FREE Courtroom Concert featuring Songs of the Season, Carols from MN Composers

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Thursday, December 21, 2017, 12pm

Featuring Songs of the Season, Carols from MN Composers

Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano  •  Laura Betinis Healy, mezzo soprano
Nicholas Chalmers, tenor  •  Timothy C. Takach, bass
Audrey Slote, cello  •  Dan Chouinard, accordion 

Program:

About the Artists:

Praised in The New York Times as “graceful,” “consistently stylish” (Boston Globe), and a “cool, precise soprano” (Chicago Tribune), Carrie Henneman Shaw is a two-time winner of the McKnight Fellowship for Musicians (2010, 2017). She has premiered major works by such Minnesota composers as Jocelyn Hagen and Abbie Betinis, and performed American premieres of works by Georg Friedrich Haas, Hans Thomalla, and Augusta Read Thomas. In addition to being an interpreter of contemporary and experimental music, Carrie specializes in music of the 17th century and has performed operatic roles with America’s leading Baroque opera company, Boston Early Music Festival. Carrie is a member of Chicago’s Ensemble Dal Niente and Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble. She holds degrees in English and voice performance from Lawrence University and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. Carrie is an instructor at Winona State University and Bethel University.

Laura Betinis Healy, mezzo, praised for her “particularly rich tone” (The Tech, MIT), made “all the more beautiful by the edge of folk styling” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), has performed with chamber and choral ensembles throughout the Northeast and Midwest. As an active soloist in the Boston area, Laura has been featured with the Oriana Consort, King’s Chapel Choir, and Cappella Clausura, with whom she recorded The Complete Vespers of Cozzolani, and appeared as Anima (“the soul”) in the staged Hildegard von Bingen opera Ordo Virtutum. In 2015, Laura premiered her sister Abbie’s new Christmas carol on Minnesota Public Radio, along with jazz pianist Anthony Healy, and soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw. Last year, Laura appeared on the Minnesota Orchestra’s Inside the Classics program. A graduate of Ithaca College with degrees in Music and English, she currently lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Nicholas Chalmers, tenor, has sung with The Rose Ensemble, The Bach Society of Minnesota and Lyra Baroque Orchestra, the Minnesota Bach Ensemble, Glorious Revolution Baroque, The Singers-Minnesota Choral Artists, and the Minnesota Chorale. Recent solo engagements include Oratory, Magnum Chorum, the Church Music Association of America, and the St. Mark’s Cathedral Concert Series. Last spring, Nicholas concluded his Master’s studies in Choral Conducting at the University of Minnesota, where he conducted several campus ensembles and held a Teacher’s Assistant position in the music theory department. Nicholas is Director of Music at Chesterton Academy, Director of Music at Annunciation Church in South Minneapolis, and Artistic Director of the Mirandola Ensemble, which presents programs of rarely performed early music from the Medieval and Renaissance eras strategically juxtaposed with the compositions of 20th and 21st century composers.

Timothy C. Takach, bass, enjoys a busy and varied career as a composer, singer and clinician. As a full-time composer, Timothy has a healthy schedule of commissioned work, and his work has been called “gorgeous” (Washington Post) and “eventful” (Star Tribune). A co-founder and longtime member of Cantus, he has also performed with VocalEssence, Seraphic Fire, the SPCO Chorale and many other vocal ensembles. He is co-founder and vice president of Graphite Publishing and a founding member of the Independent Music Publishers Cooperative. Timothy graduated with honors from St. Olaf College with degrees in Music Composition and Art.

Audrey Slote first ventured to Minnesota to study the cello with Dr. David Carter at St. Olaf College on a Christiansen Music Scholarship. As principal cellist of the St. Olaf Orchestra, she toured China, performed on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and participated in St. Olaf’s 100^th Anniversary Christmas Festival. After graduation, she earned a Masters of Music in cello performance as a graduate fellow at the University of Minnesota, studying with Tanya Remenikova, and is currently pursuing a second Masters in music theory, where her research focuses on intersections between music theory, feminism, and Jewish history. Praised by the Star Tribune for her “pensive” tone and “mournful cello ruminations,” Slote maintains an active career as a freelance cellist and teacher. She hopes to empower other young women to pursue music theory, a field in which they are generally underrepresented.

For three decades, Dan Chouinard has been pianist and accordionist of choice for a who’s who of Twin Cities performers, an enabler of community singalongs and a writer of hit shows for public radio, concert hall and theatrical stage. His list of collaborators includes Maria Jette, Prudence Johnson, Peter Ostroushko, Kevin Kling, Ann Reed, the Rose Ensemble, VocalEssence, A Prairie Home Companion, Minnesota Public Radio, the MN Historical Society, and others. In 1994, he created an acclaimed radio series The Singer’s Voice, broadcast live Sunday nights with over 200 shows from the Dakota Jazz Club. He has traveled extensively in France and Italy, with bicycle and without, and has presented French and Italian sing-alongs at the Alliance Française in Minneapolis. He’s a musical consultant and concert organizer at the progressive St. Joan of Arc Catholic Community in South Minneapolis, and leads monthly community sing-alongs in downtown Minneapolis and St. Anthony Park. Dan grew up in a big musical family near Lindstrom MN, attended St. John’s University in Collegeville MN, and spent four years teaching French and Italian as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.

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[icon color=”Accent-Color” size=”small” image=”icon-info-sign”] Concert Info

October through April
Thursdays from 12pm – 1pm
Courtroom 317, Landmark Center

FREE ADMISSION

Hosted by Abbie Betinis.

View the Frequently Asked Questions about the Courtroom Concerts.

Seating is limited and first come first served. Doors open at 11:30. Please call if you are attending as a group of 10 or more (651.292.3267).

Schedule & Programs Subject to Change

About the Host:
Composer Abbie Betinis writes music called “inventive, richly melodic” (The New York Times), “superb, whirling, soaring” (Tacoma News Tribune), and “the highlight” of the program (Boston Globe).  With over 50 commissioned works for ensembles such as Cantus, the New England Philharmonic, and The Rose Ensemble, Abbie has been awarded a McKnight Composer Fellowship, grants from the American Composers Forum, ASCAP, and Jerome Foundation, and was recently listed in NPR Music’s Top 100 Composers Under 40.  A resident of Saint Paul, she is adjunct professor of composition at Concordia University, and was composer-in-residence with the Schubert Club from 2005-2017.

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