Poster Outpost performers
The Outpost concert series will return on Feb. 1 as a virtual event, featuring a diverse lineup.
Great Northern Festival

The Outpost music series blends a diverse lineup of music with poetry, spoken word and more

When violist Sam Bergman and soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw first conceived their Outpost series of concerts in 2018, the idea was to create carefully curated programs that highlight Minnesota-based performers across multiple genres — including live music, poetry, spoken word and even comedy.

Watching an Outpost program was like enjoying a sort of postmodern cabaret, or, as Shaw says, witnessing "a collection of disparate artists riding up on horseback and dismounting together in front of a saloon to see what can be created between them."

With its emphasis on living composers, Outpost also has been one of Minnesota's thriving platforms for contemporary chamber music.

"Despite a generally themeless approach," Bergman says, "we [want to] give our audience a sense that these performers are linked by this remote and complex place where we all live."

As countless other performance series and arts organizations also experienced in 2020, however, COVID-19 put the kibosh on the series' momentum, just as it was settling into its groove.

But Bergman and Shaw were not about to allow the pandemic to quash their pet project, and now Outpost is re-emerging in virtual form as part of the Great Northern Festival. It's slated to take place at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1, livestreamed from the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis.

"We actually began talking to [the Great Northern Festival director] Kate Nordstrum about a collaboration between Outpost and the Great Northern before COVID lockdowns began," Bergman says. "Kate, of course, is one of the most creative and dynamic presenters we have in the Twin Cities, so when she asked to meet, we jumped at the chance. All she asked of us is that we change our approach very slightly to incorporate an overarching theme of winter, climate and place, so you'll see that reflected in many of the acts on our Feb. 1 show. That said, we're always committed to showcasing performers as they want to be seen and heard, so we've kept those strictures loose.

"Planning and producing a show like ours during COVID is a particular challenge because we do feature so many disparate acts and generally have a dozen performers or more on stage throughout the show," Bergman adds. "We've shaved that just a bit to account for safety and logistics this time around, but we'll still have 10 performers — seven musicians and three spoken-word artists — and feature new music by five outstanding composers, including four world premieres!"

The show will open with two newly commissioned songs for soprano and viola by the young Wichita-based composer Daijana Wallace. St. Paul-based composer and bandleader Dameun Strange offers a new song for soprano and electronic drone, written specifically for Shaw, who will also perform another new piece featuring electronics by Iranian-American composer Aida Shirazi.

Bergman describes the centerpiece of the program as "a wild and chilly string quartet" by Pulitzer-winning composer Du Yun, called Tattooed in Snow. The evening will close out with an athletic and engaging dance suite for violin and piano by Chicago-based composer Marcus Norris, i tried so hard for you.

The speakers will include cultural essayist Safy-Hallan Farah, science journalist Maggie Koerth, and stand-up comic Brandi Brown, all of whom are Minneapolis-based.

"Maggie writes for FiveThirtyEight, which is best known for election coverage, but her writing has always had a wonderfully musical quality to me, so she was a natural fit for Outpost," Bergman says.

Safy-Hallan Farah is "brilliant and funny when she wants to be, but also one of the most incisive and deeply introspective young writers currently on the rise in Minnesota," he adds. "Her essay for Vanity Fair following the police murder of George Floyd last summer was an unflinching portrait of growing up as both a Black person and a young Somali-American woman in the same neighborhood where Floyd was killed."

The musicians for this edition of Outpost are drawn from the vast array of Minnesota talent that is, as Bergman says, "champing at the bit for performance opportunities nearly a year into the pandemic."

In addition to Bergman and Shaw, the program will feature violinists Sarah Grimes, Hanna Landrum and Emily Switzer; pianist Susan Billmeyer; and cellist Silver Ainomae.

"We'll all be masked — except Carrie — and socially distanced while performing," he says, "which is a challenge we've all become used to in this hard year, but the chance to gather on stage together, even under difficult conditions, remains one of the most life-affirming things we can do."

Event details

What: Outpost: Words and Music
Where: Virtual performance, Parkway Theater
When: 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1
Tickets: $15, with streaming access for a week after the event

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