Artscape is on break and will return Wednesday, Sept. 23, with our usual mix of news and picks. Between now and then, we’ll keep you current on events worth going out for.
The picks
Tonight (Sept. 22) at Intermedia Arts: Queer Voices: An LGTB Reading Series. The longest-running series of its kind in the country, Queer Voices opens its 10th season with a reading in partnership with Shades of Yellow, the world’s first Hmong LGBTQ nonprofit. John Medeiros and Andrea Jenkins are the series’ curators and hosts. Tonight’s readers are Chardenal, an aspiring singing/rap artist who released her first album in July; Oskar Ly, a Hmong French American artist and organizer; and Sonic Rain, a Hmong queer performing artist, musician and emcee. 7:30 p.m. $5-$25 suggested donation at the door.
Tonight at Trinity Lutheran Church in Brainerd: “The Last Queen of Hawaii.” For its 20th anniversary season and 10th annual Greater Minnesota Tour, the history-mad, scholarly-research-obsessed Rose Ensemble looked west across the land and the Pacific Ocean to the Hawaiian Islands and the story of Lili’uokalani, the last queen and the composer of the famous Hawaiian song “Aloha ‘Oe.” This is a concert you won’t hear every day: a creation chant and parlor songs, missionary hymns and cowboy tunes. The ensemble travels from Brainerd to International Falls, Duluth, Detroit Lakes and more before heading back to the Ted Mann in October. FMI, tickets and complete schedule here.
Thursday at Common Good Books: Tony Hoagland reads from “Application for Release from the Dream: Poems.” In his fifth book of poetry, just out from Graywolf, Hoagland explores how a citizen of 21st-century America can stay human. An earlier collection, “What Narcissism Means to Me,” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Hoagland has accumulated many honors for his writing including the Mark Twain Award from the Poetry Foundation. He lives in Santa Fe. 7 p.m. Free.
Thursday at the Commodore: Puttin’ on the Fitz: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Birthday Bash. For a while in 1921, after being evicted from a cottage in White Bear Lake and before moving to a home on Goodrich Ave., Scott and Zelda lived in the swanky new Commodore Hotel on Western Ave. in St. Paul. The building has since seen good times and bad, including a gas leak in 1978 that caused two explosions, injured dozens of people and set the place on fire. Now part of Commonwealth Properties, newly remodeled and soon to reopen, the Commodore will host a party for Fitzgerald’s birthday (his 119th) that also supports the nonprofit organization Fitzgerald in St. Paul. The dinner is sold out, but tickets are still available to the afterparty featuring music by the band Irie Sol, whose latest release, “Dred Scott Fitzgerald,” fuses 1920s jazz with reggae, hip-hop and Minneapolis funk in original songs with titles like “Dancehall Daisy” and “The Great Garvey.” Lead vocalist Joel Pace wrote in an email, “Our goal was to use music and lyrics to bring into focus worlds that are implied in [Fitzgerald’s] works, but end up getting left off-screen, rarely seen or heard: Harlem and jazz in ‘Gatsby,’ for instance.” The music tells its own story, and you want to dance to it. 8 to 11 p.m. FMI and tickets ($25). 1920s attire encouraged but not required.
