Art Hounds: 'Fame,' a Yiddish story and Palestinian music

This week on Art Hounds: Palestinian music, a Yiddish Carnival of the Animals and "Fame."

Rebecca Lynn Petersen, the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra's executive director, recommends checking out the great young talent featured in the Duluth Playhouse's production of "Fame." Some people might know the story best from its incarnation as a TV show in the 1980s, but it got its start as a 1980 movie-musical about students at New York City's High School of Performing Arts. Performances run March 10-20.

Yaron Klein teaches Arabic and Arab music at Carleton College, and so he's looking forward to attending a concert of two renowned Palestinian musicians, Issa Boulos and Wanees Zarour. The concert will present a retrospective of Boulos' compositions, with him singing and playing the oud (the Middle Eastern ancestor of the lute) and Zarour playing percussion and other instruments. Boulos is known for using traditional instruments in innovative ways, melding Middle Eastern music with jazz and classical. "Music of the Levant: Palestinian Duo Pulse" is Friday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m. at Sundin Music Hall on the Hamline University campus in St. Paul.

Former Minneapolis Arts Advisory Panel member Laurie Savran is heading to Sabes Jewish Community Center in St. Louis Park this Sunday for a Yiddish Carnival of the Animals. The event pairs the music of Camille Saint-Saens with a children's book written in Yiddish (but it will be read in both Yiddish and English). The concert is a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Minneapolis Yiddish Vinkl ("corner"), a group that meets once a month to present music and movies and cultivate friendship.