The Danish Easel

Talk by Susan Jacobsen on the painters Vilhelm Hammershøi, Anna Ancher, and Wilhelm Marstrand; + song cycle "The Danish Easel" with Ben Cooper, tenor, and Jim Reilly (piano and composer).

Ben Cooper took up solo singing relatively late in life, and has studied with Jim Reilly,  and in Sweden with Anders Andersson in Stockholm and Margareta Jonth in Uppsala.  He has performed recitals for the Nordvendt series, the Leiv Eriksson International Festival, at the American Swedish Institute, here at the Alliance Française, in Madison, Wisconsin, and at numerous house concerts.  His repertory includes Swedish songs, in addition to better known works in other European languages, and he has premiered songs of Jim Reilly.  He recently the role of the Narrator in P.D.Q. Bach’s Oedipus Tex,  and he sings with the Minnesota Chorale.

Before retiring, Susan Jacobsen spent 47 years at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) as a museum educator. She has been active in the Danish American community for many years serving on the Danebo Inc. board when it joined with the Danish American Fellowship to form the Danish American Center from 2005 on and as DAC President from 2014-2017, Secretary of the Board 2011 & 2013-2014 and 2022 to the present. She was selected as Dane of the Year 2017. She served on the board of the Danish American Heritage Society from 2006-2009. She returned to the board 0f DAC in 2021 and wrote a grant receiving legacy funds from the State of Minnesota to establish a collection management system. She is now cataloging the collection at the Danish American Center, focusing on prints, paintings, posters and decorative arts as well as organizing exhibitions from the collection.  

Jim Reilly, the Interim Music Director at Mindekirken, is also serving, in the absence of a permanent Mindekirken Pastor, as chair of this year's LEIF. He has performed as a tenor, pianist, and organist in over twenty states, Norway, Holland, and at many local venues. He and Ben Cooper premièred the cycle "The Danish Easel" at the Alliance Française, during Covid, on the loading dock to an audience in the parking lot; it will be fun to now perform it indoors. Jim's next major local performance will be a solo recital at Mindekirken (half as pianist, half as a tenor) in April, a benefit for young people's music education in the Twin Cities.