Art Hounds: The Hounds have three arts events for your weekend

This week on Art Hounds: "A Year with Frog and Toad" returns to the Children's Theatre, a premiere of new music in Mankato, and "Q Stage."

Kris Woll, Arts and Culture Program adviser at the University of Minnesota, loved reading the "Frog and Toad" books as a kid, and later sharing them with her children. So she's thrilled to be taking them to see the musical "A Year with Frog and Toad" this weekend at Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis. The musical celebrates the fabulous amphibian friendship of worrywart Toad and happy-go-lucky Frog, with a catchy score and a set designed by Adrianne Lobel, the daughter of Frog and Toad creator Arnold Lobel. Performances run through June 18.

Sara Buechmann, executive director of the Mankato Symphony Orchestra, recommends checking out the premiere of composer Charlie Leftridge's new work "A Year by the Sea." It's a song cycle for soprano and string quartet, featuring text from the best-selling memoir of the same name by Joan Anderson. Anderson will be on hand for conversation before the performance. The program begins at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 12, at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Mankato.

Theater artist Freya Richman will be at 20% Theatre Company's new works series, "Q-Stage." The company's mission is to amplify the voices of queer, trans and gender-nonconforming artists, and Richman says it offers a lifeline to trans people like herself while building bridges of understanding to the broader community. Shows are this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis.