Great Love Stories

Get out your handkerchiefs — in keeping with Valentine’s Day, I’ve selected three of the most beautiful, achingly romantic, tear-jerking love stories I’ve ever read. Two of them were adapted into films and I think the third would make a good movie, too. Brew yourself a cup of tea, get a box of Kleenex and treat yourself to these three tales.

Wendy Webb

Series Books For Teens and Tweens

I love books for tween and teen readers, with their incredible stories about fantastic monsters, different worlds, clues and quests.

Wendy Webb

Novels By Fantastic Local Authors

One of the best things about getting my book published last year has been meeting other Minnesota authors, people whose work I’ve long admired. Here are the latest books by three authors who I’m proud to call friends.

Wendy Webb

Bathtub Reading: History, In Their Own Words

Listening in on other people’s conversations, reading their private letters — it sounds vaguely criminal. But, be honest, who doesn’t love it? These three books allow you to indulge in that guilty pleasure and learn an insider’s view of history at the same time.

Wendy Webb

Bathtub Reading: Louise Penny Mysteries

Run, don’t walk, to the bookstore to buy these three fantastic, delightful, engrossing mysteries by Canadian author Louise Penny.

Wendy Webb

How To Ruin A Screenplay

I don’t have children. But I am a writer, which is kind of the same thing. Now, before parents everywhere start asking me if I ever have to change my screenplay’s diaper or stay up all night trying to calm a colicky short story, I said KIND OF the same thing, not exactly the same thing.

Andy Bennett

Great Love Stories

Get out your handkerchiefs — in keeping with Valentine’s Day, I’ve selected three of the most beautiful, achingly romantic, tear-jerking love stories I’ve ever read. Two of them were adapted into films and I think the third would make a good movie, too. Brew yourself a cup of tea, get a box of Kleenex and treat yourself to these three tales.

Wendy Webb

Magical Holiday Happenings

We all know the holidays can be stressful. Maybe you’re still fighting with your mom about something that happened during Easter, and you just know it’s going to come up while you’re trying your best to enjoy some ham. Maybe you have to put those Christmas gifts on the credit card. Again. Whatever the reason, there are times the holiday season can be a little too much for the ol’ brain.

Tony Bennett

Local Artist Cecilia Ramon

“My real work is about the explorations of the mind, but it has visual consequences,” says Cecilia Ramon, a woman with a wide smile and an easy laugh. So easy in fact, that it is difficult to imagine this artist as a young girl growing up in Argentina during the years of dictatorship and violence and holding within her a pervasive sense of fear.

Samantha Gibb Roff

Fall Arts Preview

We thought we’d check in with the folks that put on the shows to see what they’re most excited about, in order to help you mark your calendar in advance.

Tony Bennett

Speak Brashly and Carry a Little Stick

A fter much discussion amongst the principals, it has become obvious to us here at the Maestro’s Musings offices that we would fail this issue on healthy living should we not offer a column about the health benefits of a career as a symphony conductor.

Markand Thakar

Maestro's Musings: Pocahontas

In early fall, the Duluth Festival Opera performed the historical opera Pocahontas: A Woman of Two Worlds by Minneapolis composer Linda Haugen in locations across Minnesota.

Maestro's Musings: The Comeback Kid

The Maestro compares his print comeback to Milli Vanilli's and Michael Jordan's.

Markand Thakar

Smile Because it Happened

Like all good things, both my tenure with the DSSO and my treasured place in Duluth~Superior Magazine are coming to an end; the former winding down over the next few seasons, the latter with this final offering.

Markand Thakar

Training Conductors

Imagine an occupation that pays well, and is exceedingly easy to do but exceedingly difficult to do well. Imagine that other people are almost entirely responsible for the results, and there is no objective measure of the quality of your work.

Markand Thakar