Announcements • Theoroi

Announcing the 2014-2015 Theoroi Schedule of Events

By Schubert Club

The Schubert Club is pleased to announce the fourth season of Theoroi. Theoroi is a project of The Schubert Club that aims to cultivate the next generation of Twin Cities arts audiences by engaging a select group of individuals (all in their 20s and 30s) in a curated season of ten diverse arts performances at a variety of Twin Cities arts organizations.

Every year, 25 to 30 individuals are selected to take part in this program. The season spans ten months from September to June, with the group attending one performance each of the ten months.  In addition to the performances, opportunities for additional enrichment, such as conversations with artists or backstage tours are arranged for the group before or after each event.

The project takes advantage of the power of social media by requiring the group to share about their arts experiences to their own social networks. Much like the Theoroi of Ancient Greece whose job it was to journey to festivals as ambassadors and announce and invite others to these celebrations, the members of Schubert Club’s Theoroi act as ambassadors of the arts by spreading the word about their cultural experiences through interactive social media outlets.

Members to Theoroi pay a nominal membership fee, and all other costs for participating in the program are subsidized by The Schubert Club. Registration is now open for the 2014-2015 season. The registration deadline is August 1, 2014. Prospective members are asked to submit an online application which can be found at schubert.org/theoroi.


2014-2015 Theoroi Schedule of Events

Friday, September 19
Cedar Cultural Center Presents Matuto at Icehouse, Minneapolis
Employing renowned musicians across NYC’s diverse jazz, roots, and world music scenes, Matuto features violin, guitar, accordion, bass, drums, and various Brazilian percussion instruments: the alfaia (a large, wooden, rope-tuned bass drum), the pandeiro (a Brazilian tambourine), the berimbau (a single-string on a bow struck with a small stick), and the agogô (a pair of small, pitched metal bells.) With an honest love for roots music, genuine Brazilian styles, and improvisational experimentation, Matuto creates a unique and inspired sound from the heart of New York City’s diverse musical culture.

Thursday, October 16
Mixed Blood presents Colossal at Mixed Blood Theater, Minneapolis
Performed in four 15-minute quarters with a half-time show, featuring a dance company, a drum corps, and a fully-padded cast, Colossal is an epic event that simultaneously celebrates and attacks our nation’s most popular form of theater: football. A star football player–a pro prospect, one of the most graceful runners in the world, and a man in love with a teammate–struggles to move forward in the wake of a catastrophic spinal cord injury. With a cast of two dozen men, and full contact choreography, this play about love, ability, and extraordinary feats of strength tackles definitions of masculinity and the male body as a vehicle for language, violence, and silent expression through dance, football, and disability.

Sunday, November 16
Bakken Trio & Black Label Movement at Antonello Hall at MacPhail Center for Music, Minneapolis
Bakken Trio is a premier chamber ensemble in the Twin Cities. The November program will be titled: “John Adams (finally) Dances” and will feature Stravinsky, Liszt, and John Adams’s John’s Book of Alleged Dances for electric string quartet with the collaboration of the Black Label Movement dancers.

Friday, December 19
Cantus, Theater Latté Da and Hennepin Theatre Trust – All is Calm at Pantages Theater, Minneapolis
The Western Front, Christmas, 1914. Out of the violence comes a silence, then a song. A German soldier steps into No Man’s Land singing “Stille Nacht.” Thus begins an extraordinary night of camaraderie, music, peace. A remarkable true story, told in the words of the men who lived it. The piece is a radio musical drama, using only the tools of radio: music and text. The music ranges from trench songs to patriotic and sentimental tunes, as well as Christmas music from the participating countries. The text is taken from a wide range of sources including letters, journals, official war documents, poetry, grave stone inscriptions – even an old radio broadcast.

Sunday, January 18
Schubert Club Mix: Brooklyn Rider with Greg Saunier at Aria, Minneapolis
Hailed as “the future of chamber music,” the game-changing string quartet Brooklyn Rider offers eclectic repertoire in gripping performances that continue to attract legions of fans and draw rave reviews from classical, world, and rock critics alike. NPR credits Brooklyn Rider with “recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” For their Schubert Club Mix performance at Aria, they will be joined by special guest Greg Saunier, drummer of the Indie rock band Deerhoof. The program will feature music from the group’s cross-disciplinary commissioning project, “The Brooklyn Rider Almanac.”

Friday, February 20
Ten Thousand Things: The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Venue TBA, Minneapolis
Ten Thousand Things returns to the musical that started the company’s unique investigation of the form more than 15 years ago: The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Artistic Director Michelle Hensley and Music Director Peter Vitale will freshly reimagine this classic American rags-to-riches story of a woman who can’t decide whether money or love is more important. Maggie Chestovich and Tyson Forbes star as Molly and Johnny Brown.

Sunday, March 8
The Schubert Club Presents Pekka Kuusisto with Dermot Dunne, accordion at Ordway Concert Hall, St. Paul
This is one of the first events in the new Ordway Concert Hall. Highly creative Finnish violinist, Pekka Kuusisto is joined by Dermot Dunne, accordion in a program of J. S. Bach Violin Partitas interspersed with Scandinavian traditional tunes.

Saturday, April 11
Martha Graham Dance Company at Northrop Auditorium, Minneapolis
Martha Graham has had a deep and lasting impact on American art and culture. She single-handedly defined contemporary dance as a uniquely American art form, which the nation has in turn shared with the world. Crossing artistic boundaries, she collaborated with and commissioned work from the leading visual artists, musicians, and designers of her day, including sculptor Isamu Noguchi and composers Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and Gian Carlo Menotti. Graham’s groundbreaking style grew from her experimentation with the elemental movements of contraction and release. By focusing on the basic activities of the human form, she enlivened the body with raw, electric emotion. The sharp, angular, and direct movements of her technique were a dramatic departure from the predominant style of the time.

Thursday, May 7
Penumbra presents Detroit ‘67 at Penumbra Theater, St. Paul
When their parents died, Chelle and Lank inherited their childhood home in Detroit, Michigan. To make ends meet the siblings host “basement parties” spinning the newest records to come out of Motown, a risky business as police crack down on after-hours joints in black neighborhoods. When Lank happens upon a badly beaten white woman stumbling along the avenue, he decides to bring her home to his sister for help. As tensions between police and black residents rise, Chelle and Lank suddenly find themselves in danger.  Winner of The Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, Detroit ’67 is a tense, entertaining portrayal of the hazards of idealism at the epicenter of a riot.

June Event – to be announced later in the season.