MacPhail Presents: 8 Feet from the Stars
8 Feet from the Stars: A Celebration of Songwriting
A Spotlight Series performance by MacPhail faculty member Jacqueline Ultan and the Laurels String Quartet, featuring collaborations with some of the Twin Cities’ most celebrated songwriters.
Join MacPhail faculty member Jacqueline Ultan and the Laurels String Quartet for a luminous evening of collaboration and creativity. This full-length concert features original songs by Twin Cities luminaries Aby Wolf, Adam Levy, Annie Humphrey, Barbara Cohen*, Chan Poling, Chastity Brown*, Dylan Hicks, and John Munson, each arranged in partnership with the quartet.
Blending classical strings with the soul of contemporary songwriting, the Laurels create soundscapes that are both expansive and intimate—an immersive musical experience that celebrates the power of collaboration and the vibrant artistry of our local music community.
*MacPhail Faculty
About the Performers:
Jaqueline Ultan
Jacqueline Ultan is a singularly creative cellist, composer & improvisor who’s unique versatility is reflected in her many current artistic collaborations that include: Duo CORDA (world); Chris Lynch’s Dust Of Suns Ensemble; Pop/folk bands Barbara Cohen and Little Lizard and The Starfolk; Beatles Tribute band The Shabby Road Orchestra; The Laurels String Quartet; Marc Anderson’s Not Always So; free improv ensembles, Vertighost and Hover. Jacqueline has recorded and collaborated extensively with theater, dance, pop, rock and new music artists including: Dan Wilson, Semisonic, Chastity Brown, Ondara, Soul Assylum, Prof, Annie Humphrey, Kill The Vultures, Roma di Luna, The Jayhawks, among others. Jacqueline is honored to have received a McKnight Performing Artist Fellowship; MacPhail Artist & Commissioning Grants; MRAC’s Next Step Grant and a State Arts Board Arts Tour MN grant. As a composer, Ultan co-wrote music and performed in TED Talks! conferences in Minneapolis and L.A. and co-wrote an original duo cello score for a production at Theater Latte Da. Jacqueline is also honored to have been a six-time artist in residence at Tofte Lake Center in Ely, MN. Jacqueline is a dedicated teacher on the faculty at the MacPhail Center for Music and holds a Masters Degree in Performance from Yale University.
Laurels String Quartet
After a chance meeting over a decade ago, The Laurels String Quartet quickly became a staple of the Minneapolis music scene. Their enveloping blend and collective instinct for tuning into the emotional frequency of a song has amassed the group collaborators near and far. Artists such as Belle & Sebastian, Father John Misty, Lucius, Jeremy Messersmith, Macklemore, Dan Wilson, Jason Mraz, Rogue Valley, Motion City Soundtrack, The New Standards, Ondara, and Semisonic have sought their company on stage and in the studio. Having an ease for adapting to different musical and interpersonal contexts, LSQ sets the tone for creative trust.
The quartet features Josh Misner and Devan Moran, violins; Erica Burton, viola; and Jacqueline Ultan, cello. Individually, the quartet members have a broad and diverse resume of work as collaborators, recording artists, composers, improvisors and educators. The quartet has appeared on “Late Night with David Letterman”, PBS, The Current, NPR, and has performed on stages across the country from the celebrated outdoor festival “Rock The Garden” at The Walker Art Center, to the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn NY, to the legendary First Avenue in Minneapolis and everywhere in between.
About the Collaborating Artists:
Aby Wolf
Aby Wolf grew up in northwestern Illinois’ Driftless Region, honing her ear for harmonies by singing along while her mother practiced Erik Satie on the piano. At the age of 19, Aby moved to Minneapolis and began collaborating with musicians across a spectrum of hip hop, neo-soul, weirdo electronic improv, rock, jazz, and classical crossover. Whether writing vocal arrangements, fulfilling commissions, or performing in clubs, theaters, and schools everywhere from Brainerd to Bratislava to Beijing, Aby brings an elastic skillset and a palpable element of joy to whatever endeavor she pursues. A lifelong learner with an ever-expanding curiosity, Wolf’s sound is distinguished not by typical markers of genre or instrumentation, but by her impressive range of expression and experimentation.
Adam Levy
Adam Levy is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, activist, and educator. He has led numerous projects and collaborated in varied musical genres, toured internationally, and released dozens of albums. He is probably best known for being a founding member of The Honeydogs for thirty plus years. Recent projects include the country rock harmony trio Turn Turn Turn. He’s appreciated by many as a literary songwriter who explores socio-political and historical topics often ignored in popular music. “I’m deliberate,” says Levy, “I like to wrap heaviness in a beautiful melody to make folks reflect without being preachy.” He’s taught history and government in high school and songwriting to incarcerated men. He says he still hasn’t written his best song yet.
Annie Humphrey
Annie Humphrey is a veteran, grandmother, woodswoman, a visual artist, a carpenter, a tattoo artist, a singer songwriter, and a musician. She lives a simple life and lives with the seasons. Music is something she does in between it all, or maybe she does visual art in the in-between, or maybe she does carpentry in the in-between, or maybe….
Barbara Cohen
Barbara Cohen is a Minneapolis-born, award-winning composer, singer, and songwriter whose luminous voice and cross-genre artistry span folk, electronica, and modern classical. A founding member of Brother Sun Sister Moon (Virgin Records) and former frontwoman of Farm Accident (Red House Records), Cohen has collaborated with Orbital and Air and released acclaimed solo album California. Her work has been praised as “a gorgeous, dark-streaked evocation of bitter truths, yearning, and redemption” (City Pages) and for “an absolutely breathtaking voice” (Iowa City Press Citizen). Now back in Minneapolis, after years in Los Angeles composing for film and television, Cohen continues to create with Little Lizard—her long-time collaborators Jacqueline Ultan, Jeremy Ylvisaker, and Marc Anderson—with a new EP planned for 2026.
Chan Poling
The Suburbs and The New Standards, Musical Theater Composer. The Suburbs were voted as one of the “Greatest Minnesota Musical Entities of the 20th Century” by the Star Tribune. The New Standards Holiday Show is a Minnesota Tradition.
Music Theater: History Theatre: The Defeat Of Jesse James, Glensheen, Lord Gordon Gordon. Theatre de la Jeune Lune: 1779: The French Revolution, The Nightingale, Cyrano, Children of Paradise (Yale Rep and La Jolla Playhouse); Illusion Theater: A Night in Olympus; Guthrie Theater: Heaven. Awards: MN Music Awards “POP” (Perpetually Outstanding Performer) Award. The Ivey for Glensheen (voted “Best of the Decade,” Star Tribune), The Sage Award for Music for Heaven, Emmy, and a Cine Golden Eagle for film scores.
Chastity Brown
As the daughter of a blues musician, Chastity Brown was born with an innate ability to channel complex circumstances into beautiful, uplifting compositions. Based in Minnesota, but with roots in Tennessee, her songs mine the roots of Americana, folk, and soul music, while Chastity’s stories are delivered in a style that feels remarkably timely, modern, and forward-thinking. “To listen to Chastity is to lose yourself completely in the sorrow, joy, yearning and wonderment of a hopeful voice that never stops searching; a voice so enormous and evocative that it seeps down past your skin and bones and settles right down into your soul.” said writer Andrea Swenson from The Current. She’s been featured on NPR’s “Favorite Sessions,” CMT, American Songwriter, the London Times, Paste Magazine and others. Chastity has toured the U.S. and abroad, appearing on the U.K.’s Later…with Jools Holland.
Dylan Hicks
Dylan Hicks was born in Austin, Texas, in 1970, and has lived since 1983 in Minneapolis. With his six-piece group Dylan Hicks & Small Screens, he plays exploratory pop with literary ambitions and far-flung musical influences including jazz, R&B, freely improvised music, and various song traditions. He’s also the principal songwriter in Munson-Hicks Party Supplies, a collaboration with John Munson, and the the author of two novels, Amateurs and Boarded Windows. His criticism, essays, journalism, and word puzzles have appeared in the New York Times, the Village Voice, the New England Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Paris Review Daily, and in his newsletter NR MINT.
John Munson
Starting in the eighties with Trip Shakespeare to the nineties with Semisonic to the 2000s with MPR’s Wits and The New Standards long series of shows at The State and Fitzgerald Theaters, Munson has never wanted for work. He is very pleased to have been asked to collaborate with The Laurels on this project with such an amazing group of song writers.