Appetites: Chefs cook on stage with the Minnesota Orchestra
A night out seeing the Minnesota Orchestra often involves dinner and there are countless places to eat around Orchestra Hall. But this Saturday, a select number of concert-goers will eat on stage when Sarah Hicks conducts A Musical Feast.
Hicks is the principal conductor of Live at Orchestra Hall and a self-described "huge foodie." She says the two worlds share commonalities.
"Actually the training of a chef and the training of a musician [are] quite similar," Hicks said. "You have to start young. You have to have particular talents, very sort of strenuous training."
Chefs from four local restaurants — Butcher and the Boar, Vincent A Restaurant, Travail Kitchen and Patisserie 46 — will show off their talent and training by preparing dishes on stage while the Minnesota Orchestra performs. Hicks says the musical and food pairings were selected purposefully.
"For some chefs we chose music that they like to listen to while they're cooking. For some it was more symbolic," she said. So when Vincent A Restaurant's executive chef Vincent Francoual — a Frenchman in Minneapolis — is on stage, the Orchestra will play George Gershwin's "An American in Paris."
Hicks says the idea for A Musical Feast came about when she was thinking about the intersection of food and music. "We hear and we see during an orchestra [performance], but what if we could engage all our senses and also smell and taste and feel things as well? I thought that would just be an incredible experience," she says.
An experience that has posed some logistical challenges. "We have to have a fire marshal," says Hicks. "The Travail guys promised an explosion!"
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