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About Northern Lights.mn
Northern Lights.mn is a roving, collaborative, media-oriented arts nonprofit based in the Twin Cities. Since 2008 we have worked to bring innovative art to the public sphere and spark new relationships between audience and artwork, and more broadly, between citizens and their built environment. We support global and local artists working at the intersection of disciplines to freely create new work that excites the senses, explores ideas that matter, and re-imagines ways of engagement among artists, sites, and audiences.
Northern Lights.mn shines throughout the year with projects such as the Northern Spark festival, The Creative City Challenge, Artists on the Verge, The Giant Sing-A-Long at the Minnesota State Fair, and permanent, interactive public art for Saint Paul’s Union Depot. Helado Negro Tour Dates
06/24/16 Friendly Gathering Fest Windham, VT
06/28/16 Bowery Ballroom- New York, NY 07/07/16 Playstation Theater New York, NY 07/08/16 Addams/Medill Park- Chicago, IL Read More
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On a balmy late Spring evening, it was warm enough to want ice cream… even black ice cream—
And that’s what Minneapolis got, as Helado Negro kicked off the 2016 Northern Spark with a genre-expanding, somewhat experimental performance outdoors on the lawn of the Minneapolis Convention Center.
Northern Spark is a unique, free, annual, dusk-to-dawn, multidisciplinary arts festival that takes place on the second Saturday of June in the Twin Cities.
For the 2016 and 2017 festivals, the theme of Climate Chaos | Climate Rising will explore the interconnected, evolving, and long-term consequences from climate change, giving artists a platform to facilitate concrete actions anchored in a realistic and hopeful map for the future.
Highlights of the festival space included giant, lighted moving sculptures of a wolf and moose, make-and-take antler workshop, vendor booths, and poetry readings.
Helado Negro (“black ice cream” in English) is the musical alias of South Florida native Roberto Carlos Lange and who has made several trips locally, enough that he should consider getting a second home here.
In addition to world-premiering his Island Universe Story here last March, Lange was back in town less than a month ago, to help Devandra Barnhart with his Wind Grove Mind Alone performance at the Walker Art Center last month.
The spark of the festival lost the flame temporarily as unexpected PA issues at the very beginning delayed the performance for 10-15 min. before everything could get switched out.
Singing in first in mostly Spanish then into English, Lange and an eight-piece band, which included local strings The Laurels Quartet, finally got going accompanied by two Tinsel Mammals, dancing figures draped in silver glitter that have become a visual extension of the musical compositions.
The string quartet effectively replaced the electronica beats on ‘Ojos Que No Ven’ from 2015’s Double Youth (Asthmatic Kitty Records), with the lush arrangement of their own, making the song sound more elegant than on record and to the delight of the camped on lawn crowd.
‘Relatives’ was the first song in English, with a nice bassline guiding the track, as the tinsel mammals moved expressively in place. The crowd howled like wolves between songs (likely the spill-over result of an earlier wolf howling tutorial) with Lange amused and saying, “you can go a little bit louder than that, right?!”
Lange apologized for keeping things moving, feeling somewhat making up for time after the sound delay, breaking into the new song, ‘Young, Latin and Proud’, which featured noteworthy saxophone at its break.
‘Transmission Listen’ had a gentle western groove and ‘2º Dia’ was lush in strings in the style of the best experimental chamber pop. “I know you got a long night ahead of you”, Lange said towards the end of the set (the festival ran from 9pm to 5:26am), “we’re just trying to set it off right”.
Closing with ‘Paz a ti’ and it’s infectious chorus of “claro que si” and then a glimpse into ‘Private Energy’ from a new album coming in the fall, Helado Negro overcame early technical difficulties to provide the initial fire for this year’s Northern Spark.
And that’s what Minneapolis got, as Helado Negro kicked off the 2016 Northern Spark with a genre-expanding, somewhat experimental performance outdoors on the lawn of the Minneapolis Convention Center.
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Northern Spark: Moose |
For the 2016 and 2017 festivals, the theme of Climate Chaos | Climate Rising will explore the interconnected, evolving, and long-term consequences from climate change, giving artists a platform to facilitate concrete actions anchored in a realistic and hopeful map for the future.
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Northern Spark: Wolf
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Helado Negro (“black ice cream” in English) is the musical alias of South Florida native Roberto Carlos Lange and who has made several trips locally, enough that he should consider getting a second home here.
In addition to world-premiering his Island Universe Story here last March, Lange was back in town less than a month ago, to help Devandra Barnhart with his Wind Grove Mind Alone performance at the Walker Art Center last month.
The spark of the festival lost the flame temporarily as unexpected PA issues at the very beginning delayed the performance for 10-15 min. before everything could get switched out.
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The Laurels Quartet |
The string quartet effectively replaced the electronica beats on ‘Ojos Que No Ven’ from 2015’s Double Youth (Asthmatic Kitty Records), with the lush arrangement of their own, making the song sound more elegant than on record and to the delight of the camped on lawn crowd.
|
Helado Negro
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Lange apologized for keeping things moving, feeling somewhat making up for time after the sound delay, breaking into the new song, ‘Young, Latin and Proud’, which featured noteworthy saxophone at its break.
‘Transmission Listen’ had a gentle western groove and ‘2º Dia’ was lush in strings in the style of the best experimental chamber pop. “I know you got a long night ahead of you”, Lange said towards the end of the set (the festival ran from 9pm to 5:26am), “we’re just trying to set it off right”.
Closing with ‘Paz a ti’ and it’s infectious chorus of “claro que si” and then a glimpse into ‘Private Energy’ from a new album coming in the fall, Helado Negro overcame early technical difficulties to provide the initial fire for this year’s Northern Spark.
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Helado Negro at Minneapolis Convention Center Plaza - Northern Spark (11 June 2016) |
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