Featuring the Keep Aways.

This is the maiden voyage of the Gonzo Science youtube channel, the Gonzonomicron.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is new classical chamber music featuring a real PDD’er!

The concert features the music of 4 umd alumni composers: Robert Linnemann, Ryan Rapsys, Nick Mroczek and James Gould. All of the pieces are lyrical, varied and entertaining. Every composition is a world debut! The Gichigami Piano Trio is the featured group, but the umd woodwind quintet and other small ensembles will also play.

The UMD music program has graduated many talented composers, and this concert features four of them. On Tuesday, March 23 at 7:30 pm in Weber Music Hall, you can enjoy new classical chamber music composed by UMD alumni composers Robert Linnemann, James Gould, Nick Mroczek, and Ryan Rapsys. Each is active in their communities as composers and musicians. For tickets, visit www.tickets.umn.edu. A very special UMD alumni price of only $ 2.00 per ticket is available.

“We are thrilled to premiere new works by four UMD alumni composers. It is especially wonderful that concert goers will be able to experience these pieces in beautiful Weber Music Hall,” said Jack Bowman, dean of UMD’s School of Fine Arts.

The featured performing group is Duluth’s own Gichigami Trio. Boasting great professional musicians, the Gichigami Trio consists of Josh Aerie (cello), Laurie Bastian (violin), and Sam Black (piano). They have championed accessible new music together, and each of them is active in the Duluth community. In addition to the Gichigami Trio, current UMD students as well as UMD graduate students will also perform.

Justin Rubin, professor of music at UMD, is pleased to act as faculty sponsor for this event. He worked with each of these composers when they were students at UMD. “It’s exciting that the audience will hear what the new young artistic voices in classical music today sound like and how diverse those voices can be. Each composer has such a different aesthetic. Robert comes from a jazz background. James is more traditionally classical. Nick is an experienced operatic composer with an unparalleled melodic gift, and Ryan is quite avant garde,” Rubin said.

Robert Linnemann is the organizer of this concert. He lives in Duluth and plays saxophone with the premiere local lounge group Tangier 57. He also plays oboe and has written music for the Duluth Community Orchestra. He has worked locally as a composer-in-residence at Harbor City International High School. Linnemann also has a music business called Epistrophy Products which produces the music manuscript paper, Staffgraph (available at the UMD bookstore). He writes music in jazz and classical styles. Linnemann graduated with a Theory & Composition Music degree from UMD in 2005. Website: http://robertlinnemann.com.

James Gould began composing music at an early age. Maybe too early – his first piece was a tremendously complicated work entitled “Birds” written in crayon on a staff of his own design (6, sometimes 7 staff lines!). From there, music became an ever-growing interest that eventually brought him to study music composition at UMD with Dr. Justin Rubin. While studying music composition at UMD, Gould developed a great interest in the texture of music. To this day, texture is the driving force in his compositions. After graduating from UMD in 2005, Gould moved to Minneapolis where he continues to compose, perform, and teach music to this day. Starting in 2009, he founded the MPLS Music Group that performs music exclusively composed or arranged by members of the group.

Nicholas Mroczek received his Bachelor of Music degree in Music Theory/Composition and Vocal Music Education from UMD in 2007. Mroczek’s compositions have been performed by groups ranging from the Hermantown 7th grade choir to the UMD Opera Theatre to the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra. In part with an Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program Grant, his first opera, Evelyn, was premiered by the UMD Opera Theatre under his direction in April 2007. Mroczek received honorable mention in the 2007 Roger Wagner Contemporary Choral Composition Competition and was a finalist for the MENC National Convention Young Composers Concert in 2004. Website: http://nicholas.mroczek.org.

Since graduating from UMD in 2004, Ryan Rapsys has been engaged in a number of music composition projects, including the original soundtrack to the film Minnesota’s North Shore (2007) by photographer Craig Blacklock as well as an original theatrical score for the Duluth Playhouse’s production of It’s A Wonderful Life (2008) and The Three Musketeers (2009). Currently, he continues to pursue opportunities to compose music for a variety of media through his business Erratik Music Solutions, including short and feature film, commercial, and web video projects. Website: www.erratik.com

The new store is at 124 W. First St. in Downtown Duluth. The grand opening is Saturday, March 20, from 4 to 8 p.m.

From the news release:

This small community-based business will fill a niche in Duluth’s art scene by providing darkroom and studio space for a nominal fee. The store will be open seven days a week and will have children’s, student grade, and professional quality art supplies for sale. In addition, there will be a gallery for artists to display and sell their work and a wide variety of art classes for all ages and abilities.

Passionate volunteers who strive to share their love of art with others operate Pineapple Arts. They encourage the public to share ideas and make requests.

Hours are 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Saturdays and 12 p.m. until 4 p.m. Sundays. The phone number is (218) 722-2919.

The building is affectionately known as the Pineapple Building because of the Pineapple design at the top center of the Building.

Hope to see you all there!

Starting at noon on Saturday, April 17, 2010 our first Twin Peaks marathon will take place at Zinema 2.

We will be screening the entire series and will include the two-hour pilot. All proceeds will go to benefit PAVSA, an organization here in Duluth that aids victims of sexual assault. Price is $10 but that is to just get in NOT OUT. This price will include all you can drink Joe for the 24 plus hours and a slice of cherry pie, made by the Zeitgeist Arts Cafe under the explicit instructions from the Double R Diner (Twede’s Cafe in North Bend, WA). To make this more interesting if you are too feeble to make it through the entire run and choose to take leave, you may, but you have to pay $1 for every hour that is left in the marathon. If you make it 8 hours in and decide to leave we will subtract the 8 hours you made it from the 25-hour program, which leaves 17 hours or an obligation to pay $17. It will also work in the reverse. If you decide to jump in at hour 10 you can but you must pay $1 for every hour that is left in the marathon. The coffee is on us but the METH is not. Hand-pulled silk-screened posters provided by Paul Connolly. Tickets on sale now. $10

The 16 plays that we will be presenting this Friday and Saturday at 7pm at the Venue at Mohaupt Block don’t even exist yet.

Thursday night, 8 writers will randomly choose a Who, a What, and a Where. Then they’ll write a script that incorporates those elements.

Friday morning, 8 directors will randomly get one of those scripts, then they’ll randomly get their cast. Director and cast will rehearse all day, finding props and costumes along the way. (They also enjoy a delicious dinner provided by our generous sponsor PIZZA LUCE!!)

Friday night, those 8 world premiere plays are performed.

Then we do it all over again for Saturday.

Call (218) 213-2780 for tickets and info. We’d love to see you there! Just forgive us if we’re pooped.

Here’s a list of theater artists involved in this weekend’s Chicken Hat plays. They rock.

Megan Abel
Super Dave Anderson
Greg Anderson
Minden Anderson
Jerry Bacon
Tony Barrett
Jennifer Bergum
Lawrance Bernabo
Ben Borchert
Carolyn Dick
Nick Elias
Lauren Fleischman
Bethany Gosar
Elizabeth Gregg
Kirsten Hambleton
Kathleen Hawkes
Anders Hultstrom
Keith Hursey
Dennis Kempton
Lawrence Lee
Mindy Malenius
Kaylee Matuszak
Taylor Martin-Romme
Ivan Mazurkiewicz
Mark Miller
Luke Moravec
Bob Obst
David Obst
Sharon Dixon Obst
Tammy Ostrander
Matt Perrine
Cory Regnier
Mary Lynn Regnier
Nathan St. Germain
Tim Sislo
Anne Stephen
Ric Stevens
Tanya Stevens
Amanda Tesarek
Cheri Tesarek
Michael Venske
Anna Vogt

Colder by the Lake’s “Older by the Lake,” a comedy about aging, opens this Thursday night at Teatro Zuccone.

In the pic: Cathy Podeszwa, John Schmidt, Christa Schulz, Jack Setterlund and Gary Kruchowski. They guarantee the show will be “more fun than a barrel of reading glasses.”

This post is being published early on Sunday morning for a reason. The first person to write a comment on this wins two tickets to the opening night show (Thursday, March 11, 7:30 p.m.). It’s a reward for being up early on a Sunday and reading about oldness.

Oh, and don’t worry, the playbill is in large print.

Renegade Theater Company is proud to announce a free improv weekend on Friday, March 12 and Saturday, March 13. Tickets are on a first-come, first-served basis, and you must be present to claim your ticket. Tickets will be available beginning at 9:30 p.m on both nights. The improv performances are at 10:30 p.m on both Friday and Saturday at the Teatro Zuccone in downtown Duluth.

Since bringing Improv comedy back to Duluth early last year, Renegade has seen its audiences grow by leaps and bounds. After months of regularly selling out Friday night shows, Renegade recently added a weekly Saturday performance as well, which is now just as packed. To help keep fans informed, Renegade began a Facebook page, and informed fans that if the group had 250 members by the end of February, they would perform a free weekend of shows in March as a thank you. The group quickly soared past 250 members, and currently has over 440 fans.

As promised, Renegade is happy to offer this free weekend as a small way to express our gratitude to the hundreds of people each week who pack our shows and have played a huge part in making Renegade Improv one of the hottest tickets in town.

“We’re incredibly grateful to our fans,” says Jody Kujawa, director of the Improv team. “We don’t really advertise these shows, we rely on word of mouth. So the fact that we sell these shows out week after week is proof that we have some truly incredible fans who keeping coming back week after week and bringing their friends.”

“We felt awful turning groups of people away on Friday nights, so the first step we took was adding a second show,” adds Katy Helbacka, Renegade’s Artistic Director. “Our motto on the improv team is that we’ll keep adding shows as long as people keep coming to them.

“This weekend is a great way for us to thank our fans who come week after week, but it’s also a way to introduce new people to improv comedy. At a price of zero dollars for an hour and a half of laughter, well, we think that’s a pretty great deal.”

Renegade Theater Company is a nonprofit 501(c)3 arts organization. This production made possible by a grant from the Duluth-Superior Area Community Foundation and the A.H. Zeppa Family Foundation.