banner weekend

The great thing about December is that it usually brings old friends back to the Twin Cities to visit. Because of this, I had a particularly awesome past few days that made this freezing, Minnesota composer feel like a highfalutin creator living in the center of the artistic universe.

The first visit was to Fuji-Ya:my new favorite place to get sushi. We started off with edamame (soy bean sprouts that have been roasted, salted and doused in soy sauce for the uninitiated...and that included me up until I took this picture). To my Midwestern meat-and-potatoes mind this didn't sound good at all, but I'm happy to report I was more than pleasantly surprised. This must be ridiculously easy to make.













I went with the Dynamite and Spicy Salmon rolls (and poorly-lit pictures). They were sooo good.













The next day it was off to the Walker Art Center to view, among other things, the Frida Kahlo exhibit. Here's a shot of the new 2005 addition (done by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron) from the intersection of Lyndale and Hennepin. This was a huge deal when it first opened.













Here's a quasi-reverse-shot looking out from the Center onto Lyndale/Hennepin.













There were a few of these interesting chandeliers illuminating the Hennepin Lobby.

















...down the hall.













How about looking the other way? The guy in the picture looks like he just came from an all-encompassing lobster dinner and is arguing over ticket prices.













There was a creepy Wile-E.-Coyote-esque suit in one of the lobbies (the only place they let you take pictures). If you got close enough to it you started to feel like there was actually a guy inside just waiting to move and scare the bejeezus out of you.













If you are a committed-enough-contemporary-art-fan and make it far enough, there is a restaurant at the top of the Walker run by Wolfgang Puck. However, it's only open 11am–2pm and we totally didn't make it. Luckily, there is a purposefully-interesting window at a seam in the building that shows a few things...

The Basilica of St. Mary (this will come back later).













Here's an unimpressive shot of downtown Minneapolis. The park in the foreground is the proposed setting for my opera We, The Boys (but not during winter).













I like the juxtaposition of this picture: the Basilica fights for the northeastern horizon line. Saints and sinners. It's a sculpture on a grand scale.













Next stop: Bar Lurcat for some Kobe beef carpaccio seared with grapeseed oil in ponzu. This was unbelievably amazing. The last time I had Kobe Beef was (undocumented) in San Francisco, but this was a totally different story.













Bar Lurcat is an incredibly trendy place so, in order to fit in, I went with this awesome "Royal" martini which included a bunch of ingredients I don't remember. Luckily it made a decent picture and tasted really good.













There was a second amazing chandelier at the Lurcat.













After that it was off to the aforementioned Basilica of St. Mary for yet another amazing concert by the Rose Ensemble. I've sung there a number of times and it's always nice to remember what it's like to sit in the audience...and the fact that it was a Rose concert is even better. They are one of the best (if not the best) early music ensembles in the US.













(p.s. I know this isn't a great picture but, having previously shown the Basilica from far away in this entry, I thought it might be nice to see what the place looked like on the inside.)