We are thrilled to share some exciting updates! We held our first auditions in July and have the roster set for our 2015-2016 season. There are 30 singers performing with MPLS (imPulse) throughout this upcoming season and we continue to be incredibly grateful to MRAC and our donors for granting us the ability to pay our singers. This week, Artistic Director Sam Grace is mailing music to our singers so they can begin preparing for the fall festival, Falling Awake. These packages of musical joy are especially exciting because the singers will be the first to sing All the Hemispheres, a newly commissioned work by award winning composer and conductor, Connor Koppin! In other news, we are ecstatic to announce that we have added a second date to imPulse Happy Hour in February! MPLS (imPulse) will be performing at Chankaska Creek Ranch & Winery on February 6, 2016, in addition to the February 5 performance at Flat Earth Brewing Company. Last season's performance at Flat Earth sold out in advance, so we are very happy to have the opportunity to extend this concert to an even bigger audience.
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We are thrilled to announce that we have been awarded an Arts Activities Support grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC). Several exciting elements of our 2015-2016 will be made possible by the voters of Minnesota through this MRAC grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Among many other projects, we will be able to pay our singers and commission a piece for our fall festival. Thank you MRAC and to the taxpayers of Minnesota for supporting us in our mission!
We received some incredible news from the IRS today...we are now an official tax-exempt organization under Section 501 (c)(3). We want to thank our supporters and Springboard For the Arts for helping us get off the ground!
"Space concerns and oddball janitors aside, MPLS (imPulse)'s precise singing broke through and was the star of the show." Thanks much to Kyle Weaver and the Northern Voice Festival for this fantastic review! MPLS (imPulse) waves farewell to winter With overly pleasant spring weather outside last Friday, the title of MPLS (imPulse)’s recent show, “Good Golly, It’s Still Winter!” turned out to be a bit ironic. The show featured a collection of first-winter-then-spring themed pieces that really showed off the young ensemble’s singing chops. True to the 24-voice group’s stated objective of singing in non-traditional spaces, the group performed in the atrium of the Padilla CRT building in Minneapolis. The space obviously presented the group with a little bit of risk and not just acoustically either, as evidenced by the maintenance man who loudly dragged a trash cart onto the balcony above the ensemble then sheepishly waved when he noticed the audience staring at him. Space concerns and oddball janitors aside, MPLS (imPulse)’s precise singing broke through and was the star of the show. The show started off with “Winter Songs” by Lita Grier, which was well sung, but a bit too avante garde for my tastes. The second piece, “Winter Song,” featuring a very lovely duet from Megan Myhre and Emily Streeper and accompanied by Arlo Vande Vegte on guitar, was much more to my liking. These days what would a winter-themed concert be these days without at least a passing reference to Disney’s Frozen? “Heimr Arnadalr” and “Eatnemen Vuelie” were the two pieces selected to meet that end. Other works performed included “Ice” by Bruce Sled, “Cold, Haily, Windy Night,” arranged by Jack Vishneski, “Snowforms” by R. Murray Schafer, and “We Bloomed in Spring,” by Edie Hill. Throughout the show, the ensemble and director Samuel Grace kept the atmosphere light and fun by sharing the amusing winter-themed haikus the group members had written and demonstrating the silly theater games they play to build esprit de corp among their members. Finally, leave it to the modern-day hero of a capella singing, Deke Sharon, to provide arrangements for the two best pieces of the evening. The first Sharon piece featured the ensemble’s men performing a very hip, modern-sounding chart of the jazz standard “Summertime.” The song included a great solo from Ben Dulak, perhaps one of the most relaxed looking tenors I can ever remember seeing. The group finished off its hour-long set with its best song of the night, a Sharon arrangement of Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky.” All in all, MPLS (imPulse) put together a wonderful, relaxed and entertaining show. View the original review here. |