Wisconsin Union Theater: Patrons Invited to Last Wisconsin Performance Ever for Acclaimed String Quartet and World-Renowned Chamber Ensemble Performance in September at Memorial Union

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug. 30, 2022

Contact Information:
Shauna Breneman, Communications Director
Email: sbreneman@wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 262-8862

PATRONS INVITED TO LAST WISCONSIN PERFORMANCE EVER FOR ACCLAIMED STRING QUARTET AND WORLD-RENOWNED CHAMBER ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE IN SEPTEMBER AT MEMORIAL UNION

MADISON – The timeless beauty of music by Beethoven, Mozart, Robert Schumann, and Andrea Casarrubios will usher in the Wisconsin Union Theater’s renowned annual Concert Series in Shannon Hall at Memorial Union with performances by the Emerson String Quartet on Sept. 24 and the Manhattan Chamber Players on Sept. 29.

The official start of the 2022-2023 season is bittersweet as the event will be the only Wisconsin stop on a farewell tour wrapping up the Emerson String Quartet’s 47-year career. The musicians have been honored with nine GRAMMYs, three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year Award over nearly five decades.

The ensemble includes cellist Paul Watkins, violinist Eugene Drucker, violinist Philip Setzer, and violist Lawrence Dutton.

The Emerson String Quartet will perform the following compositions by Ludvig Van Beethoven:

• String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2
• String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130
• Grosse Fuge in B-flat Major, Op. 133

Patrons only have to wait five days after the Quartet’s performance to enjoy a performance by the Manhattan Chamber Players at Shannon Hall on Sept. 29. The dynamic program spans centuries and will include:

• Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• “La Libertad Se Levantó Llorando” (“Liberty Rose Weeping”) by Andrea Casarrubios
• Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 by Robert Schumann

With its exuberant performance and instrumental prowess in the viola, violin, cello, piano, clarinet, flute, oboe, and harp, the Manhattan Chamber Players promises audience members not just a performance, but an experience.

The Wisconsin Union Theater’s chamber music series, the Concert Series, will continue through April 2023 with the following additional performances:

• Sō Percussion with Caroline Shaw, Nov. 5
• Geneva Lewis with Evren Ozel, Jan. 27, 2023
• Imani Winds, Feb. 5, 2023
• Anthony McGill with the UW–Madison Symphony Orchestra, April 4, 2023
• Danish String Quartet, April 18, 2023

The team offers virtual and in-person attendance options for all Concert Series shows.

Patrons can purchase an in-person ticket subscription to all Concert Series events at a 20% discount through Sept. 23 or until sold out. Patrons can also purchase single tickets to these performances. Wisconsin Union members, patrons under the age of 18, and University of Wisconsin–Madison students are eligible for discounted single tickets.

Patrons can purchase tickets online, by phone at (608) 265-2787 or in-person at the Memorial Union Box Office.

“The Emerson String Quartet and Manhattan Chamber Players performances at Shannon Hall are opportunities to experience technically challenging, beautiful compositions performed by some of the most talented artists in the world,” Wisconsin Union Theater Director Elizabeth Snodgrass said. “Shannon Hall is designed to provide exquisite, world-class performing arts experiences, from its acoustic design to its technology, and is the perfect opportunity to experience the full beauty of live music.”

Accomplished and renowned musicians have performed in Madison as part of the Wisconsin Union Theater’s more than century-long chamber music series, the Concert Series. Some Series artists, such as violinist Itzhak Perlman, were already world-renowned when they performed as part of a Wisconsin Union Theater season. Others rose further to fame after their Wisconsin Union Theater performance, such as mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett.

The Wisconsin Union Theater team presents the Concert Series in collaboration with UW-Madison students of the Wisconsin Union Directorate (WUD) Performing Arts Committee. WUD, the programming board of the non-profit organization the Wisconsin Union, includes 11 committees and six clubs. Wisconsin Union Theater ticket purchases and purchases at the Union’s building Memorial Union, in part, support the hands-on professional and leadership development experiences offered through WUD.

Patrons can click here to learn more about the Concert Series performances.

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About the Wisconsin Union Theater

For more than 75 years, the Wisconsin Union Theater has served as a center for cultural activity in the heart of the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. The Theater hosts performances in multiple locations, including Memorial Union, and has an extensive history of remarkable performances. The Wisconsin Union Theater is committed to social justice and works to create an equitable, diverse, and inclusive place for all who engage with the Theater’s programming, events, and activities. The Wisconsin Union Theater is part of the Wisconsin Union, a membership organization that blends study and leisure to create unique out-of-classroom opportunities. Learn more: union.wisc.edu/wisconsin-union-theater.

About the Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee

The Wisconsin Union Directorate Performing Arts Committee is part of the Wisconsin Union’s leadership development program for UW–Madison students and supports the Wisconsin Union Theater’s mission of serving students through the performing arts. By helping to program the Theater’s annual season of performing arts presentations, the students learn about program curation, relationship-building, marketing, communications, budgeting, and production. Learn more: union.wisc.edu/get-involved/wud/performing-arts.

To read this release online, visit union.wisc.edu/about/news/emerson-manhattan.

North Central Group, a 40+ Year Leader in the Hospitality Industry, Unveils New Company Name and Logo

MADISON, Wis. (August 25, 2022) — North Central Group, a leader in the ownership, development and operation of premier hospitality properties, has announced that they will debut a new company name and logo that solidifies their expertise in all aspects of the hospitality industry: real estate, development, asset management, hotels and more.

Renamed to “NCG Hospitality,” the Wisconsin-based, family-owned business looks to embrace a new identity that focuses on the full spectrum of hospitality development, operations and management. Established in 1981 by David Lenz, NCG Hospitality is credited with over 70 hospitality projects during its 40+ years and currently owns and operates more than 30 properties across multiple states and national brands.

“Our new name and logo perfectly encapsulate the depth and breadth of our passionate pursuit of our company mission of being ‘Premier’ — among the best of the best — at NCG Hospitality,” said Jonathan Bogatay, Chief Executive Officer of NCG Hospitality. “We are growing and proud to make a difference in the communities in which we live and work, and in our industry as a whole.”

Alongside their new company name, NCG Hospitality adopts a modernized logo that represents the core pillars of NCG Hospitality as an employer, real estate developer and property manager. NCG Hospitality aims to continue to build a diversified hospitality portfolio and relationships with its Team Members that allow everyone to work with, grow with and stay with NCG Hospitality for the long run. The three-dimensional square block represents a foundation and opportunities for teamwork as well as internal and external growth that NCG Hospitality is able to provide.

“This is a major milestone for our company, one which celebrates a family-owned business for not only reaching 40 years, but also setting the foundation for the future. Real estate is our trade… hospitality is our craft! We are excited to enter this next era with the most incredible, growth-minded craftspeople — our Team Members,” said Jeff Lenz, President and Chief Asset Officer.

To learn more about NCG Hospitality, visit ncghospitality.com or follow them on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

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About NCG Hospitality     

NCG Hospitality is a leader in the ownership, development, and operation of premier hospitality properties. Established in 1981 by David Lenz, NCG Hospitality is a family-owned business with over 40 years of experience in the hospitality industry. We own and operate more than 30 properties across multiple states and national brands. We leverage our unparalleled expertise to provide hotel management services, hotel development expertise, and real estate-focused services to property owners and investors throughout the U.S. Learn more at ncghospitality.com.

Contact:
Jake Leskovar
jleskovar@evokebrands.com
(608) 556-7470

Cap Times: Carl Bernstein with David Maraniss Coming to Idea Fest Sept. 15

Read Paul Fanlund’s full column here

Early in his memoir about his entrée into newspapering, Carl Bernstein recalled his first time a big story broke — an “eruption” he called it — at the now-defunct Washington Evening Star.

“A police call on the city desk squawk box reported the possible electrocution of at least two victims at one of the city’s public swimming pools,” Bernstein wrote. The supervising editor motioned over a team of reporters and gave them instructions. Bernstein watched as they tore out in separate directions — to the scene of the accident, to two local hospitals and to police headquarters. A 10-year-old boy and a lifeguard who tried to save him had been electrocuted. An electrician had been repairing wires on the pool and his 9-year-old son, who was with him, had tragically turned on a switch.

Seventy-five minutes or so after the police dispatcher’s first call, the last paragraph of an extensive story was reaching the newspaper’s composing room to be set into type.

“I felt, for the first time, the adrenaline rush of a newspaper rising to a story,” Bernstein wrote.

He was 16 at the time and barely paying enough attention to his formal education to finish high school, but he was getting his preferred education as a newspaper copy boy, the first rung on a ladder that would lead to immortality as co-author of the Washington Post’s reporting on Watergate, arguably the most consequential investigative journalism in U.S. history.

Next month, people in Madison will get the chance to hear Bernstein talk in person about his colorful early career, his Watergate recollections and the ongoing era of Donald Trump.

And it won’t be just any conversation with an ordinary interviewer.

Bernstein will be interviewed by his longtime friend and fellow Washington Post icon David Maraniss. Both are Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists and acclaimed authors.

Any interview by Maraniss is special. He is perhaps Madison’s most accomplished author and journalist, a West High School graduate whose father, Elliott, was once editor of the Cap Times. A fixture of Cap Times Idea Fest since it began in 2017, Maraniss has invited many national figures to Madison, starting in the first year with Marty Baron, then the Post’s top editor.

Through the years, I have personally thanked Post notables such as Baron, Dan Balz, Amy Goldstein, Carol Leonnig, Alexandra Petri, Catherine Rampell and Phil Rucker, among others, for making the not-all-that-easy trip to Madison. They often cite their admiration of Maraniss as a colleague, friend and, in some cases, as a mentor.

The Bernstein-Maraniss conversation will be a limited-capacity weeknight session of Idea Fest, new for us, that requires a separate ticket to benefit the independent local journalism of The Capital Times.

The $125 price (discounted for Cap Times members and for those purchasing tables) includes drinks, appetizers and a copy of Bernstein’s latest book, which was quoted above: “Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.” It’s not about Watergate, but about Bernstein’s 15-year apprenticeship in the newspaper business.

The event is at 7 p.m. on Thursday night, Sept. 15, in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, and you can purchase tickets here.

I am biased, of course, but I think this will be one of the most memorable, even historic, conversations we have hosted in what is now our sixth annual thought festival.

For me, that’s in part because Bernstein and reporting partner Bob Woodward (whom Maraniss interviewed for Idea Fest in 2020) inspired a generation of baby boomers to enter journalism after Watergate in the late 1970s. The romance and public service of what they did contributed to a glut of would-be journalists trying to elbow into the profession. Trust me, I recall that part all too well.

Bernstein’s account of big, breaking stories also struck a chord, reminding me of some of Madison’s biggest local stories in recent decades that I was part of as a reporter and editor at the Wisconsin State Journal. One was the tornado that terrorized tiny Barneveld in the overnight hours in June 1984, killing nine; another was a shattering double homicide at the City-County Building by a young man named Aaron Lindh in 1988; and a third the 1993 post-game stampede at Camp Randall Stadium after the Badgers defeated Michigan that injured and nearly killed scores of fans.

Those stories, like Bernstein’s many examples, involved all-hands-on-deck journalistic teams making sense of chaos and providing depth, breadth and context for next-day print newspaper readers before the internet changed the delivery of news.

Bernstein’s book describes his many early-career experiences on stories from the Kennedy administration to the civil rights movement, but he writes most colorfully about a spellbinding array of crimes and accidents and explains how he and more veteran reporters somehow managed to wrangle information.

Woodward, his Watergate-era partner, described Bernstein on the book’s jacket as “one of the great reporters of all time. He taught himself the genius of perpetual engagement that led us to Watergate: watching, looking, questioning and overwhelming the moment. His rules — go anywhere, listen hard, push and push some more — are, to this day, the touchstone of investigative reporting.”

Two months ago, to mark the 50th anniversary of the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate office building that culminated 26 months later in President Richard Nixon’s resignation, Bernstein and Woodward co-authored an opinion page reflection for the Post comparing the Nixon era to the years of Donald Trump.

“Both Nixon and Trump have been willing prisoners of their compulsions to dominate, and to gain and hold political power through virtually any means,” they wrote. “In leaning so heavily on these dark impulses, they defined two of the most dangerous and troubling eras in American history.

“As (George) Washington warned in his Farewell Address more than 225 years ago, unprincipled leaders could create ‘permanent despotism,’ ‘the ruins of public liberty,’ and ‘riot and insurrection.’ ”

So please join us for an evening with two of the country’s foremost observers and commentators. You will support a good cause, and it will almost certainly be a night you’ll remember.

The Curtain Rises on Madison Ballet’s 41st Season

MADISON, WI – The artists of Madison Ballet are back in the studio preparing for an unprecedentedly athletic and inspiring season under the artistic leadership of Ja’ Malik. The newly appointed Artistic Director has built a company of local and international dancers that has grown exponentially while providing more opportunities for audiences to be inspired.

Read more here

Suttle-Straus Holding Free Brunch Event on Paper and Packaging Ideas

JOIN US FOR AN EDUCATIONAL SEMINAR AND FREE BRUNCH!

When: Tuesday, September 13, 2022 9:00-10:30am

Where: Suttle-Straus 1050 Uniek Drive, Waunakee, WI 53597

Who: Limited to 40 marketers and/or creatives at this session

What: A hot breakfast buffet and the presentation on “The Idea Shop Packaging Collection.”

As buyers receive a purchase at their doorstep, they start to consider if it was a good investment or an item to soon be returned. The unboxing experience gives each buyer a moment to see how the brand values their own product, how the brand values the customer, and what they can expect from that brand moving forward. All this communication happens in the few moments after the tape is cut and item is revealed.

With a focus on sustainable solutions, The Idea Shop Packaging Collection takes a careful look at each moment in the unboxing experience. Through print demonstrations we explore how to maximize brand impact while utilizing materials that are responsibly made and recyclable. Primary and secondary boxes as well as wraps, labels, envelopes, and invites are featured.

Each attendee will receive a kit free of charge.

How: Register on the Eventbrite page to claim your ticket. RSVP before tickets run out!

Have questions? Email marketing@suttle-straus.com or call Maeghan Nicholson at 608-850-2967.