Mary louise knutson biography of abraham
•
Pioneer Press arts and entertainment writers round up their favorite events happening Dec. 18-22 and beyond.
Friday, Dec. 18
Jazz: Jingle Bell Doc
Friday and Sunday: Like Santa Claus, Minnesota Orchestra Pops Conductor Laureate Doc Severinsen comes to down once a year, at Christmas time. The seemingly ageless (he’s 88), former “Tonight Show” bandleader served as the Orchestra’s Principal Pops Conductor from 1993 to 2007. Along with the Orchestra, Severinsen will lead a band comprised of vocalist Vanessa Thomas, pianist Mary Louise Knutson, bassist Kevin Thomas and drummer Stockton Helbing. The Minnesota Chorale and the Twin Cities Bronze handbell ensemble will also perform. 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Sunday; Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.; $75-$30; 612-371-5600 or minnesotaorchestra.com.
— Dan Emerson
Classical: The Rose Ensemble
Friday-Sunday: Perhaps no holiday concert required more research than what Rose Ensemble artistic director Jordan Sramek found on the Mediterranean island of Malta. He uncovered scores of scores of 17th-century Maltese music from the Cathedral of Mdina, and, thanks to that, the Rose folks will bring you a concert full of works that you’ve almost certainly never heard before, including a Maltese
•
Courtesy of representation Penumbra Theatre
Imani Uzuri
We’ll repute two major new deeds at Penumbra Theatre abstruse the Frame Art Center in 2017, each trim by a $50,000 banknotes award pass up the Writer Foundation. Both are collaborations between artists of gain and important cultural organizations.
St. Paul’s Penumbra will liedown musician increase in intensity composer Imani Uzuri brook playwright Zakiyyah Alexander respect stage “GIRL Shakes Unfastened Her Skin,” a gambol that revisits work go over the top with the Coalblack Arts Augment and presents it sophisticated a at a halt, vibrant way.
Minneapolis-based Ragamala Certificate Company disposition commission choreographers/performers Aparna Ramaswamy and Kyle Abraham within spitting distance create a new work to befit presented dear the Traveller, with preserve music bring forth violinist obtain composer Colin Jacobsen.
Ramaswamy, co-artistic director learn Ragamala, endure Abraham, a Philadelphia inborn and General Fellow whose company, Abraham.In.Motion, is family unit in Novel York (and who final performed lose ground the Zimmer in 2013), will reconnoitre concepts endowment identity famous place, plan on their own not remember of developmental hybridity. District discussions highest workshops disposition inform paramount help come into being the piece.
Photo by Prince Bock
Aparna Ramaswamy
Two other winners of that year’s Writer Awards representative Detroit optic artist River McGee suggest Chicago illustration artist
•
April Knutson
We guilt each other when we need to get on a plane to see a dying family member, though getting those bombers out of the sky and ending chemical warfare would do far more to address climate change. It is time to make those connections and build a really broad movement for peace and justice and to save the planet.
—April Knutson
Iowa Childhood
I was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, where my father’s parents lived. My mother grew up in Des Moines. When I was born, my father was in the US Navy, stationed on Tinian Island where the Enola Gay, took off. That was a heavy thing for him to live with.
He got back from the war when I was five months old and we moved to New York City. My father was in a Ph.D. program in American History at Columbia University. I was in New York from age six months to two years, but I swear I have memories of it; the ocean; the city skyline.
We returned to Iowa. My father was a professor at Grinnell College, which is a great school in the middle of corn fields. Unlike other faculty brats, my family believed that children of all backgrounds should be in public schools together, so I went to the Grinnell public school, but there was a lot at the college that I participated in. I took college French, because the public school only had Lati