Art Hounds
Art Hounds: Shostakovich, Chastity Brown, and "A Dog is a Dog"
Chris Roberts January 5, 2012, 8:00 AM Jan 5, 2012
Illustration from "A Dog is a Dog" by Stephen Shaskan
This week's hounds pay tribute to a string quartet series at St. Paul's Landmark Center, a folky soul singer from Minneapolis, and an illustrator who's winning national raves for his new kids' book.
Art Hounds January 5 by MPR News
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Songwriter and musician Mayda knows a thing or two about soul music, so we need to pay attention when she speaks of her admiration for Minneapolis singer-songwriter Chastity Brown. Mayda says Brown's probing honesty and acoustic guitar craft can transport the listener to another place. Brown will be joined by visual artist Natalie Gallagher for an unusual performance, "Marrow," at Republic in Minneapolis, Sunday, Jan. 8.
Sometimes your friends and fellow artists surprise you. It happened to Minneapolis visual artist and musician Rich Barlow, whose former bandmate and album art illustrator Stephen Shaskan has released a critically-praised children's book called "A Dog is a Dog," published by Chronicle Books. Rich says kids will be delighted by the clever way the story's main character, a dog, continually changes his identity. Rich was also impressed by Shaskan's ability to professionalize his style as an illustrator.
The great 20th-century Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote a series of string quartets that St. Paul composer Justin Busch describes as a musical documentation of life behind the Iron Curtain. Justin says eight of those 15 quartets will be performed by the acclaimed Twin Cities-based Artaria Quartet every Thursday in January from noon to 1pm at the Landmark Center. According to Justin, the 'courtroom concerts' are not to be missed.
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Chris Roberts
croberts@mpr.org
Chris Roberts is an arts and culture reporter for MPR News. He has worked at Minnesota Public Radio as a reporter, producer and host since 1989. From 1999 to 2003, Roberts created and hosted MPR's weekly arts program, "Word of Mouth," hosted The Current's "The Local Show," a weekly hour long program devoted to local music.
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