East Otter Tail County History Museum to present jazz, drama programs

The Friends of the History Museum of East Otter Tail County was recently approved by Lake Region Arts Council for funding in the amount of $6,801 to present a series of programs focusing on jazz and drama to develop arts programming.

In the past 12 months, the Friends of the History Museum, which owns and operates the ITOW Veterans Museum, has hosted dozens of concerts, dramatic presentations, and literary readings and workshops. Even before the opening of the ITOW Museum’s event center, the Friends of the Museum worked hard to provide access to the arts for the community including several years of programming for the Pioneer Festival. Since opening of ITOW, the number of arts opportunities has grown.

This summer’s recently concluded drama camp by directors from Ride Into History gave participants the opportunity to research a local character and learn how to dramatically present the stories that make up their cultural heritage. The camp directors, Ann Birney and Joyce Thierer, are members of the Kansas Alliance of Professional Historical Performers and they have been directing workshops and camps since 1997. While in the Perham, Dr. Thierer presented her own first person narrative called Fighting Beside My Brother, a story about a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the civil war. Because of the Legacy funding, this workshop was able to be offered free of charge.

This fall, the new grant will help support a series of concerts and workshops, each one focusing on a different aspect of that most definitively American culture – jazz. All That Jazz will follow the music of the jazz from the Riverboats up the Mississippi to the Big Bands that flourished in the WWII era through the ‘cool’ era of jazz greats like Miles Davis and jazz fusion and funk. The artists have been selected not only for their incredible musical talents but also for their ability to educate and involve the audiences.

In each of these grant programs, art is the primary focus. Our goal for this project is to increase participation in the arts by providing new ways in which the community can participate.

These activities are funded by the 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.

The ITOW Veterans Museum is located at 805 West Main, Perham. Hours are Monday-Saturday 10-5. Closed Sunday.

Tags: regional news, news, arts, jazz, updates