The Perfect Holiday Gift? Some Twin Cities Culture

The holiday season is bearing down like a fat man through a skinny chimney, and many of us are still wracking our brains for the perfect gift idea - the tchotchke juste, if you will - something that simply and elegantly says, "I know you well enough not to get you a Target gift card." If you have arts lovers on your list, perhaps a taste of the Twin Cities cultural scene would make a good stocking stuffer.

I'm not talking about theater or concert tickets (too tricky to arrange), a Guthrie shot glass (too obvious) or an Osmo Vanska bobblehead (available only on eBay, and probably not in time for the holidays).
Instead, you can give the sights, sounds and stories of our local arts groups. Here are a few suggestions.
"The Guthrie Theater: Images, History and Inside Stories": Peg Guilfoyle's coffee-table book chronicling the history of the "G" has the ring of authority because Guilfoyle spent a decade on the theater's staff. She worked as a stage manager, artistic coordinator and production manager under three different artistic directors.

Guilfoyle's elaborately researched book unearths a variety of anecdotes from the theater's history: The conversation on the Des Moines-to-Iowa City train between John Cowles Jr. and Oliver Rea that put Minneapolis in the running for Tyrone Guthrie's new American theater is recounted. So is the story of the time architect Jean Nouvel took artistic director Joe Dowling up in a crane to convince him that the theater's new home needed to be boosted a few stories in the air.

In between, there are plenty of tales about the stars and soon-to-be celebrities who played at the theater, and the on-stage and backstage veterans who have seen plenty of comedy and tragedy behind the scenes.

"Church Basement Ladies" (CD): The show currently running at the Plymouth Playhouse blasted through its one-year anniversary playing to sold-out houses this autumn. Tickets for the show are difficult to come by, but you can listen to the cast recording, which gives you a good idea of the story - a couple of generations of Lutheran ladies who serve the funeral lunches in Smalltown, Minnesota.

A Broadway-scale effort it ain't - composer Drew Jansen accompanies the performers on the keyboard. But there's charm aplenty in the tunes, which poke gentle fun at menopause, religious dogma ("They glorified Mary /We glorified rice" goes one ditty about the differences between Catholics and Lutherans) and that Sodom and Gomorrah known as "The Cities."

"Our Favorite Moments 2005-06" (DVD) and "Songs of the Brave New Workshop: Best-of, Vol. 1" (CD): For something not quite as warm and cuddly as "Church Basement Ladies," you can opt for the collections from the Brave New Workshop, whose mantra is "Promiscuous hostility, Positive neutrality."
The CD was recorded in 2002, but most of it stands up to the test of time, especially Sister Mary Margaret Ovum's musical meditation on the female anatomy (sung with pirates!) and a torch song about a Girl Scout who will do just about anything to sell her... um... cookies.

The DVD includes video snippets from live performances of past Workshop shows "Shut Your American Pie-Hole; or Discount Family Values," "See Dick Shoot (and Other Signs of the Apocalypse)" and other shows.

The Minnesota Orchestra is in the middle of a five-year, five-disc project to record all of Beethoven's symphonies. This year's effort is the beloved Ninth, recorded at Orchestra Hall with the Minnesota Chorale and soloists Helena Juntunen, Katarina Karnéus, Daniel Norman, and Neal Davies.

Douglas Boyd, one of the SPCO's artistic partners, conducted Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" and the "Tragic" symphony - two pieces of work that never received public performances in Schubert's lifetime. The disc, which was released this October, also includes Entr'acte III from the Incidental Music to "Rosamunde."

Cantus, the Rose Ensemble and VocalEssence: If vocal music is more your style, there are a variety of new recordings available for holiday gift-giving.

Cantus, an ensemble of men's voices, has an eclectic new CD out called "There Lies the Home." The recording runs the spectrum from art songs to folk songs and new commissions to modern masterworks. Worth a listen, despite the earnest and unintentionally hilarious version of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

The Rose Ensemble specializes in medieval, Renaissance and baroque music, and commissions contemporary composers to create work that illuminates texts from that period. Its new release bears the tongue-twisting title "Rosa das Rosas: Cantigas de Santa Maria and Other Spiritual Songs for the Virgin." The recording, released in September, spans three centuries of vocal and instrumental music.

Splitting the difference between these serious-sounding efforts is the new recording by VocalEssence, which teamed with Garrison Keillor and the musicians from "A Prairie Home Companion." The result is a CD called "Hymn to Potatoes," a two-disc collection pulled from the popular radio show that ranges from the silly ("Spring Fever," as rendered by Schubert and Keillor) to the even sillier ("Bohemian Rhapsody," arranged for concert choir.)

By www.thespco.org