various members of the Minnesota Opera production of Edward Tulane.

Steve Staruch chats with Kate DiCamillo

Host Steve Staruch converses with Kate DiCamillo, author of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, during Friday Favorites. Listen to the audio segments of the interview.

When MNspin launched seven years ago, it encouraged Minnesota-based artists to submit one album that anyone can stream from the digital platform. Now, it has more than 500 albums in its collection, showcasing music in 18 diverse genres, including classical.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Hennepin County Library, that system’s cardholders can download music from MNspin for free on any device. Classical music of all types is welcome, and the number of releases in that genre grows each year.

Being accepted for the MNspin collection is a curated process. Performers may submit an album beginning in mid-March, and a panel of curators will consider the album, which should be at least 10 minutes in length and have at least four pieces, for inclusion. Submission parameters are detailed on the MNspin website. Up to 100 new albums are chosen each year. MNSpin pays artists $200 for an album.

Nicholas Susi, whose album Scarlatti Now is offered by MNspin, is a classical pianist teaching piano and music theory at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth.

“MNspin is yet another way to try to have your music reach new audiences,” he says. “If you have invested in recording an album, do not stop there! Go the extra step to get the word out as best as you can.”

MNspin builds community: Two contributors met at a MNspin-sponsored, free, noontime concert at Peavey Plaza in downtown Minneapolis. Jon Lewis, executive director of the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra (MSO) and Chadwick Niles Phillips, a hip-hop artist, are now collaborating on Peter and the Timberwolf, an updated version of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf that’s set in Loring Park. It’s written and narrated by Jake Endres, who also is featured on one of the MSO’s recordings on MNspin. Six of Phillips’ students will make musical interjections, functioning as a Greek chorus.

“I am delighted and proud that the MSO is in such great company and strongly encourage other local classical music organizations to participate in the MNspin program,” Lewis says. “The best place to hear us is live, in person, but this is a great way for us to get our music out in the world.”

Sharing their process for submissions, Lewis and MSO music director William Schrickel select pieces they’ve recorded from previous concerts, working with Bill Lund of Digital on Location to honor MNspin’s specific recording formats. If the MSO worked with collaborators, it obtains permission from those people for their submission. MSO Presents Argento: A Few Words About Chekhov can be downloaded from MNspin.

Other noteworthy classical albums and artists on the MNspin site:

• Beijing Trio presents Chinese Buddhist Temple Music, featuring Bao Jian on the guanzi, a double-reed folk instrument, Hu Jianbing, a sheng soloist and composer, and Gao Hong, on the pear-shaped, lute-like pipa. She has received many awards from several Minnesota grant organizations. Gao is senior lecturer in Chinese Instruments at Carleton College in Northfield, where she directs the Chinese Music Ensemble and Global Music Ensemble.

• Purple Orange is made up of Jacqueline Ultan and Michelle Kinney, who are composers and cellists. Their collaborators include Sheryl Crow, Natalie Merchant, R. Carlos Nakai, Nirmala Rajasekar and Henry Threadgill. Based in Minneapolis, they were recognized as 2014 McKnight Artist Fellowship recipients, Kinney for musical composition and Ultan for performance. Suite From ‘To Let Go and Fall’ has four pieces, with 15 minutes of listening.

• Life As Is: The Blending of Ancient Souls From Syria and China is the contribution of Chinese pipa player Gao Hong and Arabic oud player Issam Rafea, who met at Carleton College in Northfield. While teaching, they recorded some improvisations “just for fun,” resulting in this collection.

• Pianists Pınar Başgöze and Susana Pinto perform as Duo Harmonia. They teach piano at McPhail Center for the Arts in Minneapolis. Originally from Ankara, Turkey, and Lisbon, Portugal, respectively, these artists are frequently heard at concerts around and beyond the Twin Cities. MNspin shares their first album, Harmonia, recorded in 2018.

Jeff Radford, community engagement librarian with MNspin and Hennepin County Library, says the program seeks to include performers from across Minnesota.

“As we consider MNspin a statewide opportunity for artists, we try to reach out to all corners of Minnesota, especially in areas where we aren’t well represented,” he says. “We always work to increase our diversity in artists as well as music and try to build where we feel we have gaps.

“We’ve done quite a bit of outreach over the years,” he adds. “This has included connecting and doing promotion with many music-oriented organizations, schools and venues; radio underwriting and interviews with MNspin staff and artists; television interviews; partnering/sponsoring with organizations and venues for concerts featuring MNspin artists, such as the MNspin/Green Minneapolis Peavey Plaza music series and a TPT program called Stage, which featured MNspin artists. We’ve also done lots of community engagement through partner’s websites and social media. The Friends of the Library have been awesome in their support via their site and socials, as well.”

All in all, MNspin is a win-win for listeners and performers alike. If you’re a classical musician with recordings, it might be time to prepare a submission.

Minnesota music explorers are in for a treat when world-renowned tabla percussionist Zakir Hussain and fifth-generation sitar player Niladri Kumar perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul as part of the 40th-anniversary celebration of the Indian Music Society of Minnesota (IMSOM).

For those not familiar with these two instruments of classical Indian music, Allalaghatta Pavan, teacher and former president of IMSOM, and Dennis McNally, who works with Hussain, provide insight.

“Indian music is interestingly different from Western music because it really doesn’t deal with harmony,” Pavan says. “Instead, it’s a melodic progression, one note at a time … and they’re all important.

“What Zakir Hussain and Niladri Kumar will be doing is holding a musical conversation, largely improvised … and they are stunningly eloquent. The typical composition is a skeletal idea — a template for creating a much larger portrait of musical thoughts, and at the forefront, is the exposition of a raga [a whole melodic universe] rather than a song or a composition. The artists will react to each other’s energy, and that of the audience, to bring you a wholly spontaneous musical elaboration.”

Sitar tradition

Many listeners in the United States first heard sitar music when Ravi Shankar was introduced at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969. In the years since then, sitar music has evolved.

“Niladri’s style definitely reflects an evolution from what Pandit Ravi Shankar did, not least because he grew up listening to music from outside India, which was much less the case in the Ravi-Allarakha generation,” McNally says.

“Aside from his classical music chops, and multiple cross-genre collaborations, Niladri can be heard on dozens of Bollywood tracks, providing exquisite sitar pieces.

“Niladri is perhaps the first sitarist to make a serious attempt to relate to the preferences of the younger generation, in the process inventing the Zitar, a five-string electric version of the 20-string acoustic sitar, crafting his signature sound. He has not only been bridging the gap between the classical and the popular, but also trying to obliterate the boundaries between East and West.”

Tabla drumming

The other participant in this musical conversation is Hussain, who will play tabla, the drums of the north Indian classical music tradition.

“Tabla drumming is primarily finger drumming, with the occasional use of the palms and wrists,” Pavan explains. “The two drums are tuned (you’ll see him haul out a small silver hammer to tighten or loosen the cords that set the tuning). His left hand plays a larger, lower-toned, bass drum; his right hand the higher pitched, treble drum. He uses all 10 fingers, like a pianist, but more than just fingertips.

“For instance, the heel of his hand presses down and alters the tone and pitch of the bass drum, and then the fingertips go into action. The variety of sounds he comes up with is astonishing. The two drums have a resonant and sustained sound.

“Tabla playing is driven by an interesting vocabulary of sounds that makes for a most sophisticated, poetic drumming tradition. There are six major stylistic schools of tabla playing, differing in technique, compositional repertoire and presentation. Zakir Hussain primarily represents the Punjab school, but his playing incorporates elements of all schools.”

Will the musical numbers be familiar to concertgoers?

“Unless you’re a really serious student/expert on Indian music,” Pavan says, “you’re not likely to recognize tunes — and it won’t matter. As I mentioned, these are not tunes or songs that are played.

“The closest analogy to what they do on stage is akin to being given a stick diagram of a person (the basic composition and rules of the raga or melodic framework) and then using your learning, experience and the energy exchange on the stage to develop a much larger portrait, with the skeleton now becoming a full person with flesh and blood and personality. Each performance is thus unique, creating a slightly different persona from what might have been done yesterday, even with the same composition.”

Indian Music Society of Minnesota

IMSOM this year actually celebrates its 42nd anniversary of bringing the best in Indian classical music to Minnesota. Saturday’s concert is being presented, it says, “as a heartfelt thanks to our members, and to commemorate our 40th anniversary (two years later).”

During that time, IMSOM has provided an appreciative arts community with more than 425 concerts, lecture-demonstrations, workshops and residencies by more than 750 world-class artists.

Each year, IMSOM hosts two concert seasons, presenting eight to 12 concerts and three to four lecture-demonstrations. Interest in, and appreciation for, Indian classical music has been steadily growing among Indian and non-Indian audiences in the state.

IMSOM was recently recognized and deemed a “cultural treasure” by Minneapolis-based Propel Nonprofits and received a generous grant.

“We have crafted an interesting path for the future that will continue to offer Minnesota audiences more delectable slices of Indian culture, music and traditions, including regional folk music (e.g., from Rajasthan or Uttar Pradesh), as well as Baul, Sufi music and musical theater,” Pavan says.

That means more opportunities for Minnesotans to indulge in and expand their musical adventures.

The scholastic marching arts continued their post-COVID comeback as 34 of the top high school marching bands from Minnesota and beyond competed Saturday at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis as part of the Youth in Music Championships. It was the biggest lineup ever for the popular event.

“We had to turn away four bands this year because the signup was at capacity within two weeks of the registration opening,” YIM founder Brent Turner says.

All of the bands competed during the day, in various classes based on size. Then the top 10 bands return to compete in the finals at night. Minnesota’s Rosemount High School won the championship once again, capping a day and night filled with outstanding performances and musicianship. (Check out the scores from prelims and finals.)

Relive the excitement and pageantry of the Youth in Music Championships through our huge photo gallery below.

Bands are presented in alphabetical order from their daytime performances. All are Minnesota high schools unless noted otherwise.

All photos by Dack Nehring of BrenRose Photos, exclusively for YourClassical MPR, which does not make reprints available. To order official photos from the event, go to Ceremony Photos.

Composer Gerald Gurss was listening to NPR one day when he heard the story of an HIV-positive man who found life-saving drugs on the black market during the AIDS crisis.

“By the end of his story, I was sobbing at my desk,” says Gurss, composer and artistic director of the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus (TCGMC). “I reached out to him on Facebook to hear more of his story, and set some of his words to music. But then I imagined this as being larger. So I asked singers in the TCGMC to submit their own lived experience: What did you do when you found out you were HIV positive? How did you experience stigma? This piece came from them.”

This piece is Stigmata, Gurss’ new 35-minute multimovement suite for chorus, piano, dancers, percussion, narrator and soloists — which is all about the stigma of being HIV-positive. The text blends language from doctor’s visits with ancient Latin and the occasional four-letter word not often heard in church.

Ironically, that holy setting is where their performance was filmed by Twin Cities PBS (TPT) in March. The broadcast premiere takes place this week (schedule below).

You’ll see dozens of TCGMC singers wearing black T-shirts and standing in the chancel of Westwood Lutheran Church in St. Louis Park. A large “U=U” logo is positioned on the chest of each T-shirt.

“That means ‘undetectable equals untransmittable,’” says Kevin Stocks, executive director of the chorus.

Therapies now have the power to beat HIV down to undetectable levels — obviously, good news. And when the virus is undetectable, it is untransmittable — even better news.

But this is where the power of stigma comes in. Within the gay community, the question is still asked between two people getting to know each other: “Are you clean?” They’re not asking about hand-washing habits. They’re asking about HIV status. Whether the relationship moves forward from that point often hinges on the answer.

“There shouldn’t be stigma about that,” Stocks says. “Undetectable equals untransmittable. That’s the story we want to tell with Stigmata.”

Gurss sends up this “clean” conversation in a hilarious, campy scene featuring enormous bathtub scrub brushes. It’s part of an amalgamation of musical styles — Broadway to hoe-down, percussive to lyrical — that the composer uses to get his message across.

“When you talk to an audience about something heavy and depressing, you have to remember that a lot of them come to this concert to be entertained,” he says. “I want to make sure that when they listen to a difficult topic, we keep them engaged. Even in our darkest moments, there are sometimes moments of humor. The topic is what binds all these styles together, so you don’t feel like you just listened to a musical garage sale.”

Within this swirl of styles, there is a riveting quiet section at Stigmata’s center: One by one, members of the chorus place a rose in a vase on a stage-front altar, while a soprano soloist sings a hauntingly beautiful melody quoting Michelangelo: “Your soul will find no escape to heaven unless it is through Earth’s loveliness.”

It is a particularly disarming moment in the overall suite. Not surprisingly, some TCGMC singers came out during the rehearsal process as being HIV positive.

“This piece gave some folks the courage to do so,” Stocks says. “It emphasized their truth.”

Gay men’s choruses sprang up in the 1980s and ‘90s as the AIDS crisis claimed millions of lives. Today the focus is on the ongoing stigma of the disease. Gurss and Stock anticipate Stigmata and its message spreading beyond the Twin Cities home of TCGMC, with performances by other gay choirs and at HIV/AIDS medical conferences.

Twin Cities PBS schedule of Stigmata

The Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus’ performance of Stigmata is scheduled to air as part of TPT’s Stage program at the following times on these channels:

• 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 5 (TPT 2)

• 3 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 6 (TPT 2)

• Noon Sunday, Aug. 7 (TPT LIFE)

• 10 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 7 (TPT LIFE)

• 2 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9 (TPT MN)

• 8 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9 (TPT MN)

• 2 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9 (TPT MN)

• 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9 (TPT MN)

Hip-hop and horns go together like peanut butter and jelly. But what happens when you take a typically small horn section and multiply it by 10? You get something like “Brighter Day,” Minnesota rapper Nur-D’s collaboration with the Anoka-based River City Rhythm drum and bugle corps.

Bojan Hoover, director of River City Rhythm and music teacher at Inver Hills Community College, first heard of Matt Allen, aka Nur-D, while watching his TED talk during a school staff development session when he taught at Rosemount High School. After looking up the rapper’s music, Hoover was hooked.

“The creativity and messaging of his music is incredible,” he said. “I had Matt do a Zoom interview for my students about the music business and activism. It was one of the best sessions of class I’ve ever had.”

Allen attended Rosemount High School after moving to Minnesota from Brooklyn, New York. He participated in theater and choir, and members of his band played in the Rosemount band under Hoover. He graduated in 2009.

Since 2018, Allen began a meteoric rise in the Minnesota hip-hop scene and the music scene as a whole. After winning Go Radio’s Shut Up and Rap contest four times in a row, he was invited to perform at Soundset, the Twin Cities hip-hop and art festival. He has performed at Paisley Park, First Avenue and U.S. Bank Stadium and toured with Brother Ali, and he has shared bills with Jaden Smith, Tyler the Creator and the Wu Tang Clan.

After the Zoom interview for his high school students, Hoover decided to arrange Allen’s song “Brighter Day” for River City Rhythm. “Brighter Day” is an optimistic response to the global turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd.

“This last year has been full of the best and worst of people,” Allen said in late 2021. “I think this song represents the hope of people as we go forward in life and this year.”

Nur-D and River City Rhythm gave a public performance together at the March On! drum corps event in Rochester in 2021. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

“The RCR is so talented,” Allen said. “Getting to perform with them live in front of some of my old teachers and a really passionate music crowd was a super big honor.”

The music video is a combination of clips from the Rochester performance, home recordings in front of green screens and other clips.

Hoover sees this collaboration as a positive step forward for River City Rhythm. During the pandemic, the organization went through a strategic planning phase and came up with a five-year plan that included an increase in community engagement and partnerships. Rather than live on an island in the drum corps world, the group aims to establish relationships and partners across Minnesota and increase awareness of the marching arts.

March On! and more

See River City Rhythm’s tour schedule for other performances in the region.

The way Tom Mullon sees it — the way he hears it — four musical notes can sum up a life.

Four notes, arranged into a simple melody of 24 tones, played by a solitary bugler, might be one of the nation’s most recognizable and enduring pieces of music: “Taps.”

Mullon, 84, is among the buglers who nearly every weekday sound “Taps” at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, next to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport — as many as 18 times a day. 

“I think of ‘Taps’ as a pattern of life,” says Mullon, who for 20 years has played “Taps” for thousands of military funerals at Fort Snelling. “The first three notes [represent] birth. The next three are growing up.”

Listen: ‘Taps’

The next nine reflect schooling and maturity, and the following three-note ascent to a single high note are a person’s peak years.

“Then you come down slowly, and the last three notes are the passing on,” he says. “I try to make the last note fade off.”

Mullon doesn’t make a big deal of his “Taps” interpretation: “If I want to be a tough guy, I don’t bring that up.”

By law, a deceased soldier, sailor, airman, Marine or Coast Guardsman is entitled to a two-person uniformed honor guard, a rifle squad, a burial flag and the playing of “Taps.” Typically, a small bus shuttles the riflemen and bugler from funeral to funeral among the 246,000 graves in the cemetery’s 434 acres.

As family members and friends gather under an open-air shelter, a flag that has draped the casket is folded and presented to a family member. A five-member rifle squad fires a volley of three shots. Then comes the sounding of “Taps,” which first was heard in July 1862 in Virginia during the Civil War.

Mullon, former director of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Minneapolis, sometimes blows a bugle, sometimes a trumpet. Usually he plays on Fridays, which tend to be busier because weekend funerals often are scheduled for the convenience of out-of-town travelers.

Sometimes he plays on scorching hot days; sometimes in below-zero cold, when saliva can freeze in the trumpet valves. He has learned to wrap his mouthpiece in a hand warmer and keep it in his pocket. Even so, he usually plays trumpet in the summer and a bugle — no valves — in the winter.

Whatever the season, he remembers which direction to face. 

“Do not play ‘Taps’ into the wind,” he says. “The wind is stronger at the cemetery. It’s all flat, and the wind comes whipping across, and it blows the air back into your mouth.”

That makes it tough to play each note perfectly.

“If I miss a note, I hear about it,” he says, from his fellow squad members, all of them military veterans. “We’re very hard on each other.”

He remembers hearing Keith Clark, the Army bugler at the 1963 funeral for the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, muff the sixth note of “Taps,” which actually gave Mullon satisfaction because it showed how the solemnity of the moment can affect a musician.

“‘Taps’ is a very emotional song,” he says. The 24 notes “all kind of fit together. It has some feeling. That guy was choked up.” 

Mullon tries to prevent such moments by practicing with a muted trumpet in his basement.

“I don’t practice as much as I should to keep the lip limber,” he says.

But even when a performance isn’t perfect, he agrees with the Army’s insistence on using live buglers instead of electronic attachments that fit on the end of an instrument and play “Taps” when a switch is flipped.

Joe Collova, a retired Marine who, with Mullon, often plays a two-horn version of “Taps,” recalls hearing of a funeral service when the battery on an accessorized trumpet died.

“That’s kind of embarrassing,” he says. 

The two-bugle “echo” version that Mullon and Collova perform is not officially approved at military funerals but often is played anyway; people like the harmony.

Collova owns seven trumpets and keeps them where he is most likely to perform — at a cabin up North, at his church and in his car, along with a veteran’s cap. He once was driving in St. Paul on an anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and noticed a building with a half-mast flag flying out front. He stopped and realized the building was a junior high school. He went inside and got permission for students to come outside and listen while he played “Taps.”

“You’ve got to keep the memories alive,” he says.

Mullon and Collova also perform at events arranged through the nonprofit Buglers Across America — Memorial Day observances, for example, or at fundraisers. The nonprofit organization was created 20 years ago to make sure “Taps” is played by a live musician, not by electronics — “powered by heart rather than by batteries.”

There are no women among the trumpeters at Fort Snelling, but Mullon says they would be welcome if they know the music and can play it appropriately. Musicians and riflemen are not paid for their funeral duties.

Collova, 72, says he has played for 15 years simply to honor the service members who have passed. He doesn’t plan to stop any time soon but wonders how his service will end. He knows a bugler who lost his teeth and could no longer play a horn. Another began to suffer a mental decline and had to quit.

“I’ve played it hundreds of times,” he says. “But someday will I forget ‘Taps’?”

Legends require two essential ingredients: durability and unlikely stories. For Keith Swanson, the durability part is easy.

At 71, he is completing his 30th year as conductor of the Itasca Symphony Orchestra, based in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. His final concert is May 21, and two of his grown sons will be among the players. The performance actually will signal his second retirement; in 2016, he concluded a 43-year career leading high school bands in Hermantown and Duluth East.

And the stories?

One arises from the opera Der Freischutz (The Marksman), by Carl Maria von Weber, which Swanson conducted in 1995 in Duluth Denfeld High School's cavernous auditorium. The production called for special effects, including flash powder, and Bill Bastian, a veteran tenor, remembers stagehands trying to enhance the effect when “it all went off at once, and there was this huge bang at the end of the first act,” he said. “The audience was dumbfounded. … There was smoke everywhere. But Keith was just giggling.”

Swanson recalls taking his Hermantown musicians to the Minneapolis Convention Center in 1994 to perform operatic arias that were specially arranged for band.

“It was a band concert without any band music — kind of a cool thing,” he said.

Bastian called it “a stitch.”  

And there was the time a piano string broke just before a performance by the guest soloist, and Swanson and others scrambled to find another, smaller grand piano at the last minute.  

Swanson’s career reflects his passion for operas and his determination to stage them in the North Country with ensembles including the University of Minnesota Duluth Symphony Orchestra, Northland Opera Theater Experience and Colder by the Lake.

His conducting resume includes Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman,” Mozart’s Magic Flute, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Handel’s Semele, Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. He also has conducted the Lake Superior Symphony Orchestra in Rossini’s Overture to the Italian in Algiers and Brad Bombardier’s XXV.

Bastian recalls a meeting three decades ago with Swanson at a bar in Superior, Wisconsin, to talk about forming an opera company.

“I asked, ‘Would you like to conduct it?’ and he was just blown away,” he said. “He’s not a singer; he would massacre the language with the best of them.”

But conducting is another matter.

“His conducting is very good and easy to follow, but he also exudes his love for the music,” Bastian said. “A lot of conductors are technicians. They are precise. They force you to get perfect. What you get from Keith is the love, not necessarily a perfect performance. The idea is that this is an experience we all get to have. This music works because it’s great music. It can wash over you and move you to tears or great joy.”

Bastian said Northland staged nine productions over nine years during the 1990s “and Keith did all of them.” He noted that Swanson’s primary job as conductor was “ to keep people together, making this happen.”

That meant performing “great stuff and making it fun to do, not lording it over orchestra members” who also might be good friends.

“There is something about his encouragement” that includes a “hysterical” coaching technique, Bastian said. “If something is bad, he’d just scowl. You’d get this look like ‘Oh, my God’ and he’d look up to the ceiling. You don’t have to denigrate.”

Conducting the Itasca Symphony over three decades presented its own challenges.

“Every year the personalities would change,” Swanson said. “You have to work around the wind players especially. I tried to finesse what pieces the orchestra could do well.” 

Even so, “You have to be politically very savvy in a way. [The musicians] don’t get paid, and they come every week.”

But the people in Grand Rapids “love their little orchestra,” he added. “They support it monetarily, and they come to hear them.” They also allow him to hire 14 to 18 members of the Duluth Symphony — mainly strings but also winds — for specific concerts.

Swanson said it wasn’t difficult introducing operatic music to his Hermantown students. It helped to have a friend arrange the arias for band and tenor.

Ron Kari, a violist who has known Swanson since they both played in the Duluth-Superior Symphony, quickly realized they shared an affection for the human voice.

“There were many listening sessions at his house,” he said. “We would play ‘drop the needle’ on recordings and try to guess the opera. We’d sit and just [appreciate] the beauty of the voice, and we’d both have tears in our eyes.”

Swanson said he “became obsessed with great singing” by the likes of Jussi Bjorling, Robert Merrill and Joan Sutherland.

Chatting with Swanson stirs his memories of specific performances that moved him — for example, Klaus Tennstedt guest-conducting the Minnesota Orchestra in Mahler’s Third Symphony.

“There was this D major chord where the music just kept coming and coming,” he said.

He also speaks highly of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, former music director of the Minnesota Orchestra. Although he never met him, he remembers sitting in the front row of a performance of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony.

“I was blown away by how he felt and directed the music,” he said. “What a great maestro!”

His enthusiasm for listening and learning carried over to Swanson’s coaching of Hermantown students in the annual Minnesota State Listening Contest, where his teams won first place.

His musical interests took root at home, where his father, Leslie, played country-western songs on a steel guitar, while his mother sang them.

But the fuse for classical music was lit when he was 11 and saw a TV broadcast of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. He also read a pamphlet by Martin Bookspan, longtime music commentator and author, that laid out the basics of classical repertoire from Bach to Wagner. “I used that as kind of my road map” to learn more about the classics, he said.

He played horn and cello in high school. By the time he entered the University of Minnesota Duluth, “I knew I wanted to be a musician.”

He speaks highly of classes he took from James R. Murphy about learning to become a band and orchestra director.

“He was demanding,” Swanson said. “It was not all hugs and kisses, but I give him a lot of credit for my success. He turned out a lot of good band directors.”

Shortly after graduating from UMD in 1969, he auditioned for the Duluth Symphony and spent three years as second horn player. He also earned a master’s degree in educational instruction from the University of Wisconsin in Superior.

He also took private lessons for two years after college to learn the intricacies of playing the clarinet, flute and saxophone.

“If you’re a high-school band director, you have to learn every instrument,” he said. “My teacher would break it down into little parts. If an instrument was out of register, here’s why. There’s a way to correct that.”

Any regrets about his long musical career?

“I’m OK with what I did,” he said. “I knew my limitations. I don’t have a great ear; I don’t have perfect pitch. I never had a conducting class and I had no resume to fall back on.”

But in working with Hermantown student musicians numbering from 95 to 160, he said, “I had one of the top high-school bands in the state.”

For his final concert with the Itasca Symphony Orchestra, Swanson has programmed some favorites: Light Cavalry Overture, by Von Suppe; movie themes by John Williams; a movement from a Mozart piano concerto; the operatic aria “O Sole Mio”; and Les Preludes, by Liszt.

“I wanted to end with something big,” he said.

He said he is confident passing the baton to Pedro Ovieto, a violist who oversees the orchestra’s string instructional program. “He knows the repertoire. I know he’ll do a good job.”

Will Swanson miss the weekly 160-mile round trip from his home in Carlton to Grand Rapids for rehearsals?

It’s been a bit of a chore, he said. Over the years, he has hit a deer, had a flat tire and received a warning ticket — not bad for 30 years of commuting. But these days, his eyesight is not what it used to be — “I can’t drive at night” — so he’s more wary.

“I’ll go up there if I can get someone to drive me,” he said.

Swanson’s final concert will be at 7 p.m., May 21, at the Wilcox Theater in the Reif Arts Center in Grand Rapids.

The Challey School of Music at North Dakota State University has compiled a milestone collection documenting its Concert Choir’s best performances over the past 32 years. The seven-volume set of 144 selections, available online, highlights the talents of current and past NDSU students.

Listen to our hourlong special A Labor of Love featuring highlights from the project, with host Andrea Blain, using the player above. See the playlist for the program and find about more about the project below.

The project was undertaken recently by Jo Ann Miller, NDSU’s director of choral activities. The idea for an anthology first came to her during a recent sabbatical.

“This seemed like a good time to compile the best of our efforts from the past 30 years at NDSU,” she said.

Combing through 32 years’ worth of recorded choral music is no small task. Miller was meticulous in her approach.

“I’m often quite self-critical when it comes to recordings, so the first decision to include a piece on the yearly recordings already had some careful vetting,” she said. “This time, I felt like I was even more careful, because we are documenting a legacy for the singers of the NDSU Concert Choir and the School of Music.”

She didn’t see the effort as work, however, but called it a labor of love. She also leaned on the ears and choral expertise of sound engineer Doug Geston and her choral colleagues, Michael Weber and Charlette Moe.

The selection and compilation process spanned many months. All the tracks featured in the anthology are original recordings from 1989 to 2019. Due to COVID rehearsal and performance restrictions, Miller chose not to include anything more recent.

The anthology is divided into seven categories:

1. Early music

2. Minnesota composers

3. Contemporary European and Canadian composers

4. Contemporary American composers

5. Romantic-period composers

6. Music by Edwin Fissinger and winners of the annual NDSU Fissinger Composition Competition

7. Folk songs and spirituals

The anthology includes some of the most significant works in the choral tradition, as well as lesser-known works.

“I have a real love of the choral canon,” Miller said. “And I think the work we’ve done over the last three decades includes some of the most beautiful choral music of 500-plus years, especially in the a cappella tradition. Perhaps this project can bring to light some of the less-often-performed choral works that deserve to be part of our rich choral legacy.”

Hear the entire collection online for free as you peruse the listings for its many tracks.

Playlist: ‘A Labor Love’

Here are the works featured in the hourlong special A Labor of Love, hosted by Andrea Blain:

Z. Randall Stroope: "How Can I Keep From Singing"
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: “Chantez a Dieu”
Johannes Brahms: “Der Englische Gruss”
Howard Hanson: “A Prayer of the Middle Age”
William Billings: “I Am the Rose of Sharon”
Edwin R. Fissinger: “Wondrous Love”
Franz Biebl: “Ave Maria”
Stephen Shewan: “Hey Diddle Diddle”
Ēriks Ešenvalds: “O Salutaris Hostias”
Daniel Pederson: “If I Forget”
Libby Larsen: “The Settling Years (A Hoopla)”
Carol E. Barnett: “Red River Valley”
Arr. Shawn Kirchner: “Unclouded Day”
Z. Randall Stroope: “How Can I Keep From Singing”

“Less than 2 percent of players in U.S. orchestras are African-American,” Lovrick Gary says.

The bass trombonist is talking about one of the daunting barriers he faced as a young Black performer, freshly graduated from Columbus State University in Georgia and hoping to make a career as an orchestral musician.

With the statistical odds apparently stacked against him, how could Gary hope to forge a path in what is already a notoriously competitive profession?

One answer is the Minnesota Orchestra’s Rosemary and David Good Fellowship, named for the donors who have supported the award since its inception in 2017. Designed to “support the career development of outstanding young musicians of African American, Latin American and Native American descent,” it is one of a growing number of initiatives aimed at increasing diversity and fair representation in classical music.

In September, Gary and cellist Esther Seitz were named as the latest Good Fellows. As such, they receive a two-year contract guaranteeing paid employment and a priceless opportunity to glean hands-on experience with a top orchestra.

“Regardless of what kind of training you receive from school or what school you go to, I don’t think anything can replicate that type of immersion,” Gary says.

Yet the fact remains that in an ideal world, where orchestras accurately reflected the ethnic and racial mix of the communities around them, schemes such as the Good Fellowship would have no need to exist.

Gary does not shy away from this, nor does he balk at calling out the classical music industry for “being rooted in certain traditions that just exclude us,” as he puts it — for being, in a word, racist.

“But rather than focusing on that part of it, I appreciate the initiative that orchestras are taking to recognize that this is an issue and doing something about it,” he says.

Seitz, a graduate of the University of Missouri and Manhattan School of Music, has similar feelings.

“It’s sad that we need this kind of program,” she says. “But it’s also an appreciated opportunity, and I’m very glad I’m being given it.”

But the program serves as an opportunity for the Minnesota Orchestra, too.

“We see this fellowship as a tremendous exchange between the orchestra and the fellows,” says Beth Kellar-Long, vice president of orchestra administration. “Esther and Lovrick contribute so much to the organization, and the orchestra benefits from their ideas, perspectives, participation in engagement events, and musical accomplishment onstage. We are grateful for their leadership in helping us to establish how the Minnesota Orchestra can become a destination orchestra for talented musicians of color.”

So what do Seitz and Lovrick actually do as Good Fellows, now that they are permanently resident in the Twin Cities and have Orchestra Hall as their workplace?

Part of the routine is, Gary explains, carefully established beforehand to ensure that a Good Fellow is regularly in contact with the daily operations of a full-scale symphony orchestra.

“There is a set structure which specifies which rehearsals you’ll attend and which concerts you will play in,” he says. “But there are other things that you can do, like community engagement projects, lessons and mock auditions. The support is there is for you to follow up on your own personal interests.”

Seitz has so far taken lessons with Tony Ross, the Minnesota Orchestra’s principal cello, and section member Pitnarry Shin. Both have been “incredible mentors,” she says.

Seitz and Gary can, of course, already play their instruments to a high technical level and have earned acclaim. For example, Seitz is a founding member of New York’s Bowery Trio, which was recently awarded grants from Chamber Music America and the Finlandia Foundation, and she’ll perform in a chamber recital at Carnegie Hall on April 26. Gary was a finalist in the American Trombone Workshop National Solo Competition in 2017 and 2019.

So what else is there to be learned, above and beyond the mechanics of flawlessly reproducing the notes from a piece of music placed in front of them?

Both agree that simply getting used to playing in a high-caliber ensemble like the Minnesota Orchestra is a major challenge, requiring them to learn a variety of new skills fast.

“Every time I come on stage at Orchestra Hall, I pinch myself, as there’s a lot to digest,” Gary says. “You have to figure out how your own voice fits into this bigger thing that’s happening, and that’s hard to do.”

Seitz agrees that adapting her particular style of playing into a cello section with nine other players can be a steep learning curve.

“If you can’t adapt to the other players in a section, that can be a deal-breaker for a job,” she says. “So you have to learn how to use vibrato correctly in your section, how to blend and tailor your sound to match those around you, how to watch and listen very carefully.

“And any small gesture that the conductor or concertmaster makes, the reaction time of the players is extremely quick. That’s something I didn’t learn in student orchestras.”

There are also practical niceties to be attended to.

“You learn what things to do, and what not to do,” Seitz says. “For example, you should always close your folder, so the librarian isn’t dropping music when they pick it up. And general etiquette, like what time to be on stage by.”

Getting the detail right, Gary agrees, is important. For him, that has been made significantly easier by the warm, welcoming atmosphere the Minnesota Orchestra has provided.

“When you’re an outsider coming into an orchestra, you don’t really know what to expect,” he says. “But I think the people who work at the orchestra feel the value of this fellowship and respect it, and appreciate what it’s aiding in.”

Seitz, too, is full of praise for the collegial atmosphere at Orchestra Hall. But she has encountered one barrier.

“The cold! It’s so cold here in Minnesota when you’ve moved from south Texas,” she says with a laugh. “But my mom is Armenian and went to the Moscow Conservatory, and it’s extremely cold there, too. So hopefully I’ll get some of those genes eventually.”

Editor's note: At 3 p.m. Sunday, March 13, YourClassical MPR aired a live broadcast of the Singers’ Dale Warland Tribute Concert, hosted by Steve Staruch, to celebrate the 90th birthday of the choral legend. The Singers honored Warland's legacy through the presentation of works near and dear to his heart, curated by his protégé Matthew Culloton. A new work by Timothy C. Takach, with poetry by Brian Newhouse, had its world premiere performance, and the program included a Dale Warland Singers Alumni Choir. Before the concert, Newhouse, a former member of the Dale Warland Singers and a broadcast host/producer for many of their concerts, shared his memories of working with Warland. Listen to the concert now.

Dale Warland once mentioned to me, “Nothing is stronger than beauty.” When I think of the force of war, greed or fear, I wonder if those words are true. And yet humans will move heaven and earth to protect the things we love most, those things (usually people) dearest to us — what we hold as beautiful. Dale is right. Nothing is stronger.

As Dale’s 90th birthday (April 14, 2022) approached, I wanted somehow to celebrate this artist who has created so much beauty for this world. Could I capture this idea in a new text that a composer could set to music?

I brought the idea to Timothy C. Takach, whose music I admire for its beauty. Tim immediately saw one piece as not big enough for someone of Dale’s national and global impact. Tim had a lovely idea for three movements, and he gave each a working concept of Inspiration, Work and Legacy.

So I set to writing three texts instead of one, and together they form the piece, Changed by Beauty, which will be premiered on the March 13 concert given by the Singers.

My hope in creating this piece was to tell the story of surprising beginnings; then the fierce dedication to the work, even to the point of madness; and finally the gift for future generations that might come of all this — everything focused on the creation of beauty. As a writer, I have never worked with greater joy.

I was thrilled when the Singers’ artistic director, Matt Culloton, programmed it for this special concert honoring Dale’s 90th.

My hope is that this piece outlives us all and speaks not just for one beloved artist, but for the necessity of art-making in a world thirsting for beauty.

Not many concerts include Beethoven, John Denver, Eminem and Kermit the Frog. But in a recent sold-out ballroom show at the Sanford Center in Bemidji, those artists and more were covered by the energetic Deuces Wild Dueling Pianos.

Minnesota musicians Ted Manderfeld and Dave Eichholz make up the keyboard-pounding duo and provide a hilarious experience that is a unique cocktail of concert, comedy sketch and variety show.

In between jazzed up standards and pop songs — some with rewritten lyrics for comedic effect — the duo also mocked the clothing, beverage choices and song requests of the audience. Often, they pulled unsuspecting attendees up on the stage to help them sing and crack jokes. The room was filled with laughter from people in their 30s through their 70s.

“I think at their core, people want to have fun,” said Manderfeld, who cited music and humor as important unifiers. “Can we collectively laugh at some things? And just be silly and be dumb and laugh at ourselves.”

Deuces Wild travels throughout the Upper Midwest performing everywhere from festivals to private corporate gigs. The piano guys’ show is built on improvisation, which gives them a natural flexibility when navigating such diverse settings. But Manderfeld admits that different venues have their challenges.

“In a corporate setting, for example,” he said, “you have to win over an audience. Where in a public venue, people have already invested their time and their money, so you are already two steps ahead.”

Deuces Wild has performed across the country, but most performances are in the Minnesota-North Dakota-Wisconsin region. Both men have families in Minnesota, and scheduling time on the road is what Manderfeld called “a delicate balance.”

“Most of our work is in the Midwest,” he said. “We try to stay within about 8 hours from home. But we’re working musicians, not touring musicians. It’s not like a band, where I am gone three months at a time; it’s more like I’ll be gone two to four days a week.”

For Deuces Wild, there is no traveling bus carting around members of the band: They are their own band. In addition to piano, both men play multiple instruments. Eichholz plays guitar, saxophone and most wind instruments, including pennywhistle. Manderfeld plays harmonica, ukulele, guitar and drums. Both are primarily self-taught, with Manderfeld having only a few years of traditional piano lessons as a child.

This year marks 20 years of the two men performing together. Before that, Eichholz performed with a different founding member, whom he met while playing at Little Diddy’s, the dueling piano bar in the Mall of America. When the other member decided to retire, Manderfeld, who saw them play at a bar in Fargo, asked if he could try out. Twenty years later, Manderfeld and Eichholtz are still creating fresh and seamless performances together.

This year has a lot of extra energy for Deuces Wild, not only in celebration of the duo’s two-decade milestone but also resuming performing after a 15-month hiatus due to COVID. Like most performers, the pandemic had both a financial and personal cost for Deuces Wild. It wasn’t just the lack of income that made those 15 months feel so long, but also the pain of being unable to do the thing that gives you purpose and fulfillment. Being able to play again has given Manderfeld a renewed appreciation and enthusiasm for his work.

“It almost reset a part in my brain,” he said. “I found a new joy and appreciation for performing again. When you get it taken away from you … coming back, you’re like, ‘Oh that’s right. This is good.’ ‘Cause beforehand, you can get to places where you feel, ‘Oh, this is just another gig. Oh, this is just another theater show.’ ‘Cause it is a job.”

But that job now has renewed purpose. Manderfeld sees a lot of anxiety and weight on people’s minds these days — not only regarding the pandemic, but war and politics and every new daily controversy. How can music break through all that?

“Our show is about bringing people together,” he said. “My job is to entertain and have you forget [it all] for two hours.”

And on a frigid Saturday in Bemidji, that is exactly how carefree the room seemed to feel.

“To me it’s like a really expensive leather chair: It’s soft; it’s worn a little bit; it’s comfortable for me.”

Matthew Mehaffey is referring to British choral music of the Victorian and Edwardian period, when choral societies and large-scale music festivals proliferated and composers scrambled to supply an apparently insatiable demand for new music.

What happened to all the new works they created? Some, like Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, found a solid place in the choral repertoire. Others, however, drifted into a murky obscurity, languishing in museums or on dusty library shelves, where only specialist scholars and musicologists dare to tread.

These are the kind of “lost” pieces that Mehaffey, a music professor at the University of Minnesota, has a long-standing interest in.

Now, finally, they are resurfacing in the English Heritage Music Series (EHMS), a website that Mehaffey has established in conjunction with the university’s libraries publishing service.

Discussing the new venture, Mehaffey is quick to divert attention to a man he calls “the real brains and brawn behind the series” — Dave Fielding, whose daily toil is driving the rediscovery of music that might never have seen the light of day again.

Fielding is not a musicologist. A veteran of 30 years in the airline industry, and spells working for Greater Twin Cities United Way and the state of Minnesota, he brings to the English Heritage project all the pent-up fervor of a longtime devotee of choral music.

“Music of the English church has always been a first love for me,” he says. “But I really got into it seriously when I approached retirement.”

Years spent singing in a variety of choirs has left Fielding with a seasoned intuition for which particular pieces might be worth the work of resurrecting.

He first collaborated with Mehaffey in 2014 on “The Music of Downton Abbey,” a program the pair developed for the Oratorio Society of Minnesota, where Mehaffey is artistic director.

“We found some music in the archives for that program that was not published, and we were able to perform it for the first time,” Fielding says. “That kind of wet my whistle.”

From there, Fielding broadened the field of his investigations, gradually disinterring dozens of long-unheard pieces that are now available to download, free of charge, on the English Heritage Music Series website.

“We have 16 composers represented from the late Victorian and Edwardian period, with over 80 pieces ranging from a minute-and-a-half a cappella work to an hour-and-a-half piece with orchestra, choir and soloists,” Fielding says. “It’s whatever we can get our hands on.”

Most of the works Fielding has rescued previously existed either as unpublished handwritten manuscripts, or as printed scores long since discontinued by their original publisher.

Fielding combs online catalogs in U.K. libraries for these, then requests scanned copies of the scores that he is interested in. In the hooked-up digital world we live in, this process is a lot easier than it used to be.

“We’ve got a working relationship with the Royal College of Music library, which is outstanding,” Fielding says. “All I have to do is send them an email saying I want to work on, say, Stanford’s The Resurrection. And they’ll say, ‘Here it is,’ and send it digitally”.

It’s then that the hard work begins, of copying every dot and dash from the original manuscript into the pristine performance score that Fielding eventually produces.

Using Finale musical notation software, he painstakingly transcribes each note and marking, in a process requiring long hours at the computer keyboard and incalculable quantities of patience.

From Mehaffey’s point of view, Fielding’s selfless feats of musical archaeology — all his work is done on an unpaid, volunteer basis — are reaping rich dividends, by unearthing buried gems of the British choral tradition.

“When we did the Downton Abbey concerts I thought the new pieces — Patrick Hadley’s beautiful Nightfall, for example — stood up very well against the ones that we would consider standards,” Mehaffey says. “There’s some great stuff out there to be discovered, without a doubt.”

Alongside lesser known figures such as Hadley, Alan Gray and Amanda Aldridge, some big names — Arthur Sullivan, C. Hubert H. Parry, Gustav Holst and E.J. Moeran, among them — also have new-found pieces posted on the EHMS website.

These are already beginning to draw attention from choirs in other countries. In February, at St. Albans Cathedral in England, the Hertfordshire Chorus performed Parry’s De Profundis, a work once described by Ralph Vaughan Williams as Parry’s finest, in Fielding’s new EHMS edition.

“This is the first external organization performing music from our collection,” Mehaffey says.

And some even bigger projects could be in the offing. Fielding is completing work on The Atonement, a 1903 oratorio by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

“Coleridge-Taylor is enjoying a renaissance at present, with the contemporary focus on BIPOC artists,” Mehaffey says. “The Atonement is an enormous, almost Mahler-sized piece, and one that we can hopefully get out there to symphony orchestras and big choruses”.

Mehaffey is aiming at some point to perform The Atonement with his University of Minnesota choirs and to make the first recording of it.

“That would be a kind of dream, full-circle completion of the work that Dave and I have been doing — he sources the material and creates the parts, we publish it at the university, and then the university performs it.”

When Caroline Shaw won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her dazzling vocal work Partita for 8 Voices, one lingering doubt assailed her — she wasn’t sure that she was even a proper composer.

“That’s not really what I call myself,” she told one interviewer at the time.

Nine years later, she is still struggling to slot herself into a particular category.

“I used to just say I was a musician, then I started saying I was a singer, violinist, composer, producer,” she says. “But I think I’m going to go back to just ‘musician,’ because it encompasses a lot of different kinds of music-making and stops me getting pigeon-holed in a particular role.” 

Shaw turns 40 this year, and her career as a creator and performer remains remarkably eclectic, ranging from classical compositions to collaborations with rapper Kanye West, and solo work as a vocalist and string player.

On Sunday, Feb. 27, Twin Cities audiences get a chance to see the multifaceted Shaw in action for themselves, when she visits the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota for a concert. Her piano quartet Thousandth Orange and the string quartet Blueprint will feature, along with selections from the vocal work By and By, with Shaw as soloist.

Blueprint is the piece which forged Shaw’s Minnesota connection. It was written in 2016 for the Aizuri Quartet, at a time when Twin Cities violinist Ariana Kim was a member.

Kim is now artistic director of the Chamber Music Society and first met Shaw 10 years ago when they played together in the Knights, a New York-based chamber orchestra.

Kim describes Shaw’s music as “inventive, quirky and inviting,” and relishes her occasionally unorthodox instructions to performers — asking for one particular passage to sound like “brunchy gossip,” for example, and another like “a marble bust.”

The seemingly indefatigable Shaw also will unpack her viola at Sunday’s concert to participate in a performance of Mozart’s String Quintet in G minor — “a safe space,” she calls it, “playing second viola with four other players around you, and no solos to do.”

For Shaw, such variety is the spice of her musical life.

“I enjoy doing a lot of different things and having the opportunity to learn in different ways”, she says.

Such genre-hopping versatility is none too common among classical composers, many of whom concentrate mainly on composing. But for Shaw, mixing it all up is what matters.

“I’ve never been someone who writes music every day and has a schedule,” she says.

“I just fit it in between traveling and rehearsals and performances, and that feels really good. It’s a break for my brain and feeds ideas.”

Immersing herself in the constantly changing flux of everyday living — not being a closed-off, “ivory tower” composer — has noticeably affected the type of music she ends up writing, she says.

“I really think a lot about the people I come in contact with in the rehearsal process, what music the musicians like to play, and what the feeling of playing music is,” she says. “So I always say to young composers that if they have a complex idea in mind, that’s great. But think about whether there’s a way to write that for players which takes three minutes to learn, not three hours — because people’s lives are really busy.”

Her life is no exception. She is embroiled in the process of writing her debut opera, a one-act piece due to be staged at Chicago Lyric Opera in spring 2023. Her work will be part of a triple bill that also includes operas by John Luther Adams and Daniel Bernard Roumain.

In four scenes lasting 40 minutes, her so-far-untitled opera has a sharp contemporary resonance.

“There are two main characters, which I’ve called A and B, a high and a low voice with no gender distinction. There’s also an eight-voice chorus and a full orchestra,” she says.

The opera shows Shaw’s two characters attempting to communicate with each other, first on a glitchy phone line, then on a train ride, then in a car with GPS spilling out instructions. The aim, Shaw says, is to write something “intimate, relatable and everyday,“unfreighted by the traditional operatic themes of myth and history.

“What it’s like to talk to somebody and not be able to reach them,” is her succinct summation of the libretto, co-written with Irish dramaturg Jocelyn Clark. “And the feeling of loneliness that is in there and really familiar to all of us”.

While her new opera clearly addresses pressing social issues about the difficulty of making personal connections in a world awash with digital flotsam and jetsam, it’s striking that she has so far mainly avoided inserting explicitly political content into her music.

This is, Shaw explains, a deliberate choice, at a point in time when views are sharply polarized in U.S. society and statements of personal belief open to misconception.

“I think there are many ways and many reasons to make music or art in the world, and I’m very grateful for those who are able to bring a certain point of view to audiences,” she says. “But I’m not always sure if I’m the right person to make certain statements, so I’m very careful about that.

“And music is something that I also love with my body, so I think the most honest thing I can do is to write from an intuitive place. That’s where a lot of my music comes from.”

It doesn’t take long for visitors to realize that Austin, Minnesota, and Hormel Foods go together like Spam and eggs. Or chili and beans. Or Dinty and Moore (Hormel’s canned beef stew). But there’s another link between the founding Hormel family, its well-endowed foundation and the city: music.

That cultural connection might seem surprising considering Hormel’s more prominent economic impact. The company’s big packing plant employs 1,800 workers. The quirky Spam Museum in downtown Austin traces the evolution of that famous Hormel product and attracts revenue-producing out-of-town visitors. The Hormel name also shows up around town on a health center, a cancer research center, scholarship programs and street signs.

But as the company’s businesses, brands and fortune have grown for more than 130 years, so has the family’s musical legacy, beginning at the Hormel Historic Home at 208 Fourth Ave. NW and stretching to the community at large. 

There’s tangible evidence in the stately, two-story home, which was built in 1871 and is open to the public. The parlor is anchored by a handsome 1914 Mason & Hamlin baby grand piano, and the room has resounded over the years with family singalongs, choir rehearsals and performances. Nearby, a Victrola turntable holds an Ella Fitzgerald recording.

An upstairs bedroom holds a bass drum recalling the days of the Hormel Girls (aka the Spam Girls Band), the first all-female drum and bugle corps, comprising Austin servicewomen and women employees. From 1945 to 1953, they traveled the country in a caravan of gleaming white Chevrolets and promoted Hormel products, sometimes selling them door to door.

In the summer, the mansion’s grounds welcome visitors to free concerts, and the family foundation sponsors children’s music workshops and annual music competitions in the five-county Austin area. (There’s also a whimsical sculpture of a pig, an apt reminder of how Hormel Foods got its start.) 

MarySue Hormel Harris, 80, the grandniece of founder George A. Hormel, now lives in Laguna Hills, California, but still visits Austin and performs there occasionally. She says she practices piano “at least an hour or two” daily and accompanies a chorus in her seniors residence. Her favorite composers include Frederic Chopin and J.S. Bach — and she says she still discovers new elements in their works.

“I feel keenly that enthusiasm for music is one of the most important parts of my life,” she says. “The understanding that I am the [remaining family’s] most important advocate for music is important.”

She is proud that “there are people who come every year to hear me” perform in Austin. She also underwrites the summer concerts.

The Hormel family’s musical matriarch was Lillian Belle Hormel, a church organist and music teacher who in 1892 married company founder George A. Hormel. Hormel reportedly enjoyed playing a mouth harp. Their son, Jay, founded the Hormel Girls during his 25-year tenure as the company’s CEO, and a musical play about the group was staged by the Minnesota History Theater in 2007.

Grandson George (Geordie) was an accomplished pianist who performed at his well-known Kingswood restaurant in Austin, where relatives sometimes went to hear him play.

He also owned the Village Recording Studio in Los Angeles and founded the Zephyr record label. The studio was home to recording sessions by Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, George Harrison, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, Sly & the Family Stone, and Steely Dan.

As a composer, Geordie wrote music for TV shows, including The Fugitive, Lassie, Naked City and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. (In a brush with celebrity, his first of four wives was actress Leslie Caron.) 

Another grandson, Thomas Hormel, was a pianist who produced several CDs of his own music. One of his compositions, “Go for Baroque,” was performed at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills and by the Cape Cod Symphony. His original ballet, Legend of Bird Mountain, was choreographed by the Martha Graham Company and performed by the South Florida Symphony Orchestra in 2018. He also was a painter with an offbeat interest in collecting and carving avocado pits into quirky little sculptures.

Thomas died in 2019, but a foundation established a year later supports “charitable causes in the fields of art, music and nutrition.” It also contributes to the preservation of the family’s historic home in Austin.

Grandniece MarySue married a musician, Louis William Harris, who played tuba and loved to sing. Their two children (Elizabeth Ann “Buff” Harris-Colarossi and Ben Hormel Harris) also are musical, and two grandchildren took piano lessons virtually from MarySue in addition to playing organ, oboe and trombone.

MarySue, who grew up in Nebraska, began taking piano lessons at 4, began giving piano lessons at 15 and in 1990 was named the piano teacher of the year by the Nebraska Music Teachers Association. She has underwritten and helped judge music competitions in the Austin area that award cash prizes to performers of piano, violin, guitar, marimba and cello.

Although most Hormel descendants no longer live in Minnesota, MarySue’s daughter, Elizabeth, says her mother “absolutely loves keeping the Hormel music legacy alive in Austin” through the annual instrumental contests. She also is “a huge supporter of any free performances in any-sized community because it provides access and exposure to the arts.”

Austin Mayor Steve King isn’t sure how many of the city’s residents know about the Hormel Foundation’s generous contributions to arts organizations and other infrastructure projects around the city, including restoration of the city’s Paramount Theatre. 

But Laura Helle, executive director of Austin Area Arts, said that might reflect the foundation’s policy of “not shouting to the world about all the great things it does.” Its grants are funded from its 50 percent ownership of Hormel Foods’ stock.

Helle said those grants have helped extend the family’s cultural values, including music, like tentacles through the community. One of them even pulled in Helle. For six years, she served as director of the Hormel Historic Home, and in 2016 she was married there.

Thanks to Amanda Barber of the Hormel Historic Home for her help with this article.

No live audience? No problem. In fact, the University of Minnesota's 40th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute Concert was better served, and certainly reached more people, when it streamed online in January 2021. Watch it now below.

This year’s 41st Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute Concert also will be streamed live. Watch it free at 4 p.m. Sunday.

In 2021, a case could be made that it was more important to fulfill that old bromide "the show must go on" in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, the civil unrest that ensued and the death of civil-rights icon John Lewis. Curator/host G. Phillip Shoultz III even used a Lewis quote to come up with the show's theme: "A more excellent way."

"The way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way," Lewis wrote before his death in July. "Now it is your turn to let freedom ring. … Let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide."

The musical selections reflect that tone, Shoultz said last year.

"Every year, we always feature 'Lift Every Voice and Sing.' This year, that mood reflects where we are as a country: defiant, resolute, with a sense of purpose."

Toward that end, Shoultz and cohort Christopher Rochester chose two particularly fitting pop-music songs: Lauryn Hill's "Everything Is Everything" and Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll Always Be Free," both of which will be performed by Rochester and his Jazz Ensemble.

"Lauryn speaks to one generation and Donny to another generation," Shoultz said. "But it's the same message then, now and tomorrow. Lauryn sings 'after winter must come spring' … and we want to move forward with a message of peace, love and understanding."

Shoultz elicited another work from Minnesota jazz pianist/composer Laura Caviani.

"Laura wrote to me two days after the George Floyd murder and asked, 'What should I do?'" said Shoultz, whose many roles include being associate conductor and director of learning and engagement for the choral ensemble VocalEssence. "I said, 'Laura, you're a songwriter. Write one.'"

Shoultz will be singing Caviani's "Rise Up and Lay Down Your Arms," which includes the lyrics, "There comes a time when silence betrays us."

The program also includes the Black spiritual "Walk Together Children"; a VocalEssence reading of King's "I Have a Dream"; hip-hop artist Niles' rendition of "Reassure My Soul"; and a traditional South African prayer of peace, "Ukuthula," with the Minnesota Chorale joined by South Africa's Gauteng Choristers.

While the concert is entering its fourth decade — with a seriously impressive litany of performers, starting with founder Reginald Buckner — 2021 was the first show that had to be rehearsed in isolation and recorded in advance.

Fortuitously for Rochester, his day job, as instructor and jazz coordinator at the MacPhail Center for Music, had optimum logistics for his ensemble.

"We changed our hall to where we can perform together," he said, "with plexiglass, the highest-quality HVAC, a device we spray that cleans the air with magnetized particles and N95 double masks. We even have these silicon inserts that go inside the mask and create enough space where you can articulate."

Shoultz, sometimes with Niles and/or his choral backers, could rehearse for only 10 to 20 minutes at a time, then leave the room for 20 minutes so it could be prepared for a return.

On the other hand, performing without a live audience from which to garner energy has not been an issue, both performers said.

"In a jazz group, we invite people to respond," Rochester said, "especially when soloing, to try to feed off that audience. But when you've been social isolating for months and you get to perform for people, it is really great."

Added Shoultz: "There's some reprogramming, but I know people [virtually] are with me and confident that they're going to process it in the right way. This is a live experience so this is what I have to offer. I'm not trying to impress anyone in the moment, just trying to do what I do.

"When we get back to in-person activity, I won't know what to do with people in front of me," he said with a laugh.

Recruiting performers for the MLK show — "I would say 'I know you. I like your work. What do do you have to offer?' " — and curating the order of the songs has been a joy, he said.

And after the travails of 2020, those efforts were perhaps more important than ever.

"We lost George Floyd, John Lewis, Kobe [Bryant], Chadwick [Boseman]," Rochester said. "It wasn't a great year for Black culture. We lost a lot of heroes, but those heroes planted a lot of seeds on the way out. The only thing we can do now is create."