Award-winning poet and essayist Gary Holthaus and internationally acclaimed musician Lauren Pelon team up to offer a unique new program called The Story of Music, Stories from Home. Tuesday, Sept. 18, at 7:30 p.m. at Riverland Community College Austin Campus in the Frank W. Bridges Theatre. The event, sponsored by the Riverland Music Department with additional support from Riverland Theatre and the Global Education Committee, is funded by the Southeastern Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

Pelon plays a variety of ancient and modern instruments ranging from lute, lyre, and concertina, to recorders, gemshorn, electric wind controller and pedalboard.  Holthaus reads from his poems and essays. Both the music and the readings offer unique perceptions of the natural world, and celebrate our sense of place, community, and home.

Pelon has performed throughout the U.S. and in China, Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Australia, and New Zealand. She is noted for her versatile use of a diverse array of instruments, but has also won recognition for her lovely soprano voice, and for her compelling compositions and arrangements of music from many countries and cultures. Pelon has performed with symphony orchestras, The Philadelphia String Quartet, on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” and at the Russian Institute for the History of the Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia. She was the recipient of the 2001 “Artist of the Year” award from the Southeast Minnesota Arts Council, and 2010 Artist Initiative Award from the Minnesota State Arts Board. William Kearns, American Music Research Center, Boulder, Colorado, called Pelon’s concerts “captivating and awesome.”  An audience member recently remarked, “Her concerns for the sense of community and her understanding of ‘home’ just shine through the beauty of her music.”

Holthaus has three books of poems, three chapbooks, and three collections of essays, all of them rooted in the earth and the idea of community or home. Holthaus’ poems have been published in the U.S., Egypt, and Iraq (in Arabic). He received a 1990 National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship for Poetry, and his prose was cited in “Notable Essays” in 1994 and 1998. Holthaus recently worked with the Experiment in Rural Cooperation to write From the Farm to the Table, What All Americans Need to Know about Agriculture, a book on farming in the upper Midwest. He has worked for Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society, with the Island Institute on issues of sustainability in Sitka, Alaska, and with the Pepperfield Project in Decorah, Iowa.

Gary Snyder said of Holthaus’ book, Unexpected Manna, “In the drum and dance of the present he opens it both ways to the real: secular dryness and the shaman’s sacrament. But no promises. The clear cold of reality. And the early morning challenge of getting to work on it.”

Audience responses to recent presentations of “The Story of Music, Stories from Home” have been very appreciative:  “Exceptionally moving throughout – I was transported. The linkage of music and word came alive.”  “It was an inspired and inspiring program. Such tasteful, serious handling of ‘our life story.’”  “What a team!”

Hal Cropp, Executive Director, Commonweal Theatre Company, Lanesboro, Minnesota wrote The Story of Music, Stories from Home was “one of the most transcendent evenings of performance I have experienced...The artful interweaving of music and spoken word, executed at the highest level of professionalism, allowed for the emotional and almost metaphysical connection between artists and audience, and created one of the most magical evenings we have had the privilege to present.”

Scott Blankenbaker, Director of Music, Riverland Community College, said, “We are so pleased and privileged to have Lauren and Gary present this program in our community.  Ms. Pelon‘s program on world music was very well received when she was here at Riverland a few years ago. The Story of Music, Stories from Home promises to be a fresh and memorable  presentation.”

The program is free to Riverland Theatre season subscribers as well as to students (elementary through college). An admission donation of $5 is requested for the general public. It is sponsored by Riverland Community College. For advance tickets or further information, contact the box office at 507-433-0595 or the Music Department at 507-433-0547.