The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music and Walker Art Center Present Anna Meredith VARMINTS

On Wednesday, February 7, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. at Aria in Minneapolis, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music Series and Walker Art Center present Anna Meredith performing Varmints.

Celebrated United Kingdom electronic artist and visionary maximalist composer Anna Meredith makes her Twin Cities debut with an evening of her "striking and smart" (The Guardian) electro-acoustic music performed by her band featuring clarinet, cello, electric guitar, tuba, drums and electronics, a live show NPR called "incredible." Meredith's debut album Varmints (2016) mixes contemporary classical, art pop, electronica and experimental rock into compositional experiments like few before her. Prepare to be delightfully overwhelmed.

Meredith's 2018 winter tour dates across the US includes stops in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Minneapolis. This tour marks Meredith's second-ever US run, her first wildly-successful visit having been earlier this year with dates including performances at SXSW and Big Ears Festival. The new dates will be in continued support of her debut albumVarmints, which was named "Best New Music" by Pitchfork.

"After hearing much about Liquid Music's imaginative programming I'm really excited to be hopping over the pond in February to be part of their 2017.18 season," said Meredith. "And thrilled to be bringing our Varmints band show to this forward thinking programming."

"Philip Bither, Walker Art Center Senior Curator of Performing Arts, and I have been very excited about Anna's work for some time and count it as a privilege to be the first to present it in the Twin Cities," echoed Liquid Music Curator Kate Nordstrom. "The space at Aria will treat Anna's expansive music well. I think the audience will fall in love."

"The freshness of Anna Meredith's sound; her audacious and joy-filled mashing up of classical, electronic and pop elements; and the propulsively dense energy and currency of her compositions all make her a perfect fit for the Walker," added Bither. "She is exactly the kind of next-generation music innovator that the Walker has been proud introduce to the Minnesota and the region for more than six decades."

FEATURED ARTISTS:

Anna Meredith

Maddie Cutter

Tom Kelly

Jack Ross

Sam Wilson

DATE AND LOCATION:

Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2018

Doors at 6:30pm | Music at 7:30pm

Aria, 105 North First Street, Minneapolis, MN 55401

TICKETS: $25 ($20 for SPCO/Liquid Music subscribers and Walker Art Center members)

liquidmusicseries.org | 651.291.1144

ABOUT LIQUID MUSIC:
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music Series, named "Best of Classical" by The New York Times, develops innovative new projects with iconoclastic artists in unique presentation formats. Liquid Music performances invite adventurous audiences to discover the new and the fascinating within the flourishing landscape of contemporary chamber music.

ABOUT THE SAINT PAUL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA:
Renowned for its artistic excellence, remarkable versatility of musical styles and adventurous programming, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is widely regarded as one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world. Entering its 59th season in September, the SPCO has recently undergone transformational change with the opening of its new home, the Ordway Concert Hall, the addition of a new generation of players, and significant changes in its artistic vision. The SPCO is primarily an unconducted ensemble that performs a broad range of repertoire from Baroque to new music and works in close collaboration with a diverse series of artistic partners, including British Baroque specialist Jonathan Cohen, American pianist Jeremy Denk, Swedish clarinetist Martin Fröst, Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto. Past Artistic Partners include Roberto Abbado, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Joshua Bell, Douglas Boyd, Nicholas McGegan, Stephen Prutsman, Dawn Upshaw and Christian Zacharias.

The virtuoso musicians of the SPCO present more than 130 concerts and educational programs in the Twin Cities each year. The orchestra also reaches more than 250,000 listeners annually through its free online Concert Library, and has recently begun offering both live and on-demand videos of concerts that can be viewed anytime, anywhere, on any device, completely free of charge. The SPCO is regularly heard on public radio programs that reach more than 2 million listeners each week on over 300 stations. Additionally, the SPCO has released 67 recordings, commissioned 148 new works, and tours nationally and internationally, including performances in premier venues in Europe, Asia and South America.

The SPCO is nationally recognized for its commitment to broad community accessibility, its innovative audience outreach efforts, and its educational and family programming. Regular subscription series are performed in a variety of different venues across the Twin Cities metropolitan area each season, a unique commitment to geographic accessibility for a major orchestra. The SPCO offers the most affordable tickets of any major orchestra in the United States, with over 50 percent of tickets available for $15 or less, and has expanded accessibility even further by offering free tickets for children and students starting in the 2016.17 season as a part of the New Generation Initiative. The orchestra also offers an innovative ticket membership model in which members pay $7 per month to attend unlimited concerts. The SPCO's award-winning CONNECT education program reaches over 5,000 students and teachers annually in 12 Minneapolis and Saint Paul public schools, and its Target® Free Family Music program provides engaging and educational experiences for thousands of Twin Cities children and families each year. The SPCO's Liquid Music Series (named "Best of Classical" by The New York Times) develops innovative new projects with iconoclastic artists in unique presentation formats and invites adventurous audiences to discover the new and the fascinating within the flourishing landscape of contemporary chamber music.

ABOUT WALKER ART CENTER:
One of the most internationally celebrated art museums and multidisciplinary art centers, the Walker Art Center is known for presenting today's most compelling artists from around the world. In addition to organizing traveling exhibitions and presentations of its world-renowned collections, the Walker presents a broad array of contemporary music, dance, design, theater, and moving image. In 2015, the Walker celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding as a public art center dedicated to presenting and collecting the art of our time with a series of institutional initiatives, exhibitions, and events that spanned more than a year. Although it was more than 125 years ago when lumber baron Thomas Barlow (T. B.) Walker built a room onto his Minneapolis house, mounted his 20 favorite paintings on the wall, and opened his door to the community, it was in 1940 that the Walker's contemporary-focused mission to be a catalyst for the creative expression of artists and active engagement of audiences was born. Supported by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Walker became a public art center presenting the work of living artists, forming a collection beyond the 19th-century holdings of its founder to the multidisciplinary works of today's artists. Led by Senior Curator Philip Bither since 1997, the Walker's Performing Arts program under his tenure has been defined by its commitment to the increasingly blurred lines between artistic disciplines, including contemporary dance, new music-theatre, performance art, experimental theatre, avant-jazz, contemporary classical music, new global sounds and alternative rock and pop. Visit walkerart.org to learn more.