On a perfectly sunny day for a baseball game, as thousands of fans swarmed to the dust heap that is to be the future home of the new Twins Stadium, a good half-mile away a small but dedicated group of curmudgeons gathered outside Cuzzy’s Bar on Washington Avenue. They were preparing for their own little … Read more
We are children, and then we work. If we’re fortunate, at any rate, we’re allowed to experience our childhood as children, and able, when the time comes to make our way in the world, to find work. Meaningful work, if we’re truly fortunate. The truth, though, is that the introductory icebreaker for youngsters—“How old are … Read more
In the past hundred years, women have successfully appropriated menswear, from slacks and dungarees to business suits—but the exchange hasn’t exactly gone in the other direction. But lookit! Finally it has at least become socially permissible for men of all stripes to carry purses—or satchels, if you will, or just plain old bags. It’s only … Read more
There is nothing wrong with talented chefs like J.P. Samuelson at jP American Bistro turning out dishes like roast chicken breast with fermented black bean sauce and mango salad and calling it American cuisine. And Doug Flicker has every right to offer duck breast with prune ravioli, asparagus, and portobello mushrooms at Mission American Kitchen. … Read more
In the early 1980s, when I was 16, my friend, Martha, picked me up at 11 p.m. in her father’s enormous Buick, and we drove from our neighborhood in Minnetonka to the Uptown Theater for the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was brought up on an entertainment diet of The Carpenters, … Read more
Bridgewater won a Tony for her role in The Wiz, won a Grammy for an Ella Fitzgerald tribute, had early-career dabbles in fusion jazz and R & B; more recently, she recorded a disk dedicated to Kurt Weill, and another of Parisian café music sung completely in French. But her latest, Red Earth, ranks with … Read more
He looks like a waiter out of a New Yorker cartoon. Crisp shirt, ramrod straight back, tray held aloft on his fingertips. He wears reading glasses on a chain around his neck, makes the best wine recommendations, calls all the ladies “dear” no matter what their age, and sports a wild, white mane of hair. … Read more
Vega is deservedly getting the best reviews of her career for Beauty & Crime, her tip of the beret to New York City, her home since childhood and also the site of September 11th, her dead brother’s apartment, and sidewalks full of poets and fashion models. Vega gathers it all up—Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, and … Read more
This weekend’s program is emblematic of conductor Osmo Vänskä’s five-year tenure to date with the orchestra. It begins with “Rakastava,” the romantic, melancholic choral work from Vänskä’s famous fellow Finn, Sibelius. It ends with Beethoven’s “Second Symphony,” a secondary but not second-rate composition among the nine Beethoven symphonies that Vänskä is recording with the Minnesota … Read more
Red House Records is a tiny label headquartered in a modest office in the St. Paul Midway, yet one that is internationally celebrated among roots-music devotees. Founder Bob Feldman spent more than twenty years signing a roster of folk musicians like Greg Brown, Peter Ostroushko, and Ann Reed. But when Feldman died unexpectedly last year, … Read more