Zeitgeist Music Ensemble has closed up shop at its St. Paul studio and performance space in Lowertown, Studio Z, and is making the Anderson Center in Red Wing its new artistic home.
The quartet has already set up its new rehearsal space located on the Anderson Center campus. In the past few years, they’ve held an annual event there, and now are planning a whole season with 3-4 concerts at the center. Before that, the group is performing a series of backyard concerts this week, and two more in the metro area later this summer.
Zeitgeist was founded in 1977 by students at Macalester College and has had a number of transformations throughout the years in personnel. It’s now made up of percussionists Heather Barringer and Dr. Patti Cudd, woodwind player Patrick O’Keefe, and pianist Nicola Melville.
In 2008, the group opened Studio Z inside of the Northwestern Building. For years, Studio Z was a home for not only Zeitgeist’s own concerts, but performances by other artists and groups. For example, Zacc Harris’ monthly Jazz at Studio Z ran there for years.
“Studio Z for years enjoyed being a hub for many different types of newly created music,” said Barringer, who is not only a musician with the group but also an administrator. “It was a place where audiences could co-mingle and learn about each other and experiment.”
In recent years Studio Z has faced challenges. Artists have rented the space less frequently, Zeitgeist’s own rent has increased, and a series of break-ins and thefts beginning in 2022 have made Barringer and her team feel that staying at that location was untenable. The move to the Anderson Center made sense for a number of reasons, in part because they’ve grown to love the interdisciplinary art center’s facilities.
“It’s very beautiful, and they are growing, they’re full of ideas,” Barringer said. Led by executive director Stephanie Rogers, Barringer notes that the organization has been very supportive of Zeitgeist’s move.
“We’re excited about networking with the other artists that we know are living in Red Wing and also about bringing all of our friends who have collaborated with us in the past down to Red Wing as well,” she said.
In some ways, the move down to Red Wing made natural sense for Barringer herself because she lives in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, just 20 minutes from Red Wing.
Besides her roles with Zeitgeist, she’s also a farmer. In 2018, she and her brother purchased their family farm in Ellsworth, and once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she began investing more time into the actual nuts and bolts of running the farm.
“When I moved out here, I didn’t think I would be the person on the tractor, and as it turns out, I am the person on the tractor,” she said, adding that her 80-year old father and 30-year old son are a bit more tractor proficient than herself. Currently, Barringer has a small CSA and does CBD hemp products. “It’s embracing that part of myself.”
Barringer did spend a few years living in Saint Paul on Selby Avenue, but for most of her career, she’s commuted from either River Falls or Ellsworth where her grandparents had their farm. “For decades, the administrative home for Zeitgeist has been my computer,” she said, which was wherever she happened to be.
Barringer’s farm gets a bit of a cameo at Zeitgeist’s outdoor concerts this week, when the group performs two newly commissioned pieces by Todd Harper, who Barringer describes as a composer long interested in natural spaces.
Barringer tells me that Harper has been developing his skills as a watercolorist since the beginning of the pandemic, and has begun creating a form of work he calls visual intuitive scores. These works can stand alone as a piece of visual art, and also acts as musical scores. “They have a lot of musical information contained within that accomplished improvisers can figure out how to music from them,” Barringer said. For the series, both Zeitgeist and Barringer Family Farms have commissioned music from Harper that draws from Harper’s visit to the farm, and offers a celebration of the outdoors.
You can hear “Musical Landscapes by Todd Harper” Friday, July 12 at 7 p.m., Saturday, July 13 at 2 p.m., and Sunday, July 14 at 4 p.m. (free). See here for more information and to make a reservation).
Sheila Regan
Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at [email protected].