“An annual tradition of a playful, genre-bending celebration of keyboard music.”  – Paul Cantrell 

Keys Please: Paul Cantrell, Carei Thomas, Todd Harper©Marianne Combs, MPR

The 9th annual concert by Keys Please (“The Chord Wars”) will take place on Saturday, February 6th at 8 pm at the Janet Wallace Audutorium of Macalester College in St. Paul. Comprised of composers Carei Thomas, Todd Harper and Paul Cantrell, this year Keys Please welcomes special guest, guitarist Bob Ockenden. They will be performing original works, plus music by Thelonius Monk, Bill Evans, Frederick Chopin and others.

Keys Please is a trio that performs annually before a live audience. Coming from different generations and backgrounds in music, they share skills at the keyboard and “all resist attempts to pigeonhole their music “(MPR). Paul Cantrell (classically trained, a computer programmer in his 20s), Todd Harper (a teacher with a jazz background, in his 40s) and Carei Thomas (a semi-retired working musician with a jazz background, in his 60s) joined forces in 2000 to showcase individual compositions and collaborations. Noted Cantrell in an interview for Minnesota Public Radio, "Even on the radio, we have a classical station and a jazz station and a rock station. And when you put it all together you start hearing -- it's all music, it all communicates, these worlds all overlap," says Cantrell. "It's not about the social group that the music makes you a part of, or what kind of commercials run on the station that plays it. It's about what the music does to you in your gut."

Bob Ockenden

Janet Wallace Concert Hall (1600 Grand Av, St. Paul) is located on the Macalester Campus. Tickets (at the door only) are $10. Students with ID free. More on Keys Please at http://innig.net/music/keysplease/ 

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites