OUR STORY! In the spring of 2002 a group of international master-level musicians committed to making music in South Dakota began performing programs that combined interesting stories with original, never before heard arrangements of the world’s greatest ensemble music.
“It is amazing how much of our best music lends itself to storytelling. In fact, it is storytelling. This year I was reading a new translation of Andersen’s fairy tales. I remembered my grandmother telling me some of these stories when I was a child in Poland, but I hadn’t yet read them as an adult. I was amazed at how great they were for grown up people, too. I started to imagine an evening full of the same weird beauty and strangeness that I was picking up from the tales...The Show
story and sound
Words & Music
mood matching
The Concept
from idea to form
From the very beginning of the show, you know that you're in for something completely different. The music begins and sets the mood, then the reading takes its turn and the listener is not impatient for one or the other - it is an equal sharing of the dramatic delights of words and sound.
This is the most important part of the process. The writer of the script and the music programmer get together and decide what music is to back up a dramatic segment of the show. Sometimes it's not what you expect it to be! The music puts the emotional "spin" to the actors interpretation.
My name is Magdalena...
Welcome!
The concept of the show is an old one: a melodrama or “melody drama,” in which music and words take equal part in the presentation. The lights come up on the actor who begins the story and then the lights go up on the music which follows the situation and adds to its drama!
“This is one of my all-time favorite stories,” says Darrel Fickbohm, the actor from the group. “We’re very eager to bring it to Parkston, Freeman, and Sioux Falls. The story is so hopeful, and the explosion of holiday spirit at the end is not fake in any way—the tale earns every laugh and tear. In A Christmas Carol, we see what we all want to believe can happen: that someone can change—really change for the better. This idea seems so impossible, these days. We’re so cynical. We seem convinced that once we’re older and ‘set in our ways,’ that we’re done listening to good advice.”
— Darrel Fickbohm, actor
Come walk with the ghost in 2023!
"A Christmas Carol"
The National Music Museum, Vermillion SD, Dec. 1 at Noon
Old Courthouse Museum, Sioux Falls, Dec. 8th at Noon Dakota Theater, Yankton SD, Dec. 16th at 2 p
Harmony Hill, Watertown (private party), Dec. 19th at 2 pm
Legends Lake Lorraine, Sioux Falls (private), Dec. 20 at 7 pm
Prince of Peace, Sioux Falls, (private), Dec 22 at 1:30 pm