The Great Northern knows how to throw a party. And this year’s massive winter festival features plenty of spectacle. A sauna village! A winter carnival! A 100-foot-long ice bar!
5 quiet must-do Great Northern festival events
The 2024 winter festival offers moments of reflection through art, music and movement.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
January 22, 2024 at 2:00PM
But if past years are any indication, the winter festival also knows how to host a contemplative moment. Think dozens of mitten-clad dancers moving oh-so-slowly on a frozen lake.
“It’s easy with all the events we have for smaller, more reflective moments to sometimes get lost in the bigger moments,” said Kate Nordstrum, the fest’s chief programming officer. Even within those big, buzzy events, though, are quieter moments, she continued. This year, for example, that hopping sauna village will also host silent sauna sessions.
Here, with Nordstrum as our guide, we offer five quieter but essential events during the Great Northern, which runs Jan. 25 to Feb. 4.
Music in the dark
After spending silent time in the contemporary galleries, audience members will enter another room, which will darken. Then, in that darkness, violinist Ariana Kim will begin to play. Kim created the multi-movement piece, commissioned by the Great Northern, with composer Steve Heitzeg, whose works often feature instruments found in nature, such as stones, shells and branches.
“It’s an opportunity for us to reflect on the season and what darkness gives us,” Nordstrum said. “The festival is always asking the question, ‘What does winter give us?’ This is one response.”
When: 10:15-11:45 a.m. and 2:15-3:45 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday
Where: Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 3rd Av. S.
Cost: $40
A voice from Flint
Tunde Olaniran makes all kinds of art — music and dance, literature and film. See the dance party side of the prolific Flint, Mich.-based artist during a concert of genre-bending pop, soul and electronic music on Saturday at the Amsterdam in St. Paul. Then, catch their debut short film “Made a Universe,” followed by a conversation with Craig Rice of the MSP Film Society. The film blends science fiction and social realism to comment on issues including environmental injustice.
“It’s an opportunity to see a bit of the breadth of their work,” Nordstrum said. “Tunde is a fellow northerner and environmentalist in their own right. And they bring the party, too.”
When: 4 p.m. Sunday
Where: North Garden Theater, 929 W. 7th St., St. Paul
Cost: $10
Talking, connecting
The festival’s two days of conversations, called the Climate Solutions Series, span a huge set of topics. It all begins with birding: “What can we learn about climate change and bird species from their migratory patterns?” Next up, a look at visual arts curators focused on climate change. Then, a deep dive into the Fashion Act and how it could make the fashion industry more accountable.
Nordstrum hopes that a bird watcher sticks around for the visual arts session, that an artist might catch some of the fashion talk. By having different industries up against one another “back to back and day to day ... ” she said, “I hope we spur innovations, spur ideas.”
What: Climate Solutions Series
When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday
Where: American Swedish Institute, 2600 Park Av. S., Mpls.
Cost: Free
From birth to death
Hear Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson perform what he considers to be “history’s greatest keyboard work” — J.S. Bach’s iconic Goldberg Variations. In his Great Northern debut, co-presented with the Schubert Club, Ólafsson will play the piece onstage at the Ordway. But if that isn’t intimate enough for you, the 39-year-old will also be in conversation with local drummer Dave King at Berlin, a small, soon-to-open venue and cocktail lounge at 204 N. 1st St., Mpls.
Ólafsson “interprets the work as a life cycle, with the Aria as ‘the ode to life ... or birth’ and the variations as encounters with discovery, tragedy, joy, reflection and eventual silence with a hint that something lives on even when the music ends,” Nordstrum said. “This makes me think about the gift of seasons, spring to winter, and how they mirror life so movingly — especially in the North.”
When: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 30 and 10:30 a.m. Jan. 31
Where: Ordway Concert Hall, St. Paul
Cost: $35 to $75
Dark, cold dance
A dance event on a frozen lake under the moonlight. What could be more Minnesotan? After research in Iceland and the Arctic, choreographer Morgan Thorson created “Untitled Night,” an ode to night skies and cold places, with a group of interdisciplinary artists. It’ll play out on Silver Lake, fingers crossed, within Silverwood Park in St. Anthony. The festival bills the work, another Great Northern commission, as “a necessary, ever-evolving, multisensory partnership with stars, trees, land, ice and creatures.”
“I have loved her work over the years,” Nordstrum said, “and this is a special moment for her as a choreographer.”
When: 5:30 and 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: Silver Lake in Silverwood Park, 2500 County Road E, St. Anthony
Cost: $15
Lefse-wrapped Swedish wontons, a soothing bowl of rice porridge and a gravy-laden commercial filled our week with comfort and warmth.
