Zeitgeist & Spitting Image Collective

May 4-6, 7:30 p.m.
Studio Z: 275 East Fourth Street, Suite 200, St. Paul
$15 / $10 students & seniors

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Teaming up with Twin Cities composer collective Spitting Image, Zeitgeist presents new commissions by Spitting Image Collective composers Katherine Bergman and Daniel Nass plus Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung’s captivating work Spiral XIV “Nimitta.”

Chinary Ung’s music weaves together his Cambodian heritage, Western classical training and a powerful sense of purpose born of life's challenges to create music that is profoundly moving and transformative. Ung's singular approach to color, gesture, timbre and form results in a highly authentic music that sounds unlike anything else being created today. Spiral XIV "Nimitta," commissioned by Zeitgeist in 2012, incorporates vocalization, chant and Cambodian percussion instruments in addition to Zeitgeist's unique instrumentation of two percussion, clarinet and piano.

The composers of Spitting Image Collective are emerging voices in the Twin Cities new music scene who represent the breadth of new music being created today. Their new works for Zeitgeist will encompass themes of nostalgia, legend, and landscape.
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  • Joshua Clausen’s Endless chain is inspired by a 1937 advertisement design by László Moholy-Nagy promoting the introduction of escalators on the London Underground. Explaining the operations of this new invention, the ad describes the looping ‘endless chain’ beneath the stairsteps, which drives them continually forward and upward. The music evokes contrapuntal textures of past eras, interspersed with ruminative material in a contemporary idiom.
  • While visiting Iceland in summer of 2016, Daniel Nass stumbled upon the legend behind Katla, a large, active volcano in the southern part of the country. As the legend goes, Katla was a bad-tempered housekeeper at an Iceland monastery, and she was rumored to be a witch with a pair of magic britches. Whoever wore the britches could run as fast as the wind and never tire. This story inspired his new work Katla the Hag and her Magic Britches.
  • Katherine Bergman’s earth sleeps below explores the boundless, mesmerizing winter landscape of Voyageurs National Park, a hidden gem in the National Parks system located on Minnesota’s northern border. ​
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​Spitting Image Collective was formed in Spring 2013 to build a strong community of composers, performers and listeners in the Twin Cities metro area. Since then, the collective has commissioned eleven new works from local Minnesota composers and presented them in three concert series throughout the Twin Cities featuring some of the area’s most talented new music performers. In addition, Spitting Image hosts community social events to encourage the formation of professional relationships among composers, and monthly “Composer Hangs,” an opportunity for composers to received artistic feedback from peers. Spitting Image Collective members are: Katherine Bergman, Joshua Clausen, and Daniel Nass.



Tickets can be securely purchased by credit card or through your PayPal account in advance, or by cash, check, or credit card at the door. Tickets purchased online will be held at the door.

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