The Friday performance is an Inside the Classics concert that delves into Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe ballet suites through conversation and performance, with Sarah Hicks as conductor and violist Sam Bergman as host.  Saturday evening features Hicks conducting Brahms’ Second Symphony and Copland’s Old American Songs with Willmar-native Andrew Wilkowske singing. 

Tickets for these concerts are priced at $5 and are available for purchase at Cashwise, Whitney Music, Willmardesigncenter.com, Willmar Community Education & Recreation, and the Willmar Convention and Visitors’ Bureau.

Our upcoming Common Chords partnership is with the city of Willmar, Minnesota.  As we plan this collaboration, with the majority of events slated for May 2012, we invite you to follow our progress through this site as we explore the many ways in which music can bring a community together.

Learn more about our debut project in Grand Rapids in October 2011.

Common Chords is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, McKnight Foundation and Mardag Foundation.  It is also funded in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature from the State’s arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

More about Common Chords

The Minnesota Orchestra will perform two concerts at the Willmar Education and Arts Center

Located in West Central Minnesota, Willmar and surrounding areas offer access to some 360 lakes, 20 miles of paved biking trails and beautiful parks.  With a population of approximately 20,000 residents, the City is home to a variety of business and industry, as well as a thriving arts community.  The Minnesota Orchestra is proud to partner with Willmar to produce this Common Chords experience.

Conductor Sarah Hicks joined Choir Director Scott Shrimpton’s Thursday morning choir practice at Grand Rapids High School to rehearse the singers in Sibelius’ Finlandia. The choir was given its “secret” instructions: they would be seated in small groups throughout the Reif Center auditorium for the Orchestra’s Saturday evening concert and would suddenly rise up to join the encore, surprising the audience. “Go for it,” Hicks encouraged the students. “Give it your all.”

The top secret finale—students didn’t even tell their parents what they were up to—was the denouement of the Orchestra’s new Common Chords project, which featured more than 30 music-related exchanges over the past six days connecting the Minnesota Orchestra and the Grand Rapids community. Next up: the Orchestra partners with the Willmar community for a spring Common Chords residency.

View more photos from our residency in Grand Rapids on our Facebook page.

Orchestra trombonist Kari Sundström signs an autograph for a child following the Orchestra's Family Concert on Saturday afternoon.

As the Common Chords week nears its conclusion, the Minnesota Orchestra played an afternoon Family concert for audiences of all ages. Students who had met musicians in the schools earlier in the week had a chance to greet “their” musicians after the performance.

Three-year old Max enjoys an intermission cocoa at the Orchestra’s Family Concert.

“One of our aspirations for this project was to foster interactions between our musicians and the community,” said the Orchestra’s Mele Willis, who manages Common Chords. “This exchange has gone both ways, and we couldn’t be more grateful to the Grand Rapids community.”

View more photos from our residency in Grand Rapids on our Facebook page.

Soloists from the Minnesota Orchestra play a rendition of Simple Gifts from Copland's Appalachian Spring.

Members of the Grand Rapids community filled the Reif Center to capacity Friday evening for the second full-ensemble performance by the Minnesota Orchestra. Part conversation and part performance, co-hosts Sarah Hicks and Sam Bergman took audience members Inside the Classics with Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

Sam Bergman, viola, and Concertmaster Erin Keefe chat offstage prior to Friday evening's Inside the Classics concert in Grand Rapids.

A capacity crowd was on hand at the Reif Center Friday evening for the Orchestra's performance.

View more photos from our residency in Grand Rapids on our Facebook page.

Students hop off the bus Friday morning before the Young People's concert.

The Orchestra performs to a capacity audience at the Reif Center Friday.

View more photos from our residency in Grand Rapids on our Facebook page.

Sarah Hicks chats with KAXE announcer Scott Hall.

The residency String Quartet hit the airwaves for a live morning interview and performance on KAXE radio on Thursday. The musicians pose with (from left) Steve Downing, Kathy Dodge, Chad Haatvedt and interviewer Scott Hall.

View more photos from our residency in Grand Rapids on our Facebook page.

Arek Tesarczyk offers a few words of wisdom to cellist Maggie Anderson and her stand partner during rehearsal.

Fourteen-year-old Maggie Anderson, a ninth-grade cellist and resident of Bigfork, MN, is our guest blogger this week, writing about her experiences and interactions with the Orchestra over the course of the Common Chords project.

The IOSP Youth Orchestra workshop with conductor Courtney Lewis was fantastic! With his help, we seemed to go from missed accidentals and underplayed dynamics to pieces that felt nearly performance-ready. We worked on St. Paul’s Suite by Gustav Holst and Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. In both pieces, Courtney gave us tips on how to play together and listen to each other as an orchestra.

In St. Paul’s Suite, we were told to imagine the peasants working in the countryside. Courtney said that this kind of music seemed to narrate how they went about their daily lives. He also made sure that the whole orchestra breathed together on the upbeat before starting so that we would all come in at the same time.  He told us about a recording he conducted with a professional orchestra where they had to edit out the starting “sniff” as they began!  In addition to our conductor’s instruction, we had a Minnesota Orchestra member helping us out in each section. They gave us great suggestions and pointers on bowing, finger positions, and notes. Lucky for us, they just kept smiling even though things weren’t totally perfect.

After St. Paul’s Suite, we worked on the Surprise Symphony until the clock ran out. That piece really made us have to breathe together. Courtney also took it a little faster than usual to our great relief. The first section of the piece has a very slow and quiet tempo followed by a single quarter note marked fortissimo. Courtney explained that Haydn dearly loved to add those little “jokes” to his pieces.  In fact, he had recently conducted a piece by Haydn where there were a few “false endings”.  The audience would burst into applause and then quickly stop, a little embarrassed. Courtney said, “It’s the oldest musical joke that still works,” and I must agree that it made us laugh, too.

-Maggie Anderson

View more photos from our residency in Grand Rapids on our Facebook page.

This small future trumpeter watches Minnesota Orchestra trumpeter Charles Lazarus play a little jazz.

Two Kinder Konzerts—lively narrated programs for pre-schoolers—reached upwards of 300 youngsters at the Grand Rapids Public Library and Reif Center on Thursday.  “I‘m sure it made more of an impression than we know,” said Mary Kosak, program officer at the Blandin Foundation. “Maybe twenty years from now one of them will be up on that same stage.”

Kathy Dodge, one of the major forces behind Common Chords and chair of the local Steering Committee that organized the week’s events, manages an Instrument Sound Factory before the morning Kinder Konzert.

View more photos from our residency in Grand Rapids on our Facebook page.