Piecing together a life

Fargo, N.D. -- An elephant picture hangs on the wall, the mother's trunk curled around her baby. A Bible verse is printed across the bottom in a smooth script. As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. Isaiah 66:13. The brown leather sofa and chair sit empty around the opposing walls, an electric keyboard stands waiting to be played on the fourth side of the room and a television hides in the corner, next to the artificial Christmas tree hidden behind the keyboard. The room is maybe ten by fifteen feet, if we're being generous. The family is gone.

“When we do things as a family,” Judith Young said, “we like to go out.”

She sits in the West Acres mall by Lighthouse Coffee. Curly, brown hair hits her just below the shoulder as some gray shows near crest of her forehead. Her oldest daughter, Adele, 22, sits next to her, each holding their steaming drinks in blue styrofoam cups. Her son, Evan, 17, sits across from them, mostly silent but gently offering responses to their direct questions. He draws in a sketchbook—working on a warrior at first until his sister says “draw me some broccoli,” and he works on the three-inch-by-three-inch sketch for 45 minutes.

This single mother of three has lived in public housing for nearly eight years, and it has allowed her to care for her children's special needs without sending them into foster care. She has used the system so her kids can escape it, she said.

Amber, Judith and Evan after a production
of "Les Miserables" at West Fargo High School.

Her two youngest kids, Amber, 14, and Evan, are still in high school, and Adele is preparing to graduate from Concordia College on May 6. Adele will become the first person in her family to obtain a four-year degree, and she will be the first child to follow mom's rule that all of her children must attend college immediately after high school and obtain degrees in four years. She made that rule because of her own struggles with career and finances.

“If you have a college degree, that's something that can never be taken away from you,” she said. “Not getting that degree, especially when [my] kids are so intelligent, and with our limited means, not having it in your tool box is just not OK.”

After high school graduation, Judith's dad died, and she moved to Grand Forks to be with family. She struggled in college because of his death and ended up dropping out. She completed a two-year degree and had her first child all within a few years of leaving high school. And yet, she dreamed she would find a husband to raise her daughter.

“I thought I would be able to do 'middle-class' for Adele,” she said. “I really thought that would happen.”

Adele would never need to know the difference, Judith thought. When Adele was one year old, Judith met Jeff. They were married four years later.

Adele had always been a unique and irritable child, but as she was the oldest, Judith had no point of reference. She assumed Adele's actions were normal. Adele wouldn't learn until her senior year of college that she was allergic to nearly all meat proteins, but she knew at an early age that meat made her feel sick. One daycare provider required the children to eat all of their food, so Adele pocketed it in her cheeks. At the end of the day, Judith would bring her home to find meat in her mouth from lunch.

A few years after Evan and Amber were born, and the divorce finalized, Judith got her dream job at the as a surgical assistant and returned to Fargo. But what seemed to be a dream job turned out not to have hours conducive for a woman to care for three kids. Judith's mother had just died two weeks prior to their move, in the same hospital where Judith would be working, and transplanting kids, ages 3, 5 and 10, was a complicated issue.

“I was as much of a mess as an eighth grader could be,” Adele said.

Combined with puberty and anxiety issues, Adele's lack of comfort in social settings manifested itself in “not so sociable ways,” she said. Her school in Grand Forks valued individualized education, she said, but Fargo was different. It wasn't as much of a priority, she said, and anxiety about doing the new type of homework resulted in it not getting done.

One day, a math teacher who habitually ignored Adele's individualized education program made fun of her in front of the class for not completing her homework. That's when Adele threw a desk at the teacher.

“[Adele's] favorite game in school was 'how much can I piss these people off so they tell me to leave?'” Judith said.

“It was a good strategy,” Adele said, shrugging her shoulders.

When Adele received medication, she slept for three days, Judith said. She woke up a whole new person. She no longer crouched or hunched over into herself. Her voice was different.

“There's no other way to say it,” Judith said, “but it's like in the Bible when a demon is cast out.”

Judith and Adele

As Adele began to recover, however, Judith began to see some of Adele's mysterious behaviors in Evan, and Amber's physical health continued to be poor. Amber had had the stomach flu and chicken pox within her first few months of life, and she always had any sickness for three times as long as the rest of the family, Judith said.

These growing health problems plus the nearly $30,000 Judith spent every year on child care eventually required her to pull Evan and homeschool him for the year he would have had Adele's non-IEP-believing math teacher. Not to mention Judith's awareness of the risks for unwatched teenagers in their neighborhood.

The people who live in their public housing community are genuinely nice, hard-working people, Judith said. Rent is proportional to income, but getting a raise at work is still worthwhile since rent only increases by a fraction of that raise, she said. Parents work, but pre-teens and teenagers often go unsupervised. They can't be in child care, and they get bored. That's why she gets her kids away from home: not because the once-innocent faces have turned dangerous, but because kids without a guiding hand more easily find trouble. They drop out of high school. They lead difficult lives by all standards. So Judith has used the system for her kids to be free of it.

“My real job is being a parent,” she said. “I've done what it takes to get through.”

She credits her children's success to scholarships to Trollwood Performing Arts School, financial and emotional support at church, social services in schools and through the government and Concordia's support of Adele. Public housing helped them pay rent. Food stamps helped buy food. Trollwood gave Adele an outlet. Every step of the way, they've needed everything they've had. These three kids would not be graduating from college or consistently lettering in academics. Judith believes they would not even be alive.

“We have pieced together a life,” she said, “and we're piecing together a future as a family.”

Judith now works at Bank of the West, where she has worked since May 2011. If she can move into a full-time position, she plans to utilize the education benefits to return to school and finish a four-year degree like she requires all of her kids to do. After years of counseling and rebuilding their family, they are finally in a better place. Judith is finally able to pay her bills.

Adele's recent allergy testing revealed she is allergic or sensitive to wheat, eggs, corn, dairy and most meat proteins as well most environmental allergens, such as trees and mosses. She also has a high-functioning case of Autism Spectrum Disorder, but on May 6, 2012, she will receive the same bachelor's degree as any other English writing major at Concordia, and her family will be there to see her walk.

Judith pulls out her EBT food stamp card. The outline of North Dakota sits in the upper left corner, filled with pink wild prairie roses, the state flower. Using the card was the biggest source of embarrassment while she needed the aid, she said. But now, she keeps it in her purse as a reminder of the social services that saved her family.

“The whole world can end, and we'll figure it out,” Adele said. “I'm seriously not afraid of a zombie apocalypse.”

Kicking Ass: A Reason to Skate

Fargo, N.D. -- The Fargo Civic Center was only half full, and the entertainment was going in circles. Skaters with matching jerseys wore patterned tights and shorts or leggings and a belt, anything to make their look their own. The Fargo Moorhead Derby Girls skated on the cement floor, warming up as the fans purchased glazed almonds, nachos and beer and settled into the red stadium seating. It was a family-friendly event, and a member of the Battlescar Gallactica team tossed silver Mardi Gras beads into the stands. An older man wearing a “Call me Big Papa” Smurf shirt waited to show his granddaughter a bout, the derby name for a match that comes from boxing terminology. A middle-aged man sat a few rows back with a beer, watching the scene. Some kids caught the beads and put them around their necks—Battlescar fans.

The FMDG skates to raise money for local non-profit organizations, but it currently needs the community’s support to make its practice space safe. They have donated funds to the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center of Fargo Moorhead, The Giving Tree, Lake Agassiz Habitat for Humanity and Moorhead State University—Moorhead’s “Fight the Frost: Go Pink” awareness drive to support the Roger Maris Cancer Center in Faro, according to FMDG president Donna Donley, skater Bruz-her.

If possible, the Derby Girls also participate in a service activity related to the bout’s designated charity, such as building a shed with Habitat for Humanity and filling backpacks for a school drive, she said. Within the league, however, roller derby has transformed lives as well. Riah Roe, skater Buffy Bastinada, knows women who were hooked on drugs or in abusive relationships when they started roller derby, but FMDG has provided them with a supportive community and changed their lives.

“There’s a lot of solidarity in an all-girls league,” she said.

The use of derby names is an important part of the individuality in the culture, and no two Derby Girls in the nation have the same name. Girls check their names against a national registry to ensure there are no duplicates, and the names are often edgy puns, such as Bruz-her, Bolt Action and Buffy Bastinada.

“It’s kind of like an alter identity,” Roe said. “I get to take on what I like about her, and it becomes me.”

Mary Beth Shaffer, skater Rollz4Damage, began derby without knowing how to skate, but she was hooked. The Fresh Meat program teaches potential recruits everything they needed to know about skating and falling, and Shaffer was addicted to the empowering culture.

“It’s finally nice to have a female sport that portrays women as strong and sexy,” she said.

Roller derby is a unique, rugby-esque sport, according to Jen Hurd, a Concordia senior who experience derby for the first time this season. She heard about FMDG through her sociology professor, Natalie Peluso, who skates.

“It sounded so cool with being so aggressive, pushing people around while on quad skates,” she said. “Seeing your prof outside of class is one thing, but this is just so different.”

The Haute Dishes jammer (pink, far right) tries to
pass "the pack" and become eligible to gain points.

In roller derby, one designated skater from each team of five tries to be the first to break through the pack, the remaining four of both teams’ skaters. The first skater to do so becomes the lead jammer and can stop the jam, the 2-minute round, at any point. Both jammers score points by passing members of the opposite team, so the lead jammer will often continue the jam if she is far enough in front of the other team’s jammer to gain points without the other jammer immediately gaining points as well. She will usually call off the jam if they are close together and the brouhaha necessary to get through the pack wouldn’t create a gap in the two teams’ scores.

Hurd sat in the “suicide seats,” those located on the floor of the Civic Center. To sit in chairs on the floor instead of in the higher permanent seating, Hurd simply signed a waiver and arrived ten minutes early. She went to the bout with a Concordia friend also curious about the off-campus event.

“It’s a fun way to get out of the Concordia bubble,” she said, “and if you’re 21, you can drink.”

Although Hurd had no experience with derby, the bout was easy to understand. Before each event begins, the announcers read the rules and end with the most important one:

“Don’t spill your beer!”

After the rules are read, the teams skate out from under the stands, like football players running into a stadium of cheering fans. They circle the track as each derby girl is introduced.

FMDG operates as a non-profit though it is still in the process of transitioning to a non-profit in the eyes of the federal government, according Donley. Because the skaters pay to be in FMDG, any shortage is paid by the Girls, she said. In fact, FMDG has been so busy helping women that the organization hasn’t been helping itself. The current financial need is too great.

“We could get $10,000 for the warehouse and not even spend it on the rent,” she said. “There’s so much to be done.”

The smaller costs are consistent, such as tape to keep the rope in place, rope that outlines the track and other supplies for the warehouse. But, the padding that currently keeps skaters from hitting metal posts if they fly off the track is old mattresses that need to be replaced, preferably with actual padding. Also, FMDG is hoping to add a new key card system to the warehouse is more secure and accessible, Donley said. The padding costs about $3,000, but FMDG hopes to also install the security system, which would be a great way to practice more, Donley said.

Flat track derby began in 2001 and currently accounts for over 98 percent of current derby leagues due to the financial appeal of tape and rope to construct the track over the costlier construction of a banked track, according to the Derby News Network. Flat-track derby can be just as physical as banked tracks, but it occurs at a slightly slower pace.

Those interested in sponsoring a skater or donating to the Skate-a-Thon on Saturday, February 25 can find more information at the FMDG website, http://fmderbygirls.com, or their Facebook group, www.facebook.com/fmderbygirls.

The point of the FM Derby Girls is to empower women, regardless of whether or not the women are on the teams or recipients of the money raised at bouts. As Alex Vruno, skater Nutmeg, said:

“[It] gives us a reason to be here—other than kicking ass.” 

Changing times, changing trends bring people together

Fargo, N.D. -- The store smells like used clothes and dust, an appropriate combination for a store selling used clothes and dusty items, but it's a smell that's only there once you notice it, like a hidden face in a picture that you don't see. Until you do. 

It is 7 o'clock on a weeknight, and the Fargo Savers has three customers. One woman looks at blouses, maybe searching for a work shirt or just something nice to wear. Another woman is farther back in the store, almost to the dresses but still in jeans, and the third is wandering up and down the rows of shoes.

The economic downturn hurt the thrift store like any other store, assistant manager Don Cornell says, but it has also encouraged a shift in the predominant clientele.

“We get all types of people: doctors, lawyers, teachers... it used to be all blue-collar workers like road construction,” he says.

We're close to the West Acres mall, and that's bad for business. But more white-collar workers are buying professional clothes at Savers, Cornell says, and the proximity to the mall has to help too.

The regular customers still shop as they always have. The wool ladies from Detroit Lakes and Park Rapids buy all of the wool in the store to make mittens and blankets, says Doug Klettke, a red-shirted, red-vested employee who volunteered at Savers for eight years before being hired in 2008. Some customers come weekly or daily at a specific time to see what's new, Cornell says.

“They like the treasure hunt,” he says.

A woman steps up to the cashier, ready to purchase a shirt.

“That's cute. I like that!” the brown-haired cashier says to the woman. “I was there the day it came out, but it wouldn't fit me. I'm glad someone bought it.”

Cornell stands at the front of the store—past the register but before the shopping carts lined perpendicular to the wall with clothes and hangers ready for employees to return to the floor. He is next to Joey Zawicki, a teenage employee with aqua streaks in his long hair, talking to Zawicki about “the cougar outfit [that's] still there,” hanging on the wall.

A few more customers enter the store and wander around the clothes, the toys and the kitchenware.

“Wanna play Jeopardy?” Klettke says.

There's not a whole lot to do. The extra hangers are already neatly hooked on the bright red hanger racks, and it seems like a good night to just talk to customers.

College-aged boys set a Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey on the counter by the register. The cashier scans the tag, the boys make small talk—“this is a cool jersey”—and they purchase the jersey with a “thanks.” Immediately after them, a blonde woman with curled hair, a Chanel purse and a red pea coat steps up to the register holding a tan trench coat. She looks like she stepped out of a Macy's advertisement, like she should be trying on a new coat at Christopher & Banks or New York & Co.

Something's changing. Maybe it's the decade-old Savers policy of “don't fill the landfill, fill the recycling” that's finally catching on, Cornell thinks.

Maybe it's the friendly employees who enjoy their jobs, the ones with a “sense of humor, they last here,” Klettke says.

Maybe it's Savers' focus on “Good deeds. Great deals,” the generosity of Savers to local flood and fire victims, Cornell says.

Maybe it's the economy. But something is bringing people together at Savers.

“Beep beep!” says Zawicki, carrying a pile of clothes to add to the return cart. He sets the clothes down, and a cashier wanders over to an 8 o'clock regular, a middle-aged man with a big smile and a big black coat.

Thiele will speak to seniors

This article was originally printed in The Concordian in April 2012.

MOORHEAD, MN--

We have a life of choice. Little girls in America might prefer a red dress over a pink one, or a Blow Pop over a Tootsie Pop, but Haitian children don’t understand the difference, according to Joanna Thiele, class of 1997 and the 2012 Sent Forth Award recipient.

“They have nothing,” she said, “but they have so much hope.”

Thiele received the award for her embodiment of Concordia’s heart of service and living a Christian life, most notably in service in Haiti. She will be on campus during graduation weekend and will host the Senior Farewell Banquet on Friday, May 4 with President William and Anne Craft and the Office of Alumni Relations. But Thiele isn’t used to being the center of attention: the work stems from her nurturing personality and her habit of simply caring.

When Thiele graduated from Concordia with a degree in nursing, she didn’t set out to save the world. She thought she’d be married and have a family by this time. And while she had a passion for people and justice, she never imagined she would co-found a non-profit dedicated, as the Haiti Mission Project Website says, to sharing “God’s love and hope in Haiti.”

Until she recently switched churches to attend with her fiancé, John Dols, Thiele attended Calvary Lutheran Church in Golden Valley, Minn., where she worked with the youth program. After one uninvolved teen committed suicide about eight years ago, the leaders made a conscious effort to get teens who were not regularly attending more involved. Thiele noticed that there was a group being overlooked: the children of pastors, leaders and other highly involved church members. She began mentoring students and still does today.

Physical challenges during one youth group trip to Washington, D.C. wouldn’t have allowed Nick, a boy with cystic fibrosis, to attend. However, because Thiele is a nurse, she was able to talk to Nick’s parents and work with him on the trip. He currently attends the University of Minnesota, and they still meet up monthly for lunch.

It wasn’t until she was approaching her 30th birthday, a milestone that pushed her to check off a few items on her bucket list, that she ran a half-marathon and went on her first mission trip. The half marathon was an unpleasant experience—“never again,” she said— but the trip to Haiti ignited a fire. During the trip, the group built an orphanage, visited children’s hospitals and other orphanages and had daily time for individual devotionals.

“My heart was totally captured,” she said.

Near-constant political upheaval, hurricanes, earthquakes, food scarcity and feces-contaminated water fill the Haitian life. Diplomats have called Haiti a “failed state.” Four out of five Haitians live in poverty, according to an April 2, 2012 article in the New York Times, and more than half live in abject poverty. Barren, over-farmed land washes into the sea as food prices skyrocket on the tiny island.

“It would never be acceptable to anyone here,” she said. “It is disheartening.”

When Thiele returned from Haiti after that first trip, the culture shock created a sense of numbness. She was overwhelmed by happiness, sadness and gratefulness. She was so overwhelmed that she had difficulty functioning in this life of affluence, an average American life of running water and predictable meals, a life with technology and expendable income.

“I couldn’t believe that 300 miles off the coast of Florida life could be so different,” she said.

She was grateful to be alive.

Her early trips were primarily construction-oriented, but then she was in Haiti during the 2010 earthquake that left the country in shambles. She joined with other missionaries to organize a field hospital and pharmacy and provide medical care to hundreds of wounded people, said Beth McHoul, director of the Heartline Maternity Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She worked 16-hour days in the field hospital’s pharmacy but still made silly signs and baskets of candy to make the pharmacy fun.

“She created an atmosphere of order but lightness,” McHoul said in an email nominating her for the Award. “She created a sanctuary during those dark days of non-stop chaos.”

As a nurse at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minn., she works in labor and delivery. Since the earthquake, she has been transferring her professional skills in America to her service in Haiti. She now helps women by working in a women’s program at the Heartline Maternity Center. She works in prenatal and child development classes, and she even came down with gifts, according to McHoul.

Thiele is loved for who she is, and her co-workers recognized her as an outstanding nurse who goes above and beyond what is necessary when they awarded her the Sarah Harrison Knight award in 2005. She also received the 2009 Community Service award for her excellent work with patient care and her community service that overcomes social barriers. Yet, even after two awards that recognized her service, she is still not used to the spotlight shining on her.

“People go ‘Haiti equals Joanna, Joanna equals Haiti,’” Thiele said, “but I’m just a small drop in the ocean.”

This June she will leave for her 15^th visit in the last seven years, and the shock that used to last for days has become much more bearable, she said. Counseling has helped her develop tools to manage the disparity between a day here and a day in Haiti.

Back home in Plymouth, Minn., Thiele is currently planning her wedding.

She and John Dols have been together since last Christmas when her co-worker, Dols’ dad, realized they have all the same passions.

“He does Africa,” Thiele said.

Dols goes to Africa every other year for five weeks, but he has never been to Haiti. Thiele goes to Haiti about twice each year and usually is gone for a week at a time. They value remaining themselves, something that many couples lose when they meld two lives into one. And while they both hope to visit the other’s country of passion, it’s a dream that live in the future.

In 2006, Dols received St. Norbert College’s equivalent to the Sent Forth Award in recognition for his work in Africa since graduating from St. Norbert, Thiele said. He is currently an assistant principal and campus minister at Holy Family Catholic High School in Victoria, Minn., but students approach him as if he were a friend, Thiele said.

“Our passions just line up,” she said, smiling and shrugging her shoulders.

Ten years out, Thiele hopes to be living a life very similar to her current life. She and Dols will be invested in their local community and reaching out to those who often slip through the cracks in society. They plan to live in North Minneapolis where there are many opportunities for them to be purposeful about outreach, she said.

“Another adult being a positive influence on someone’s life,” she said, “it can never be bad.”

Alumni find rings worthy

This article was originally printed in The Concordian in April 2012.

MOORHEAD, MN--

Her Cobber ring sits in a glass dish, unworn. The golden “C” in a rectangular ruby surrounds “05,” the year Jade Rosenfeldt graduated from Concordia College. Now an attorney at Vogel Law Firm in Fargo, N.D., Rosenfeldt doesn’t wear her ring.

Each year, hundreds of juniors and a handful of seniors spend $500, $600 or $700 to purchase the idolized rite of passage to wear proudly on their right hands, but after graduation day comes and goes, when the diplomas are hidden in boxes and real life ensues, some Cobbers like Rosenfeldt take off their rings. Even if they don’t wear them, however, most Cobbers who coughed up the cash are glad they did so.

Rosenfeldt graduated from Concordia in 2005 with degrees in sociology and social work. While she didn’t purchase a ring right away, she caved by senior year. People see the ring as a badge of honor, she said. It’s reflective of someone who not only graduated from Concordia but is also a part of a specific community. It shows achievement, status. But on top of all that, it’s a personal memento.

“It’s like an engagement ring,” she said. “It’s reflective of a commitment, of work put into something.”

Yet Rosenfeldt doesn’t wear her ring on a daily basis. When she wore the ring, it started conversation. She was one more example of a story any student on campus has heard. But, when she and her husband, Steve, got married, her ring fingers were full. After her sister died in a car accident, Rosenfeldt and the women in her family decided to get commemorative rings.

“It allows me to to look down and see her,” she said.

The Cobber ring was bumped.

Petty officer Laura Auer enlisted in the Navy after graduating from Concordia in 2010 with a major in English writing. Her mom bought her the ring senior year, and as a Navy woman working with others fresh out of high school, the ring is much more personal.

“It’s a reminder to myself,” she said, “that I’m an intelligent person with a college degree.”

She wasn’t originally sure that she wanted a ring, but now it reminds her of what she’s done, of where she’s called home. Once, at her naval optometrist check-up in Portsmouth, Va., the optometrist said she’d seen a lieutenant with the same ring–not a similar one, as Auer insisted, but the same one. After the optometrist went and fetched the lieutenant, Auer connected with a Cobber 1,500 miles from campus.

Yet for other alumni, it’s not a ring in a dish or a personal reminder. It’s a way of life.

Assistant director of admissions Katherine Halvorson, a 2002 graduate who majored in organizational communication and religion, found her passion and her family at Concordia. She considered working in geriatrics, a church profession, event planning or human resources, but she worked in admissions throughout her time as a student. After graduation, she began working in the office full-time.

“The connection people make to this place is kind of neat,” she said. “This place is steeped in tradition.”

She met her husband, Joe, a 2004 graduate, while working the front desk in the admission office and complaining about filling a CSC-equivalent commissioner position (for which Joe applied and filled).

“Concordia put two rings on my fingers,” she said.

She got her Cobber ring as soon as possible, during the beginning of her junior year. Her husband, a few years behind her, didn’t get his ring as a junior. By that time, they couple was married and had a baby, so his parents purchased his ring as a graduation present.

“As someone who values tradition and establishing roots, it’s nice,” she said.

Rosenfeldt’s ring is unworn but not unloved. She sees it every day, and said she would gladly buy it again knowing it would rest in that glass dish.

“It’s a really great tradition,” she said. “Most colleges don’t have such a following. The community is something to be proud of.”

Prospective student rocks with PTFS band

This article was originally printed in The Concordian in February, 2012.

Photo by Rachel Torgerson. Members of Post Traumatic Funk Syndrome,
Russ Peterson and Matt Patnode, play sax with prospective student Sarah Kremer.

MOORHEAD, MN--

The dim lights paint the audience in shades of grey as the young brunette’s saxophone reflects golden light. The drums, trumpets, trombone and nine other jazz instruments fill the room with loud, saucy music that floats around a pre-determined chord progression, a progression the high school senior has never practiced with the rest of the band. She exchanges fours with the band’s alto saxophone player; he plays a few measures of improvisation, and she responds with equally emphatic runs up and down. Staccato and glissando, like a player who has learned from the best.

Within one hour last Friday night Jan. 27, prospective student Sarah Kremer played on stage with Concordia saxophone professor and jazz ensemble director Russ Peterson in his band Post Traumatic Funk Syndrome, improvised with Concordia students in the blues band Chord on Blue (which opened for PTFS) and played sax to a karaoke track of Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” in the High School Choral Festival talent show.

“So, do you think Sarah should come to Concordia,” Russ Peterson asked the cheering crowd after Kremer’s scat solo, “or NDSU?”  The clapping turned to loud boos, a smile came to Kremer’s face and the cheering resumed.

Kremer, a senior at Cathedral High School in St. Cloud, Minn., has played saxophone for eight years and first met Peterson while on campus for the 2011-2012 Minnesota All-State Jazz Band. He went to the concert and talked to Kremer about her sax solo after the impressive performance.

“She was firey and had tons of energy,” he said.

When Kremer visited Concordia in the fall, Peterson told her to bring her horn to Studio 222 in Fargo where his five-piece band, The Funk Commission, was playing.

Throughout the first set, she sat in the front row, but Peterson bounced in his chair remembering and imitating Kremer during that set. Leaned forward, ready to jump, he said she looked like an athlete waiting for the coach’s call.

“Put me in, Coach! Put me in!” he said, putting his words into her imagination. When she started playing with them, the crowd erupted.

“People stood up and screamed,” Peterson said. “I really enjoyed it.”

Kremer has had several similar impromptu performances throughout her musical career. While at the University of Minnesota—Morris’ Jazz festival in 2007, then seventh-grade Kremer traded fours with guest clinician Allen Vizzutti, a classical and jazz artist who has performed around the world from Tokyo, Germany and Slovenia to Winnipeg, England, Brazil and many more countries. Kremer attended the UMM festival for several years, but the experience was the first time she improvised with a famous musician. She has since worked with several accomplished musicians including Steve Jennings, Eric Merienthal and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, an international ensemble founded in New Orleans’ French Quarter.

In Nov. 2011, Kremer saw Gordon Goodwin, a Grammy award-winning composer and performer, at a jazz event at Winona State University. Goodwin called for one person from each instrumental part, and Kremer couldn’t resist.

“I just ran onstage,” she said.

Eric Merienthal, a member of Gordon Goodman’s Big Phat Band, recognized Kremer from the UMM Jazz festival in 2008 where he had been a guest clinician the year after Vizzutti. He came up to her and just said “Yeah! I remember playing with you!” Kremer said. Her tone of voice got higher as she remembered the event, the honor of being remembered by a famous musician years later. She wasn’t expecting to be remembered, she said, but the experience has stuck with her.

Many Cobbers also remember Kremer. Senior Nicholas Ganoe, a music education major whose primary instrument is saxophone, thought she was a fantastic player from another college in the area.

“I was totally shocked [when Peterson announced she was a prospective student],” he said in an email. “Both of her performances were fantastic and rivaled anything that anyone else in our saxophone department could play… if she wants to perform, I think she could make it at a conservatory.”

Kremer is the first prospective student to accompany Peterson’s band in such a way, he said. Most prospective students wouldn’t have the guts to do it.

“She’s fearless and good,” Peterson said. “She’s not afraid to walk into a place, pull out her horn and start playing.”

After impressing Cobbers in the Centrum, Kremer hurried off the stage, packed up her sax and rushed over to Memorial Auditorium just in time to play in the Choral Festival talent show.

As the whistling of Maroon 5’s “Moves like Jagger” played over the speakers, Kremer tapped her foot and swayed her sax side to side while playing the popular melody. By the time front-man Benjamin Levin would begin the chorus with “I don’t need to try to control you, look into my eyes and I’ll own you with the moves like Jagger,” Kremer was floating around the melody, playing enough to recognize and enjoy the song but taking creative liberties and turning it into a jazz lick. Three prospective students in the top row of the auditorium seating were dancing, standing up and cheering while pumping their fists in the air. After the standing ovation sat back down and the cheering stopped, the three-judge, American Idol-style panel shared their feedback.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” said Chris Kenney, a sophomore vocal performance major and the ‘Randy’ character in the emcee panel during the talent show.

“I like to judge songs by whether or not I could have danced to them,” said Britta Fitzer, a senior music education major and the ‘Paula’ character, “and I could’ve danced all night to that.”

Even ‘Simon,’ senior music education major Ryan Fellman, said “would your last name happen to be Peterson?”

The following day, Kremer sang with the Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota as one of four featured choirs in the Choral Festival concert. Not only does Kremer play a mean jazz scat on the sax, but she also plays violin and piano, sings soprano, participates in five school-related ensembles, and captains both the nordic ski team and the state champion cross country team. In addition, she plans to audition for the role of Rizzo in her high school’s musical “Grease,” because she has never been onstage in a theatrical production before.

“I’ve always regretted not being in a musical,” she said, excepting her role in one pit orchestra, “and I want to finish high school with no regrets.”

She plans to participate in varsity track, band and choir at Concordia—a seemingly impossible task but one that she has discussed with Peterson and Marvin Roeske, the women’s cross country coach. Because cross-country is a team sport based on individual performances, athletes can do workouts on their own time, Roeske said. It is different from other sports, and some students like Kremer can still be athletic while performing in multiple ensembles.

“Some kids realize they have to make choices, [but] sometimes they cope really well,” Roeske said. “I think she’s the kind of person who can make a combination work.”

After a thrilling few days on campus filled with a music scholarship audition, three on-stage sax performances and a 36-hour choral festival, Kremer looks forward to her last semester of high school and returning to Concordia.

Clausen conducts 9/11 tribute in NYC

This article was originally printed in The Concordian on September 23, 2011.

MOORHEAD, MN--

“Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison,” translated “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy,” is the basis for the ending of René Clausen’s “Memorial” written to commemorate the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Ten years later, on Sept. 11, 2011, Clausen directed the piece in New York City’s renowned Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The concert, titled “A Concert of Commemoration,” took place a few miles from Ground Zero, honored the 10th anniversary of the attacks and featured Karl Jenkins and Clausen, both guest composers and conductors.

The essence of “Memorial” is the drama and response to the attacks on Sept. 11, he said in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio preceding its first debut in 2003. The 30-minute piece has four sections, referred to as “September Morning,” “The Premonition,” “Attacks,” and “Prayers and Petitions” by Clausen in the MPR interview.

“Hopefully the themes of the piece are cleansing and hope,” he said in the MPR interview.

Clausen conducted his piece "Memorial"
with a mass choir in New York City
for the 10th anniversary of the
Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

When the piece was first premiered in New York City, both the Concordia Choir and Concordia Orchestra made the trip. In an e-mail interview, Clausen recalls the “intense passion, commitment, skill, professionalism, and musical craftsmanship exhibited by our Concordia students” while on that trip. The students performed the piece three times in the one day, he said.

“It was a physical and mental feat as well as performance accomplishment,” Clausen said.

The most memorable performance on that day, however, was not in Lincoln Center but in a Manhatten church, at least for Concordia graduate Michelle Hayes who sang in the choir as the piece was premiered.

“It was powerful beyond belief,” she said in an email. “It was visceral. Every ounce of my being was invested in the piece in hopes it could bring a sense of understanding for the healing that was needed.”

Clausen has conducted several performances of “Memorial” in various locations around the country over the last few years. Last year, Jonathan Griffiths, president of Distinguished Concerts International—New York, contacted Clausen about conducting his piece for the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 and invited the Concordia Choir to sing as well, Clausen said.

While Clausen was able to go to the event, the Concordia Choir remained on campus. Unlike the first trip, the college did not have sufficient time to budget the money to send the choir to New York for the weekend, according to the administration. Also, after the cost of the South Korean tour in May 2011, the college deemed it unwise to ask the choir members to bear the significant cost of the trip.

While the piece was originally written for and performed by the Concordia Choir and Concordia Orchestra after being commissioned by the American Choral Director’s Association, Concordia and the Fargo-Moorhead area were represented in the event, as Concordia Choir alumni and The Master Chorale of Fargo-Moorhead performed.

Clausen also conducted Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” and Jenkins conducted two of his own pieces, “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace” and the United States premier of “For the Fallen: In Memoriam Alfryn Jenkins.”

In addition to conducting “Memorial” in the Lincoln Center, Clausen was also invited to conduct his piece at the Northern Symphony Orchestra’s opening concert to their 10th season this weekend. The NSO is an orchestra in the Twin Cities metro area, and the choir will be comprised of over 70 choir alumni and other musicians to total 125 singers. Hayes, who  directs choir at Anoka High School and helped organize the chorus for the Twin Cities performance, will be singing in the chorus.

The Concert will take place at St. Andrew’s Church in Mahtomedi on Saturday, Sept. 24 at 7:30pm.