A Minnesota Orchestra Christmas:Home for the Holidays

Sarah Hicks, conductorConceived and directed by Peter Rothstein

Written by Kevin Kling

Holiday Concerts

Thursday, December 21, 2017, 11 am and 7:30 pm | Orchestra Hall

The concert is 75 minutes and is performed without an intermission.

ensembleChristina Baldwin*Dieter Bierbrauer*

Kevin Kling*Thomasina Petrus*Alejandro Vega

Peter Rothstein, stage directorKevin Kling, writer

Robert Elhai, composer and arrangerPeter Ostroushko, composer and mandolin

Jim Lichtscheidl, movement directorAlice Fredrickson, costume designerEric McEnaney, rehearsal pianist

Aaron Wheeler*, production stage managerCourtney Yung, assistant stage managerAbbee Warmboe, properties master

* Member of Actors Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States

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35DECEMBER 2017 MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA

Dieter Bierbrauer, ensemble

Singer-actor Dieter Bierbrauer has performed in and around the Twin Citiesfor more than a decade, and previouslyappeared with the Minnesota Orchestrain Bernstein’s Mass, Candide and a CasualClassics Musical Theater program. He hasappeared in productions at the Ordway,Theater Latté Da, Guthrie, Theatre de laJeune Lune, the Children’s Theater, Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, IllusionTheater, Park Square Theatre and Bloomington Civic Theater. He has alsosoloed with the Minnesota Boychoir andfor the Plymouth Music Series. Regionally,he has performed at Pittsburgh PublicTheater; A.R.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Tennessee Williamsfestival in Provincetown, Massachusetts;and the Midtown Theater in New YorkCity.

Sarah Hicks, conductor

Profile appears on page 22.

Jerome Foundation, and many others. His plays have been produced by major theaters in the Twin Cities, including theGuthrie and the Jungle Theater, andaround the country. His autobiographicpiece Home and Away premiered at theSeattle Rep and moved to Second StageTheater, off Broadway, where it received aDrama Desk Award nomination. He haswritten plays for Children’s TheatreCompany, Seattle Children’s Theatre andStageworks at Open Eye Figure Theatre.He has also authored five books publishedby Borealis Books and six storytellingCDs. A frequent commentator for NPRand MPR’s All Things Considered, Klingwas named the Minneapolis Story Laureate by then-Mayor R.T. Rybak in2014. More: kevinkling.com.

Christina Baldwin, ensemble

Christina Baldwin returns to the Minnesota Orchestra having previouslyperformed in its staging of Humperdinck’sHansel and Gretel, in numerous concertsand as a recording artist on StephenPaulus’ To Be Certain of the Dawn. As asoloist, she has worked with the BakkenTrio, VocalEssence, Schubert Club, Skylark Opera, Ex Machina, AstoriaMusic Festival, Fort Smith Symphonyand Colorado Symphony. She serves asArtistic Associate, music director andperformer with The Moving Company.Her collaborations at the Guthrie Theater range from Shakespeare andcontemporary plays to musical theaterand operetta. A collaborator with Theatre de la Jeune Lune for nearly 10years, she co-adapted and performed thetitle role in their critically-acclaimedtouring production of Carmen. More:christina-baldwin.com.

Kevin Kling, writer and ensemble

Monologist and playwright Kevin Kling hasbeen awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota StateArts Board, the Bush Foundation, the

Thomasina Petrus, ensemble

Thomasina Petrus has become one ofthe premier vocalists on stages bothlocal and abroad, known for her multifaceted artistic range. She is acompany member at Penumbra Theatre,Mixed Blood Theatre and Park SquareTheatre. She has performed with prominent artists including James“Cornbread” Harris, Sr., Javetta Steele,T. Mycheal Rambo, Stokley, WalterChancellor and Prince. She has touredthe country with six separate stagings ofLady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, andwith her original production Lady Daysfor young audiences and elderly residences. Her other original productions include HOLD, a play aboutincarcerated women through music andpoetry. She was a 2015-16 Playwright

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Nautilus Music-Theater and Theater LattéDa. He also arranged music for The New Standards’ performance withthe Minnesota Orchestra in July 2016.He is the recipient of Tony and DramaDesk nominations for best orchestrationsfor the Broadway production of The LionKing. He has contributed orchestrationsto some 150 movies, among them Fences,Avengers: Age of Ultron, Across the Universe, The Sixth Sense, Pirates of theCaribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearland five films from The Fast and the Furious series. More: robertelhai.com.

Center McKnight Theatre Arts Fellow,and in a departure from her stage work,she is the creator of Thomasina’s CashewBrittle.

Chronicles, a three-CD box set releasedon Red House Records. More: redhouserecords.com.

Alejandro Vega, ensemble

Alejandro Vega has performed with Theater Latté Da in Oliver!, Gypsy, andthe NEXT Festival 2017. He appeared in The Shining with the Minnesota Opera,Damn Kids These Days in the MinnesotaFringe Festival, The Passage with 7thHouse Theater/Guthrie Theater, and inHennepin Theatre Trust’s SpotlightShowcase. He has also performed withthe Children’s Theatre Company in TheAbmoninables, Peter Pan The Musical andThe Wizard of Oz. He is in 7th grade atMinnetonka Middle School East in theChinese immersion program. He willnext be seen in the world premiere ofFive Points at Theater Latté Da.

Peter Rothstein, stage director

Peter Rothstein is the Founding ArtisticDirector of Theater Latté Da, where hehas staged 57 productions, includingnine world premieres. His other recent collaborations include productions withthe Guthrie Theater, Children’s TheatreCompany, Minnesota Opera, Ten Thousand Things, Seattle’s 5th AvenueTheatre and the Utah Shakespeare Festival. He is the creator of All Is Calm:The Christmas Truce of 1914. Rothsteinhas received nine Ivey Awards for overall excellence, and he was namedthe 2015 Minnesota Artist of the Yearby the Star Tribune. He has beenawarded grants and fellowships fromthe National Endowment for the Arts,Theatre Communications Group, Minnesota State Arts Board and theMcKnight Foundation. He holds a B.A.in Music and Theater from St. John’sUniversity and a Master of Fine Arts inDirecting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. More: peter-rothstein.com.

Robert Elhai, composer andarranger

Robert Elhai has written music forproductions at Fortune’s Fool Theatre,

Peter Ostroushko, composer andmandolin

Mandolinist, composer, arranger andteacher Peter Ostroushko grew up listening to tunes played at family get-togethers in the Ukrainian communityof northeast Minneapolis; this music provides the basis for many of his compositions. Since picking up his father’sold bowl-back mandolin around agethree, he has been committed to a lifelongodyssey with the instrument. His firstrecording session was an uncreditedmandolin set on Bob Dylan’s Blood on theTracks. Since then, his works have beenperformed by the Minnesota Orchestra,the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra andthe Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, amongother ensembles, and his music has beenfeatured on public television specialssuch as Ken Burns’ film The NationalParks and Minnesota: A History of theLand, for which Ostroushko won anEmmy. His recordings include The Mando

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