Matthew Smith was in the midst of a thriving painting career when he made a sharp detour to musical composition. He’s now a multidisciplinary artist, threading film, visual art and experimental theater and movement.

Five small, indepedent theater troupes in the Twin Cities have banded together to stage an evening of Quickies.

Photographers, poets and illustrators are among the many who have steered their work toward book arts.

It might seem a strange time to produce an hour-long piece of choral music dedicated to the Holocaust, but Vocalessence founding artistic director Philip Brunelle says the subject is timeless.

Charles Lazarus, a longtime trumpet player with the Minnesota Orchestra, also writes his own jazz compositions.

St. Paul native Taous Khazem, whose father is Algerian, has focused her artistic pursuits on Algeria and the village of Tizi Ouzou.

A handful of local comics, monologuists and thespians band together as the Rockstar Storytellers for monthly storytelling evenings at Bryant-Lake Bowl.

MiniStories is a flash fiction competition and publication series by mnartists.org, attracting established, emerging and aspiring writers to create works no longer than 500 words.

SteppingStone Theatre, a youth company with a long history and new space in St. Paul, Friday night opened "Rainbow Crow," an original work created by former Playwrights' Center fellow Rhiana Yazzie.

Folk singer-songwriter Colleen Buckman is the founder and executive director of Fair Trade Om, a production company created to connect socially conscious businesses with Earth-friendly artists.

Metro State University, in St. Paul, is home to one of the area's most obscure music festivals — Strange Attractors.

Four budding performance artists have spent the past nine months training, workshopping and preparing new work through Intermedia Arts' Naked Stages mentorship program.

3-Minute Egg drops into rehearsals as four musicians work out their solos in preparation for concerts Thursday through Saturday at the SPCO Center.

On the heels of a collaborative retreat for black writers, supported by the Givens Foundation for African American Literature, local writers belonging to the Urban Griots collective took the stage at Penumbra Theatre earlier this week to read poems, essays and excerpts of plays and screenplays.

See More Perspective and El Guante performing at the Capitol