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 … Read more
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 … Read more
Not content as one of the world’s foremost cartoonists (don’t call her a graphic novelist—she loathes that designation), Marjane Satrapi has now made the leap into directing movies, starting with an animated adaptation of her highly acclaimed Persepolis. This modestly budgeted film is a brilliant hybrid of black-and-white and color, fable and memoir, at turns … Read more
The Hart family (Brooke and Sean, along with sons Rio and Kai) of Minneapolis stumbled into an unusual situation while visiting Tanzania: A meeting with members of the Hadzabe, a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe situated in the Yaeda Valley, was followed by a barbed exchange of sorts. The Hadzabes’s arrows won out against The Rake, Brooke … Read more
Editor Julie Caniglia HingieSenior Editor Brad Zellar GarfongAssistant Editor Christy DeSmith NoneyaOnline Editor Cristina Córdova The Gooch (see Jackass the Movie) Art Director Evangeline Johnson Ickers Production Manager Lisa Pahl Obsane Interim Production Savior Ryan Tungseth Booch ContributorsAnn Bauer SpinkyJeremy Iggers FreatingColleen Kruse Chill-axingStephanie March Shyah (as in “shyah right!”)Oliver Nicholson A tisser (one of … Read more
Every day, a hundred thousand people travel through the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, lugging an astonishing quantity of stuff. They leave for vacations, board connecting flights, and come home from business trips. About 5,000 times a year, they leave things behind. They leave cell phones and carry-ons. They leave prayer rugs and acupuncture instruments and snow … Read more
Darfur, Minnesota, population 137, doesn’t have a newspaper or a café, but news still gets around. Ask at the bank, and they’ll show you the town’s hundred-year anniversary publication, which lists the history and members of every club, business, and family who’s been here since 1903. And if there’s important news for everyone in town, … Read more
Echo Bodine, a south Minneapolis psychic, sees it in people’s auras. She sees it in the number of angels and spiritual guides hovering around the living (“So many!”). She sees it in the number of calamities and catastrophes, and the number of people laid off, divorced, and dying. According to Bodine these signs all point … Read more
That first hit made my brain tingle. And so, a few days later, I found myself reaching again for the can of enriched oxygen—just a few huffs before heading to the gym. Normally, those initial minutes of exercise are somewhat skull-rattling. On this occasion, however, I bounced along the cushioned surface of a gentle high, … Read more