Category: So Little Time

Ever since Wynton Marsalis seized the reins of the JLCO in the early ’90s, both the orchestra and the organization have been hallmarks of supreme scholarship and top-notch quality control in the effort to enshrine jazz as America’s classical music. The only danger was that Marsalis would smother his project with love, favoring hermetically sealed technique over goosebumps. But the theme chosen for JLCO’s twelfth tour—Duke Ellington’s love songs—banishes those worries. From “Sophisticated Lady” to “Satin Doll,” to “In a Sentimental Mood” and “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good,” the repertoire should set the stodgiest stick-in-the-mud all atwitter. And with a stellar fifteen-piece band—the trumpet section alone includes Ryan Kisor, Marcus Printup, Sean Jones, and Marsalis—channeling some of Duke’s most heartfelt compositions, the gig shapes up as an ideal Valentine’s date, albeit three weeks and three days early.

Orchestra Hall, 612-371-5656.

Italian conductor Roberto Abbado knows the difference between flair and flash, or sophistication and ostentation. After a series of typically elegant performances with the Minnesota Orchestra earlier this decade, he became an artistic partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra two years ago and ascended the podium for five weeks of solid Beethoven last February and early March for performances that enhanced this undeniably crowd-pleasing music with rigorous exploration. This season’s three Abbado dates concentrate on another early nineteenth century Viennese master, Franz Schubert. The program includes Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, the “Great C Major”, preceded by his Overture to Rosamunde and Kirchner’s 1960 Concerto For Violin, Cello, Ten Winds, and Percussion, featuring Steven Copes (violin) and Ronald Thomas (cello).

Ordway Center &
Ted Mann Concert Hall, 651-291-1144; www.thespco.org

Jazz pianist Bill Carrothers was born in Minneapolis in 1964 and, even as a tyro getting his artistic bearings, elevated the local jazz scene with his cerebral gravitas (No one, for example, untangled the Gordian knots of altoist Lee Konitz better than Carrothers in concert.) While his best-known disc is probably Duets with drummer Bill Stewart, his masterpiece is the two-hour epic, Armistice 1918, which won the Charles Cros Award (the French equivalent of a Grammy) in 2004. It opens with the innocent pop songs of the pre-World War I era, such as “Hello Ma Baby” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” and then wends through a wellspring/maelstrom of affecting originals and period-covers, brimming with impressionistic details regarding, as Carrothers put it in his liner notes, “the call to battle, separation of loved ones … night raids, rum rations … the disillusionment with ideals and finally the silence of Armistice Day.” Many of the original musicians will join Carrothers for this extraordinary U.S. premiere, including cellist Matt Turner, percussionist Jay Epstein, and vocalist Peg Carrothers. Rounding out the ensemble are bassist Jean-Philippe Viret, drummer Dre Pallemaerts, and bass clarinetist Jean-Marc Foltz.

9 p.m., Artists’ Quarter, 408 St. Peter St., St. Paul; 651-292-1359; $15.

Nearly five years ago, drummer Matt Wilson brought a quartet into a fledgling, soon-to-be shuttered jazz nook called Brilliant Corners in downtown St. Paul and blew about sixty listeners away with music that blended visceral skronk with the sort of exotically forceful swing that could summon forth dancing elephants. Now former Brilliant Corners proprietor Jeremy Walker runs Jazz is NOW!, the nonprofit organization bringing Wilson (who has a justifiably higher profile these days) back to town for a gig that will weave the poetry of Carl Sandburg with Wilson’s original compositions. The band includes superb bassist-composer Ben Allison, vocalist/guitarist Dawn Thompson, and reed man Jeff Lederer, a holdover from that Brilliant Corners Wilson quartet.

8 p.m., Minnesota Opera Center, 620 N. First St., Minneapolis; 612-333-6669.

Tegan and Sara have a quirky combo of high-concept modifiers to grab your attention—they’re lesbian twin sisters from Calgary—but their strengths are much more mundane and potent than that. Their latest, The Con, retains a handcrafted, DIY spirit, but the vocals are less girlish and the arrangements less cheesy than their 2004 breakthrough, So Jealous. In terms of songwriting, Sara’s tunes are more brainy and assertive, Tegan’s more emo and introspective. Their confessions are vague—“I’m not unfaithful/but I’ll stray,” and “Nobody likes to/But I really like to cry,” for examples—but the sincerity is straightforward enough to carry such lyrics past preciousness, where they become verbal hooks that are as catchy as Tegan and Sara’s spare but memorable melodies. Some people call it folk-punk, but it’s really a couple of impish Canucks flying by the seat of their considerable intuitions.

8 p.m., Pantages Theater, 710 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-339-7007; $25-$27.50.

America may have spent decades fighting the evils of communism, but with The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein shows us the scary side of the free market. “Disaster capitalism,” the idea at the center of Klein’s new book, employs a simple yet sinister formula: disaster strikes, the public panics, and the government promptly takes advantage of the chaos to reengineer the economy as it sees fit—often in favor of privatization. Klein’s hypotheses even venture into revisionist territory, as when she posits that governments have been using disasters to their advantage for years, from Tiananmen Square to Katrina to the I-35 bridge collapse. Whether you think it a call to arms or crackpot conspiracy theory, it’s one of the boldest and most talked-about books of the year.

Barnes & Noble, 2100 N. Snelling Ave., Roseville; 651-639-9256.

At this point Bill Holm probably qualifies as a literary lion. He looks the part, certainly (Garrison Keillor has described him as “the tallest radical humorist in the Midwest”), and has a pretty unconventional lifestyle by Minnesota lit standards. Holm is an outsized personality, yet he’s also something of an outstate recluse and a rambler. When he’s not hunkered down in his little hometown of Minneota, Holm’s generally … well, somewhere exotic else. He’s capable of writing about anyplace—and anything, really—in an amiable yet erudite style in which, time and again, his sui generis personality comes through loud and clear. His latest book, Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland, is a dispatch from his favorite summer retreat, an Icelandic fishing village, and is a sharp and often very funny study in cultural contrast.

7 p.m., Minneapolis Central Library, 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612-630-6170.