By Christie Bender
Grand Rapids Public Museum
Sit back and experience the wonder of the cosmos with the wonder of music! Kick off the New Year with Concerts Under the Stars at the Grand Rapids Public Museum (GRPM) featuring the sounds of dark folk music with Fiona Dickinson on Thursday, Jan. 17.
This site-specific performance will combine shoegaze and dream-pop with ethereal interludes to create two seamless sets that flow into familiar song structures and out into meditative drones. Musicians Dan Fisher, Shane Tripp, and Ben Wiessenborn will assist on the project as a backing band. Accompanying Fiona with live visuals on the planetarium dome will be Meghan Moe Beitiks.
“Fiona Dickinson is a great start to the 2019 Concerts Under the Stars series,” said Kate Kocienski, VP of Marketing and PR for the GRPM. “Although each concert is a different genre, so you would need to see all of them for the full experience.”
Concerts Under the Stars will begin at 7:30 p.m., with Museum doors opening at 6:30 p.m. New this year, performers will play two sets, with a short intermission in between. Refreshments, beer and other beverages will be available for purchase.
Tickets are $12 for GRPM members and $15 for non-members if purchased in advance, and $15 for members and $18 for non-members on the day of the concert. Tickets are currently on sale at grpm.org, by calling 616-929-1700 or at the Museum’s front desk.
The 2019 Concerts Under the Stars series will continue on Feb. 7 with psych rock from Frankie and Myrrh, Feb. 28 with ambient R&B from Bronze Wolf, and will conclude on Mar. 21 with the electronic sounds of Pink Sky.
Fiona Dickinson is a British songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and music educator currently residing in Grand Rapids. Along with her work arranging strings for the ambient noise project, Saltbreaker, Fiona has a lengthy list of collaborations on stage and in the studio. She also has a background in composition for independent film and live score for site-specific performance with dance, video, and analog projection.
Meghan Moe Beitiks, has designed lights for the California Academy of Sciences, the Asian Art Museum, SF Sketchfest, and Atom-R. She is an artist working with associations and disassociations of culture/nature/structure, analyzing perceptions of ecology through the lenses of site, history, and emotions in order to produce work that interrogates relationships with the non-human. She was a Fulbright Student Fellow in Scenic Design to Latvia and a recipient of the Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists. She received her BA in Theater Arts from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her MFA in Performance Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Grand Valley State University, and has designed media for previous Concerts Under the Stars in 2018.
