For the opening concert of its 2025/2026 season, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra welcomes the return of former artistic partner Thomas Zehetmair, an Austrian violinist-turned-conductor, who in recent years has broadened his artistry to include composing.

The program traces a path from Zehetmair’s contemporary turbulence back through the romantic reconciliation of Johannes Brahms’s last orchestral work to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s final symphony.

To start things off, the SPCO performs a new string orchestra arrangement of Zehetmair’s 2023 string trio, Passacaglia, Burlesque and Choral. It opens with a slurry beginning, a blurred mass of repeated tone chords built from adjacent notes on a musical scale that evoke eerie disorder.

In time, these dissonant chords start to sound more musical, even as they change in rhythm and tempo, before Zehetmair introduces a sly pizzicato and more strident accented rhythms.

After a pause, the composition takes on a searching quality, as the melody travels from one instrument to the next, including a compelling viola solo performed by principal viola Maiya Papach, eventually fading out to nothing, leaving the audience suspended in uneasy quiet.

The work’s last movement, which in his intro Zehetmair noted derives from a theme Mozart used in his “Jupiter” Symphony going back to the 12th century, takes on a cacophonous tumult, swelling, hovering, and exploring strange rhythms, and lopsided, sloppy bliss.

From Zehetmair’s searching dissonances, the SPCO moved into Brahms’ Double Concerto, performed by concertmaster Steven Copes and principal cello Julie Albers. Brahms wrote the double concerto — a rare form at the time — for his former friend, Joseph Joachim, as a way to make amends, as well as his frequent collaborator Robert Hausmann. The music allows room for each of the soloists to shine, as well as be in dialogue with the larger orchestra. It often carries a cheerful feeling, with wonderful textures.

After the orchestra launches in with a full flaring sound, the cello takes the lead on a sweet, almost pensive solo. The woodwinds dash in for a moment before the violin arrives, leaping across scales before the orchestra returns with a celebratory flair. The first movement has ample opportunity for Copes and Albers to demonstrate not only their own skill as separate musicians but also an easy camaraderie that comes from years as colleagues.

In the second movement, warmth prevails: woodwinds interject tenderly while violin and cello shadow each other in playful turns. The finale opens with a sneaky cello solo answered by a mischievous violin line. The music feels like a murder mystery caper, propelled by urgency yet never losing its lightness.

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After Brahms’s resplendent dialogue, the SPCO turned to Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter,” his last and most monumental symphony. Zehetmair breathed with the musicians as he conducted, guiding the ensemble with physical clarity rather than showmanship. The opening Allegro vacillates between punchy jabs and fluttery gaiety. The Andante cantabile offers benevolence tinged with shadow, its harmonies turning suddenly ominous.

The Menuetto: Allegretto takes the shape of a dance, its courtly pulse enlivened by fanciful woodwind slides that seem to tumble over each other. You can hear the slide-and-step pattern like footsteps on a ballroom floor. The finale arrives like crashes of thunder and lightning, shifting between forceful and delicate moments. Zehetmair’s arms fly as he leads the orchestra toward its stormy finish.

Opening weekend

Who: St. Paul Chamber Orchestra

What: Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony with Thomas Zehetmair

When: 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13; 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14

Where: The Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul

Tickets: $0-$70

Accessibility: ordway.org/visit/accessibility/

Capsule: Former SPCO Artistic Partner Thomas Zehetmair returns to conduct Brahms, Beethoven, and his own work.

The St. Paul nonprofit ArtStart is hosting a community block party Saturday, Sept. 27, to celebrate the purchase of its building in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood. The building has been home to its ArtScraps Creative Reuse Materials and Idea Center for 32 years.

“We can’t wait to fill the street with joy, creativity and connection,” said ArtStart executive director Anne Sawyer.

The family-friendly celebration is free and will be from 3-6 p.m. at the ArtScraps store, located at 1459 St. Clair Ave., St. Paul. Highlights include a performance from Hijinks Stilts at 3:45 p.m., music by Brazilian percussion band Batucada do Norte at 4 p.m., on-demand poems from the Poetry Bus, food trucks and art-making activities.

ArtStart collects donations of recycled materials and art supplies and sells them back to the public at low prices at its ArtScraps center. The organization also offers youth art camps, workshops in libraries and artist residencies in schools across the Twin Cities.

A customer looks through a bin of beads at ArtStart’s ArtScraps ReUse Center in St. Paul. (Bennett Moger / Pioneer Press)

Over the summer, ArtStart asked the community to help raise $10,000 for the purchase of its ArtScrap center building. The nonprofit has now raised more than $12,500.

“We’re really happy to have the building, because it helps us keep doing what we’re doing,” Sawyer said.

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After a week on strike, the University of Minnesota and Teamsters Local 320 have reached a tentative agreement.

The Teamsters announced on Facebook that their negotiating team has a tentative agreement for members to vote on, ending the strike and allowing next week’s Farm Aid concert to continue as planned.

“The strike is over!” the post said.

Members of Teamsters Local 320, which represents 1,400 custodial, food service, maintenance and sanitation workers on campuses around the state, went on strike Monday night at the Crookston and Morris campuses and expanded to Duluth and satellite campuses Tuesday morning. Workers at the Twin Cities campus joined the strike Tuesday night.

The union’s current contract expired June 30, and negotiations have been ongoing since late March. Union members filed an intent to strike Aug. 7, with initial plans for the strike to begin Aug. 20, just as students were returning to the Duluth campus.

The university put forth a new contract — its last, best and final offer — on Aug. 19, and the strike was put on hold so workers could consider the contract. With an 82% majority, union members voted to reject the offer, citing frustrations over annual wage increases and changes to the contract’s expiration date.

Farm Aid

The Farm Aid organization said on X that their September 20 concert will go on as planned. The concert had been jeopardized by the strike and organizers considered finding a new venue at the last minute.

Farm Aid staff were set to begin building the stage Friday for the concert featuring Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and a dozen other musical acts, but organizers released a statement Thursday that said: “Our artists, production team and partners have made clear that they will not cross a picket line.”

Just after midnight on Saturday, the organization said on X: “Farm Aid is grateful that the University of Minnesota and Teamsters Local 320 have reached an agreement. We are thrilled to confirm that Farm Aid 40 will go forward in Minneapolis as planned.

“For four decades, Farm Aid has stood with farmers and workers. Today’s agreement is a reminder of what can be achieved when people come together in the spirit of fairness and solidarity.”

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Twin Cities mom wants to help you have ‘The Talk’ with your kids

Joe Soucheray

A shooter was prone on the roof of a building 200 yards away and fired a single shot, horribly destructive, and then is seen scurrying off the roof and disappears.

Americans are entirely justified in wondering if the murder of Charlie Kirk was a professionally accomplished assassination ordered by who or what we don’t know. I am particularly disbelieving of anything the government tells me.

But it apparently wasn’t that wormhole at all. That was written while I was as feverish as the next person. The people running us must be proud of how frazzled they have us.

We were told during the Joe Biden administration that Joe was fit as a fiddle. He clearly was not. It was all his handlers could do to get Joe to go through the motions. Who was running the country?

Donald Trump was elected a second time and he inherited with his ascendency a re-invigorated Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Trump has to keep fighting off the Epstein connection. Bits and pieces of the so-called Epstein files are dangled before us and then magically withdrawn. If those files are devastating to Epstein’s pals, will we ever know?

Who is running this country? The people we vote for? Increasingly, that doesn’t appear to be likely at all.

And why Charlie Kirk? There are dozens of louder, meaner and more outrageous pundits in the marketplace. Kirk was only 31. Many of the things he said were easy to disagree with and many of the things he said and believed were easy to agree with. That is called having opinions. Opinions are still legal and should not be punished by a sniper with a bolt-action rifle.

About that shooter. Yes, I am aware that the woods will soon be full of hunters who can take a deer from 200 yards. But they can’t and wouldn’t try if there were hundreds and hundreds of people between them and the deer.

We want answers and question number one is: Who is running the country?

The government, or the government we are allowed to know, is doing a miserable job in virtually every aspect of life. If you think of something the government does extremely well, please let me know. We are in a period of maddening moral and ethical decline. We are exampled no character, no morality, no fiscal responsibility – well, except for Congress members who enter Congress supposedly broke and then are suddenly worth millions. We are played like peas under one of three cups and we don’t even know which cup we are under.

We are not safe. We are not secure. We are critically in debt.

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The judicial system is a revolving door. Criminals roam the streets. The once-great cities of America are infested with deadly drugs and theft and assaults, car thefts and shootings. Police departments are short-staffed. Entire downtowns, once the center of commerce, are hollowed out and decaying.

The kids at Annunciation weren’t safe. A Ukrainian immigrant woman wasn’t safe on a train in Charleston, N.C., where she was stabbed to death by a career criminal who should have been in jail. Charlie Kirk wasn’t safe and all he was doing was taking questions on a college campus.

The inevitable answer to all this is just get rid of guns. It’s a lovely wish. Do you trust the government to make that happen? Hell no, that might cost them their place on the third rail, where they lead lives separate from the rest of us.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.