Three Bridges International Chamber Music Festival is celebrating its fourth year with five Duluth  concerts. The first two, one at Weber, the second at Sacred Heart, dispelled any qualms that chamber music might be a bore.
     This music, international indeed, tears at your heart, extolls joy, entices and charms your ear. The combinations of instruments are myriad. The intimacy of the small group, just enough to fit in a room, makes it seem the music is meant only for you.   
     Last Sunday’s Euro-American Romance concert began with a “Quartet for Piano and Strings in A minor, op.67” by Joaquin Turina. Such a cold title for such a splendidly ‘wow!’ piece of Seville.
     Glorious heldentenor, Gustavo Jimenez, with a fuller than full baritone that scales up to treble, filled Weber Hall with Spanish love songs. His ultra-dramatic interpretation of the Finn, Jean Sibelius, was sung in resonant Swedish.
     The oboe, played by Anne Leek in red satin, was playful and sparky for a Mozart quartet. This is no shy woman.
     The music flew around the globe. A Sonata for Oboe and Piano written by Frenchman, Francois Poulenc, whose records I played as a teen over and over into the wee hours, was written when I went off to college. This mellowed composition was his last, ending in an elegy, piano tolling.
     The American in this diverse melange was Unitarian Arthur Foote, one of the Boston Six. My second listen to Foote was at Tuesday’s free concert at Sacred Heart Music Center, when his intermezzo was repeated: catchy, for sure. Bill Bastian did the play by play for these two concerts. What fascinating history and detail he brings. The Sacred Heart concert was a tease, giving us snatches from the upcoming three performances.
     “War and Peace” is held this Saturday, June 9, 7:30pm, at Weber Hall on the University of Minnesota-Duluth campus. Song plays a big roll. There will be Schumann duets with Jimenez and mezzo-soprano, Lara Nie; Blake songs composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams and sung by Bill Bastian; a string quartet by my fave, Claude Debussy: 3 Bridges Artistic Director, Anton Miller and Ellen Jewett on violin, Rita Porfiris on viola, and Dave Mollenauer on cello. Also look for Handel arias, song and concerto by Vivaldi and music for string orchestra by Delius, with Executive Director, Samuel Martin conducting. Martin will also give a pre-concert talk at 6:30pm. An incredibly full night.
     Remaining concerts are “Dreams and Nightmares” on Wednesday, June 13. Think: a quartet written by Dmitri Shostakovich under the ‘watchful’ eye of Stalin; another written by my favorite French iconoclast, Gabriel Faure’; a sparkly trio by Vincent d’Indy. Fifteen students are featured along with master players in these concerts. Bill Bastian is raconteur.
     The final performance, “B’dazzling”, sponsored by New Scenic Cafe’, will be on Wednesday, June 15 at Weber. You’ll hear Amy Beach, Brahms and Beethoven played by masters and ingenue musicians.
Join them after each performance at a reception provided by New Scenic Cafe’. Visit  www.threebridges.org for ticket information. Email: communication@threebridges.org or call 218-206-5623.

ACROSS ONE BRIDGE

     Superior Community Theater produces “Steel Magnolias”, with shows Thursday, June 7, to Saturday, June 9, 7pm, and Sunday, June 10, 2pm at United Presbyterian Church, 229 N. 28th St. E. (on Mall Drive) in Superior.
     It’s hard to believe though I recently saw this very show on another local stage, it seemed I was  attending “Steel Magnolias” for the first time. Director Ben Robinson does a splendid job with a fine crew of actors. Robinson has dreamed of directing this drama since high school. Having lived with the trauma of his own father’s diabetes, he thoroughly relates to the fragility of diabetic, Shelby, played piquantly by UWS student, Reba Buczynski, and to the qualms of her mother, M’Lynn: a touchingly fine performance by Maria Lockwood.  
     After the play, I watched the movie for the first time ever (Netflix), and I’d say Superior Community Theater is nip and tuck with Sally Fields, Daryl Hannah and Julia Roberts. Jennifer Martin-Romme is Hannah’s counterpart, playing beautician Annelle, a lost girl whose husband has abandoned her, and who’s scared of her own shadow. We watch Martin-Romme morph to a woman of the world and then into a committed Christian who gives her not-so-religious allies some breaks.
     Although the play is piquant, and folds into a tragedy, it is consummately funny. Annelle’s misgivings about marriage, about her choice of husband, even up to the wedding date, belong to many a woman. Beauty shop owner Truvy (Jesse Kruse) has a husband who can’t find a job. M’Lynn has a hard time coming to terms with her daughter’s dangerous pregnancy.
     The fun runs right along with everyday woes: the groom’s cake, blood red velvet in the shape of an armadillo; M’Lynn’s hubby, Drum, shooting at a flock of birds to get rid of them for the wedding reception; Annelle’s Christmas decorations; IDing gay men by their use of track lighting; Ousier (Star Strycharske) growing tomatoes even though she hates them, because old Southern women are supposed to “wear old ugly hats and grow things in the dust”.
     Shelby’s death tethers the play, making for eloquent dialogue. “Steel Magnolias” is one you can see over and over. Call 218-393-0148 for tickets. The price is right.

I MEET SALLY AGAIN

     I almost didn’t look at the Duluth Superior Film Festival Schedule. But did. And there was the film, “Solveig” about my friend, Solveig, also known as Sally Johnson. What a surprise! A documentary directed by Kiersten Dunbar Chace, it traced the full, poignant life of Solveig Arneng who married the love of her life, Rudy Johnson, past Head Librarian at UMD Library.
     Born in Kirkenes, Norway of Sami parents, who ‘passed’ for Norwegian (there was great discrimination in Norway against indigenous Sami people), the story tells of artist Solveig’s WWII experience: 14 year old German soldiers, some chained and shackled to freeze because they would no longer fight. She gives a glimpse of her Sami spiritual powers, talks about the hard work of being a painter, of the joy of color and love of winter and arctic light, and of the good life of being a mother who was also an artist. What a treat to find my friend in the movies and right there, live, in her beautiful Sami dress.