2011 Calendar of Events

Brown bag lunch program, Klassic Klarinet Klezmer, Deborah Check Reeves, clarinet, The University of South Dakota, with John D. Check, piano, University of Central Missouri. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Music at the MUC Encore, A Vessel of Song:  Klassic Klezmer Klarinet, The Pit, Muenster University Center, 4:00 p.m. Free.

Brown bag lunch program, Rocky Mountain Celtic, with Willson & McKee, Colorado Springs. The popular duo, Jigheads, returns with a "non-traditional performance by design," to define "what Celtic becomes when it settles comfortably in the West." Appalachian and hammered dulcimers, Celtic harp, accordion, Irish bouzouki, bodhran, guitar, and vocals. 12:05 p.m. Free.

OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) Class, "Histories and Mysteries at the NMM," with Deborah Check Reeves, Curator of Education. Learn the answers to intriguing historical mysteries such as: "Why does the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle have eight strings?" The OLLI provides intellectually engaging and enriching classes, workshops, activities and events designed primarily for lifelong learners age 50 and up; however, learners of all ages and from all backgrounds and levels of education are welcome to register for the NMM's four-session OLLI class: February 8, 15, 22, and March 1, 2:00-4:00 PM.

Class size limited. OLLI membership and advance registration required. Register online at www.olliuc.org; or call 605-367-5226; or email info@olliuc.org.

Brown bag lunch program, Black Elk Sings, featuring Michael Murphy, folk singer and songwriter, from Omaha. Accompanying himself on the guitar and Native American flute, Murphy sings songs of social awareness, peace, and of those who have influenced his life. His music was featured in the 2008 movie, "The Battle for Whiteclay," and his CD, “Black Elk Sings,” was named “Traditional Native American CD of the Year” in 2009 by the Rural Roots Music Commission. 12:05 p.m. Free.

OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) Class, "Histories and Mysteries at the NMM," with Deborah Check Reeves, Curator of Education. Learn the answers to intriguing historical mysteries such as: "How can a piano sound like a drum?" The OLLI provides intellectually engaging and enriching classes, workshops, activities and events designed primarily for lifelong learners age 50 and up; however, learners of all ages and from all backgrounds and levels of education are welcome to register for the NMM's four-session OLLI class: February 8, 15, 22, and March 1, 2:00-4:00 PM.

Class size limited. OLLI membership and advance registration required. Register online at www.olliuc.org; or call 605-367-5226; or email info@olliuc.org.

Left: NMM Curator Sarah Deters Richardson plays the NMM's rare set of Deagan organ chimes made in Chicago about 1901 (Arne B. Larson Collection, 1979).

OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) Class, "Histories and Mysteries at the NMM," with Deborah Check Reeves, Curator of Education. Learn the answers to intriguing historical mysteries such as: "Why do the mouthpieces of Civil War brass instruments point in the same direction as their bells?" The OLLI provides intellectually engaging and enriching classes, workshops, activities and events designed primarily for lifelong learners age 50 and up; however, learners of all ages and from all backgrounds and levels of education are welcome to register for the NMM's four-session OLLI class: February 8, 15, 22, and March 1, 2:00-4:00 PM.

Class size limited. OLLI membership and advance registration required. Register online at www.olliuc.org; or call 605-367-5226; or email info@olliuc.org.

OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) Class, "Histories and Mysteries at the NMM," with Deborah Check Reeves, Curator of Education. Learn the answers to intriguing historical mysteries such as: "How can bagpipers sing while they play?" The OLLI provides intellectually engaging and enriching classes, workshops, activities and events designed primarily for lifelong learners age 50 and up; however, learners of all ages and from all backgrounds and levels of education are welcome to register for the NMM's four-session OLLI class: February 8, 15, 22, and March 1, 2:00-4:00 PM.

Class size limited. OLLI membership and advance registration required. Register online at www.olliuc.org; or call 605-367-5226; or email info@olliuc.org.

Brown bag lunch program, Fingerstyle Fireworks, featuring guitarist, Bill Mize, from Gatlinburg, Tennessee, with Beth Bramhall, accordion. While drawing inspiration from legends of Appalachia, soul, jazz, folk, and rock, Mize's original music has been described as varying from delicate Appalachian highland melodies to greasy Memphis grooves, performed in such a smooth yet syncopated fashion, you'd swear there was another guitarist on stage! Mize is a past winner of The National Fingerstyle Guitar Competition at The Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas--the "U.S. Open" of guitar competitions. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown bag lunch program, Returning and Returned, featuring Michael Mandrell, fingerstyle guitarist, from Portland. An artistic and passionate contemporary guitarist, Mandrell composes and plays with an ear for the creative side of the world fusion genre. His music offers equal parts world and new age, an array of Middle Eastern rhythms and scales, with tinges of folk and an infusion of Celtic overtones. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Music at the MUC Encore, Returning and Returned, The Pit, Muenster University Center, 2:00 p.m. Free.

9:00-5:00  Gamelan Workshop with Joko Sutrisno, Music Director, Indonesian Performing Arts Association of Minnesota. 

1:00-2:00  Beginner session. No experience necessary. Come one, come all!

Free.  Open to the public.

Brown bag lunch program, An Eclectic Musical Journey, featuring Curtis Teague & Loretta Simonet, acoustic folk music duo from Minneapolis, with their unique blend of traditional Celtic tunes, American folk songs, original music, and familiar old-time songs. Acclaimed for their exquisite harmonies and incisive songwriting, the duo will perform on an array of stringed instruments, including Celtic harp, mandocello, mandolin, guitar, clawhammer banjo, and ukulele. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Knutson Distinguished Professor Lecture, The Musical Alphabet and the Rise of the Keyboard as a Device of the Literate, presented by John Koster, Professor of Music and Conservator at the National Music Museum. As recipient of the USD College of Fine Arts Knutson Distinguished Professor Award for 2010-2012, Koster will present an illustrated lecture about the medieval origins of the standard European notation in which letters represent the steps of the musical scale. He will explore the relationship of this notation and of literacy in general to the development of the keyboard in the organ and, eventually, other instruments such as the clavichord and harpsichord. Arne B. Larson Concert Hall. 7:30 p.m. Free.

Brown bag lunch program, Flying Forms in Concert, featuring Marc Levine, baroque violin, and Tami Morse, harpsichord, St. Paul, Minnesota. Formed out of a passion for performing early chamber music, Flying Forms is a baroque chamber music ensemble that performs a wide variety of programs from traditional to experimental. The dynamic duo, which is rapidly establishing a presence in America's early music scene, has been heralded by noted harpsichordist, Arthur Haas, as “the bright future of early music.” 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown bag lunch program, The Classical Guitarist, featuring Vladislav Blaha, Brno, The Czech Republic. Blaha, one of the world's leading players on the classical guitar and winner of four international guitar competitions, returns to the NMM to perform works by John Dowland and Manuel de Falla, as well as several contemporary works composed in his honor by Nikita Koshkin, Jorge Morel, and John W. Duarte. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown bag lunch program, "Play from the Soul . . .": Heeding C.P.E. Bach's Advice, featuring Preethi de Silva (Claremont, California), harpsichord and fortepiano. De Silva, a Professor of Music Emerita at Scripps College and Adjunct Professor of Music at Claremont Graduate University, will discuss and perform her own compositions, as well as works by C. P. E. Bach and George Frideric Handel, on the NMM's harpsichord by Joseph Kirckman, London (1798) and a fortepiano made specifically for the NMM by Thomas and Barbara Wolf, The Plains, Virginia, 2004. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Special Sneak Preview Performance, The Kyai Rengga Manis Everist Gamelan, featuring the Tatag Gamelan Ensemble (USD). 7:30 p.m. Free.

Brown bag lunch program, Vermillion's Own King of the Guitar, featuring T. Wilson King, South Dakota poet/songwriter, acoustic and bottle-neck guitars. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown bag lunch program, Strumming Along . . . Singing a Song, featuring Tom Peterson (guitar) and Charley Smith (mandolin), from Sioux Falls, performing a selection of Peterson's original compositions. 12:05 p.m. Free.

"Peter and the Wolf" and Other Musical Stories

Summer Explorer Series for students entering 4th-6th grades

Monday-Wednesday 9:00-11:30 AM; Thursday 9:00 AM -1:30 PM

Brown Bag Lunch Program

The Polka Professors

"Peter and the Wolf" and Other Musical Stories

Summer Discovery Series for students entering 1st-3rd grades

Monday-Thursday 10:00-11:00 AM OR 1:00-2:00 PM

Brown Bag Lunch Program

Celebrating Life Through
Story and Song

Jerome Kills Small, traditional Oglala Sioux storyteller, oral historian, and drum maker (USD). Traditional, powwow, rabbit, and other songs will be presented along with explanations of their meanings and stories of their origins. Jerome is the recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from South Dakota Humanities Council, the Reconciliation Award from former South Dakota Governor George Mickleson, The University of South Dakota Poet of the Year (1994), and numerous awards and certificates for speaking at the Red Road Retreat and the Building Bridges Conference. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown Bag Lunch Program

Midday Musicale

The Dakota Baroque and Classic Company (USD)--Arian Sheets (viola), Deborah Check Reeves (clarinet), Susanne Skyrm (fortepiano), and Gary Reeves (horn)-- perform chamber music from the Classical period. Mozart's Kegelstatt Trio will be featured, along with other exciting repertoire played on modern reproductions of historical instruments from the Classical period. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown Bag Lunch Program

Celtic Wizardry:
Traditional Wind-powered Music

Laura MacKenzie, Ross Sutter and Danielle Enblom (Minneapolis/St. Paul), sing and play music from Ireland, Scotland, England, Nova Scotia, Central France and Galicia on a dazzling array of wind-powered instruments, including flutes, whistles, concertina, voice, and many bagpipes, including Scottish, French and English, bellows and blown. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown Bag Lunch Program

Sodbusters:
Folk Music of the Upper Midwest

Singer/songwriter, Jami Lynn Buttke (Rapid City), vocalist, accompanying herself on guitar and banjo. Enjoy an exuberant performance of a diverse body of folk music unique to this region, including mining songs from the Black Hills gold rush era, Norwegian lullabies as they were once sung by prairie settlers, lumbering ballads formerly sung by shanty-boys in the 1890s, and Populist political tunes from the late 1890s. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown Bag Lunch Program

Old Time Music of the
Hills and Plains

Bob Bovee and Gail Heil will play the fiddle, banjo, guitar, harmonica, vocals, and yes, will even include some yodeling (Spring Grove, Minnesota)! Enjoy rural music as it was once heard and played in homes, at dances, at minstrel shows, and on the old-time country radio. Accompanying a repertoire that includes dance tunes, ballads, cowboy songs, humorous and sentimental numbers, blues and rags, Bovee and Heil's shows also feature entertaining stories, history, and folklore. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown Bag Lunch Program

The Ambassador of Bluegrass

Dick Kimmel (New Ulm, Minnesota), vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, playing guitar, mandolin, and clawhammer banjo. For more than fifty years, Kimmel has been associated with traditional bluegrass and old-time country music as a performer, recording artist, workshop instructor, historian, and songwriter. A well-known and highly respected musician, Kimmel was inducted into America's Old-Time Country and Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2008 and the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in 2010. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown Bag Lunch Program

Celebrating Life Through
Story and Song

Jerome Kills Small, traditional Oglala Sioux storyteller, oral historian, and drum maker (USD). Traditional, powwow, rabbit, and other songs will be presented along with explanations of their meanings and stories of their origins. Jerome is the recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from South Dakota Humanities Council, the Reconciliation Award from former South Dakota Governor George Mickleson, The University of South Dakota Poet of the Year (1994), and numerous awards and certificates for speaking at the Red Road Retreat and the Building Bridges Conference. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown Bag Lunch Program

Dizi, Xiao, Shinobue, or Shakuhachi?

A method for the identification of Asian bamboo flutes continues to be the focus of intensive research being conducted at the National Music Museum by Kendra Van Nyhuis, a USD Senior majoring in music education and anthropology. The recipient of a 2010 U. Discover undergraduate research grant, Kendra has already presented the results of her original research at USD's Ideafest, the National Conference for Undergraduate Research at Cornell University, and at the National Meeting of the American Musical Instrument Society in Phoenix. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown Bag Lunch Program

Holiday Brass

Join us at noon for some festive season music performed by the South Dakota Brass Quintet (USD)--Rolf Olson, trumpet; Clayton Lehman, trumpet; Gary Reeves, French horn; Jonathan Alvis, trombone; and Chuck Dibley, tuba. 12:05 p.m. Free.

Brown Bag Lunch Program

Christmas with
The Polka Professors