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Illustration from "A Dog is a Dog" by Stephen Shaskan

This week's hounds pay tribute to a string quartet series at St. Paul's Landmark Center, a folky soul singer from Minneapolis, and an illustrator who's winning national raves for his new kids' book.



Songwriter and musician Mayda knows a thing or two about soul music, so we need to pay attention when she speaks of her admiration for Minneapolis singer-songwriter 

. Mayda says Brown's probing honesty and acoustic guitar craft can transport the listener to another place. Brown will be joined by visual artist Natalie Gallagher for an unusual performance, "Marrow," at Republic in Minneapolis, Sunday, Jan. 8.





Sometimes your friends and fellow artists surprise you. It happened to Minneapolis visual artist and musician Rich Barlow, whose former bandmate and album art illustrator 

 has released a critically-praised children's book called 

 published by Chronicle Books. Rich says kids will be delighted by the clever way the story's main character, a dog, continually changes his identity. Rich was also impressed by Shaskan's ability to professionalize his style as an illustrator.





The great 20th-century Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote a series of string quartets that St. Paul composer Justin Busch describes as a musical documentation of life behind the Iron Curtain. Justin says eight of those 15 quartets will be performed by the acclaimed Twin Cities-based 

 every Thursday in January from noon to 1pm at the Landmark Center. According to Justin, the 'courtroom concerts' are not to be missed.



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Chris Roberts

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This week's hounds pay tribute to a string quartet series at St. Paul's Landmark Center, a folky soul singer from Minneapolis, and an illustrator who's winning national raves for his new kids' book.


Art Hounds: Shostakovich, Chastity Brown, and “A Dog is a Dog”

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