Cynthia Hopkins in This Clement World. Photo: Ian Douglas

Cynthia Hopkins has invited a slew of talented Twin Cities musicians to perform beside her in next week’s Midwest debut of This Clement World. This part-music, part-theater performance investigates expansive issues of climate change and more personal struggles with addiction. Pulled from various music scenes of the Twin Cities, Cynthia brings these twelve musicians to support her in the performances here at the Walker. We wanted to know more about this eclectic group of performers, so we asked them to tell us their most rewarding or memorable musical experiences and answer a more casual question related to their everyday lives. Check out their answers below (and learn such things as what they listen to, where they can be found on a Saturday night, and what they ate for breakfast)!

Crystal Myslajek, Piano

My most memorable performance is actually a toss-up between two performances with my band, Brute Heart. It would be either performing Brute Heart’s original score to the silent film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, in August 2012 in the Walker’s Open Field for the Music & Movies series, or playing in First Avenue’s Mainroom for Minneapolis-based, Polica’s record-release show. For me, both experiences reflect the vibrant fabric of music and art in Minneapolis. The Walker’s movies in the park have been a longstanding summer staple for many a Minneapolitan and I had always wanted to play First Avenue having grown up in the Twin Cities going to many shows there since I was a teenager.

What have you been listening to lately?
I’ve been listening to a lot of ambient music. Some of the artists on my playlist are Grouper, Stars of the Lid, and Tim Hecker. I’ve also been thoroughly enjoying the newest release of local music duo Father You See Queen and the lovely guitar and vocals of Chicago-based singer-songwriter Julie Byrne.

Crystal Myslajeck (left) of Brute Heart. Photo: Sophia Hantzes

Larry Zimmerman, Trombone

I’ll never forget the first time I performed with my quintet, Chestnut Brass Company, at the Jeju Seaside Arts Center in South Korea–an amphitheater full of (mostly) Koreans clapping in unison to our arrangements of George Gershwin & Irving Berlin songs. What a rush, and now we’re looking forward to our sixth trip to Jeju this August!

What is your favorite thing about the Twin Cities?
There’s something really special about a bright sunny day in February, with fresh snow on the ground and in the trees. A lot of places you won’t ever see that, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Larry Zimmerman (second from left) of Chestnut Brass Company. Photo: abelcentral.blogspot.com

Erica Burton, Viola

One of my most memorable experiences as a musician came when I played in-studio at the Hideaway for Lazerbeak of Doomtree. It was the very first time I had played music outside of the classical genre, and it was thrilling.

What have you been listening to lately?
Lately I’ve been listening to Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You,” The Pharcyde’s “Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde,” and John Mark Nelson’s “Waiting and Waiting.”

Erica Burton.  Photo: facebook.com/Laurels.String.Quartet

Zack Lozier, Trumpet

Last summer, as a member of Doc Severinsen’s latest orchestra, I arrived at a rehearsal to find a chart labelled, “Duet/Split-Lead.” I later performed “Well Get It,” a Dorsey classic, trading note for note, right next to Doc at the front of the stage! I sure hope it’s in the show when we go back out in April.

What did you eat for breakfast?
This morning I had corn grits with cotija cheese, a hard fried egg, dark roast coffee, and an orange juice.

Zack Lozier. Photo : Andrea Canter

Jonathan Sunde, Tenor Vocals

My band, The Daredevil Christopher Wright, got an opportunity to perform for 50 or so people on a rooftop balcony in Paris overlooking La Basilique du Sacre Coeur. The opening act was a two-person, one-act performance of a Bertolt Brecht play. It was absolutely as bizarre and romantic as it sounds.

What have you been listening to lately?
I’ve been really excited about Nina Simone. I picked up her Pastel Blues record and am really enjoying. She’s amazing.

Jonathan Sunde (middle) of The Daredevil Christopher Wright. Photo: thedaredevilchristopherwright.com

Karen Townsend, Alto Vocals

Last summer I played accordion for Open Eye Figure Theatre’ s Driveway Tour. It was incredibly rewarding to be part of these hilarious puppet shows that bring communities together for highly entertaining, free, outdoor, family friendly (yes, adults LOVE it too) entertainment in various backyards and neighborhoods. After performing 40 shows last summer in the Twin Cities and Tulsa, I still laughed at every joke and thrived off of the responses of the children and adults in the audience.

Which animal do you identify most with?
The snake. I was born in the year of the snake. I am about to give birth to my first child who will also be born in the year of the snake. I love encouraging people to shed what is no longer serving them. I like to visualize snakes and their movements when thinking about how to introduce concepts and ideas that people may not be open to if I just come right out and say it. I’m always looking to slither my way in, past the armor, to the most kind and compassionate part of the human heart.

Karen Townsend. Photo: karentownsend.bandcamp.com

Leslie Ball, Alto Vocals

My most memorable experience as a performer — over so many decades! — would have to be a three-way tie:
1) in the ’70s:  the adventure of weeks spent entertaining our troops on a U.S.O. tour in Panama, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and  several other Caribbean islands
2) in the ’80s: the privilege of singing  for Stephen Sondheim and others in a private presentation of a new work
3) in the ’90s: the honor of being a backup singer for Gene Pitney at his Carnegie Hall concert

Where can you be found on a Saturday night?
At the stunning Southern Theater hosting BALLS Cabaret, the longest-running weekly midnight cabaret in human history (now in our 22nd year). BALLS is a greenhouse for artists of any discipline or experience, nurturing creative community in a sober environment every Saturday night at midnight. BALLS was cited in the New York Times as a “must-see” while in the Twin Cities.

Leslie Ball. Photo: circleofgracemn.org

Parker Genne (Soprano Vocals)

My most memorable performing experience was busking on the streets in Edinburgh for fringe before my evening shows. There was this magnificent afternoon where I was singing away with my ukulele and this older Scottish gentleman who I noticed singing along to every tune I sang, accepted my offer to join me, and we busked together and made a killing for two hours. We had crowds as we belted our tunes, the best being “Down by the Riverside.”

What is your favorite thing about the Twin Cities?
The people, my family and friends that I love so much, and the lakes we swim in, sail on, and run across in the winter.

Also performing with Cynthia Hopkins are local musicians: Jesse Edgington (bass vocals), Jake Endres (bass vocals), Jason Sunde (tenor vocals), and Lauren Asheim (soprano vocals).

Cynthia Hopkins performs the Walker Commision of This Clement World March 7-9, 2013.

Tortoise

The best way to understand Tortoise is to remember that they are a group formed entirely of bassists and drummers/percussionists. With background and side projects in grunge and hardcore bands, Tortoise emerged from the need to be creatively versatile, with the musicians pursuing ambience, math-rock, and dub in a heady and steady brew that adds up to the retroactive label of “post-rock.”

Also it helps to place Tortoise among their contemporaries: Fugazi came a little bit earlier and aren’t usually associated with Tortoise, but Fugazi’s Red Medicine seems to be tapped into the same zeitgeist as both Tortoise and Slint (a member of whom left to join Tortoise in time to work on the album Millions Now Living Will Never Die). Slint seem like the paranoiac cousin to the kinder dub-math ambience of Tortoise’s earliest albums. Or to say it another way, Slint would never have named a track on their album “Ry Cooder.” Slint would also never have segued into positively Reich-ian repetitions like on the famous Tortoise track “Djed.” And it’s hard to imagine a band like Mogwai without Tortoise’s prior steps.

Tortoise’s newest album Beacons of Ancestorship remains just as intellectually gregarious as Tortoise’s earlier work (the track “Yianxianghechengqi” is a mix of what one music reviewer called “Schoenberg and hardcore”) but the music seems more immediate. They’ve stayed current with explicit explorations of dubstep ideas (on “Northern Something”), and the opening track “High Class Slim Came Floating In” even feels at times like a jaunty take on contemporary R&B instrumentals before becoming an extended jam sesh of rumbling minimalism.

For their Walker show Friday night, Tortoise will be joined onstage by the Minneapolis Jazz All-Stars: Douglas Ewart (formerly of AACM), JT Bates (of Fat Kid Wednesdays, the Pines, and Alpha Consumer), Mike Lewis (of Happy Apple, Gayngs, Alpha Consumer, Andrew Bird), Greg Lewis (trumpet guru of Redstart and elsewhere and father of Mike Lewis), and Michele Kinney (of Coloring Time, Jelloslave).

Rob Simonds, the Cedar Cultural Center’s Executive Director, opened the second of Tony Allen’s two sets last night with this demand of the normally placid Minnesota audience. By the end of the night, most everybody in the house was doing some form of dancing, yet Allen and his 9-piece band more than made up for any lack of movement in the crowd.

Perhaps most famously labeled as “Fela Kuti’s drummer,” last night I really got a sense of just how much more Allen is. The style of Afrobeat he helped create with Fela was fully on display: the interlocking guitars, horn lines, and quickly-clipped clave pairs formed the bedrock of the night’s music. These songs were also infused much more with soul, jazz, and funk elements, including a wider-ranging harmonic palette and more intricate horn lines.

I was lucky enough to be close to really watch Allen’s drumming. It wasn’t like his hands were a blur, full of virtuosic pyrotechnics, ala Neal Peart. In fact, it’s the complete opposite: it almost seems like he’s not working while he’s playing. Polyrhythms and syncopations abounded, fills blended effortlessly into his time-keeping patterns (if one would even call them that), and isolating one element of his set (a hi-hat, kick, or snare) made it even more incomprehensible as to how those two hands and feet could lay down such a tight, infectious groove yet seem so disparate.

And then, of course, Allen sings on top of all this. His lyrics were few and far between, and most took on the character of proverbs, such as the song “Kindness” with its chorus of “Don’t take my kindness for weakness.” His raspy, growling baritone certainly reminded me of Fela, one example of how Fela’s presence is never that far away from his music. (He politely, yet directly declined when an audience member asked him to play Fela’s “Water Get No Enemy,” but later, his scruffy, trickerstery guitarist briefly quoted his “Sorrow, Tears, and Blood.”) Amp Fiddler, who played keyboard and keytar, took a turn singing lead on one song. This was the most explicitly political song, though it still came across as a lukewarm anti-war song, quoting  both “War” and “A Love Supreme.” In the end, it was his incredible voice that was more powerful than any words he sang.

The group’s performance at the Cedar last night was last stop of their US tour, their tightness and musical camaraderie display on every song. It was Allen, though, who everybody paid to see. People of all different walks of life took this rare opportunity to see Allen: hippies, yuppies, world music fans, Afrobeat connoisseurs, hipsters, and more than a few diasporic Africans who now call Minnesota home filled the Cedar to capacity. Halfway through the first set, a father put his son on his shoulders so he could a better view, while a few feet away, a grandma danced liked no one was watching, a testament not only to Allen’s acclaim, but also the Cedar’s incredible development of a diverse audience base.

During the second song of the band’s encore, a reprise of “Kindness,” I saw Simonds boppin’ through the crowd with a starry-eyed grin on his face. I’m sure many people in the audience felt the same way, and it was an incredible end to another year of great music from the Walker.