When people talk about the arts right now, the vibe has started to feel a bit funeral. Graying subscriber lists, empty seats, orchestras doom-scrolling their own attendance numbers. But Kate Nordstrum has been building the opposite of that story for over a decade. Liquid Music started as a scrappy experiment inside a chamber orchestra and grew into something that premieres work in a desert amphitheater one season and a converted tower the next with no permission required.

Now she's joined by Maija García, running the Capri and asking the same question from the other side of the ecosystem: not how do we save this, but what haven't we built yet. What does a show actually need to feel like tonight? Who's shows up? And how do you grow and keep a scene alive without turning it into a museum piece?

Mathew: Kate, every time I see you, there's a lot brewing, some of it far in the future, some of it right now. Is life always like this for you?

Kate: Yes. There's a lot happening in the present, and I'm also working two and three years out. Some projects have been announced publicly; maybe 50% haven't yet. Depending on the platform, the lead times can be very long, or I can take advantage of opportunities close to now, which I like, and which also makes me a little crazy.

Mathew: For context, Liquid Music started inside the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO), and in 2020 you made it fully independent. What happened?

Kate: Liquid Music was at the SPCO for eight years. Before that, I was producing new-music projects at the Southern Theater; I expanded that work and gave it the name Liquid Music, then brought it with me to SPCO. Being inside an orchestra was wonderful; it opened up new relationships, both within the orchestra world and with other orchestras who got interested in what we were building. It was free-form: I pitched something they were interested in, and we built it from scratch, without a lot of precedent to work around.

Eventually SPCO went through budget realignments across several programs, and Liquid Music was one of the areas they were reconsidering: either reimagine it, scale it back, or let it go independent. They chose to let me take it and run with it, which I really appreciated. I still have a strong relationship with SPCO; we have a project together this coming October, and I regularly bring in SPCO musicians for work I do at the Walker or Northrop. Going independent let it become, I think, what it was always meant to be: we now do projects across the country, and internationally. Minnesota is still home, but having the freedom to find the best context for a project, wherever that is in the world, that's been a gift.

Mathew: Musical performance tends to get sorted into categories: sit-down orchestra, dance performance, and so on. Kate, you've been blending those. And audiences are changing; orchestra houses skew older, and I wonder where the next audience comes from. I've seen younger crowds at Liquid Music events. How do these spaces stop feeling so compartmentalized?

Kate: Liquid Music has always drawn an all-ages audience, teenagers to eighty-year-olds, united by the same instinct: they're looking for something new, not their favorite thing repeated. That shared curiosity is beautiful. It's different depending on the platform. I'm giving 50% of my time right now to the Boston Symphony, which is a different challenge entirely: cultivating a new audience inside a traditional concert hall, which still skews older. That work happens mostly outside the hall itself, through partnerships, festivals, thematic contextualization, chipping away at an older form from the edges. Within Liquid Music, I don't feel that same friction. It's institutions, generally, that could use the help.

Mathew: Maija, does that resonate for you?

Maija: Definitely. The Capri also partners with SPCO, so I've had a parallel experience. I love that Liquid Music grew out of SPCO and eventually became too big, or too free-form, for that structure, and that the organization let it go. That's a powerful precedent, and something more institutions should sit with. I run a venue that's also a social service agency, and I see it as our job to empower creative entrepreneurs without expecting to house them forever. The real question is: what's the engine that lets the next Liquid Music emerge from a place like this?

At the Capri, we're defined by intersectionality. We used to run a Legends concert series that did really well with an older Black church-going audience, driven by people who loved specific artists, and attendance there has dropped by more than half. So I'm asking: why would someone choose the Capri over the Cedar or the Dakota? What's distinct about what we do?

I love how Kate defines Liquid Music by "heart"; I think the Capri is similarly about community coming together, plus a lifelong-learning element: people expanding their palette. Someone comes because an artist they don't know played alongside someone they do, and that curiosity becomes the draw. It's how we've approached Legends, celebrating people like Tommy Barbarella, who played with Prince for years but rarely got billed as the headliner in his own right. Right now I'm in an experimental phase, trying to see who comes to what, and how interest in one thing can cross-pollinate into another.

Mathew: Kate, the Star Tribune called what you do "storied matchmaking." There are really two questions here: what's the special sauce in that matchmaking, and separately, how do you build buzz and get budget, given how limited regional media coverage is here? National press is great, but it doesn't necessarily put people in seats.

Kate: On the matchmaking: I try to approach it organically. I'm listening to artists talk about their work, their hopes, their history, where they want to grow, and sometimes I can connect those hopes to an idea, or to another person. I love bringing worlds together and seeing what happens, knowing plenty of times the spark isn't there, and that's fine too. Nothing feels better than connecting people who, together, can do something neither could do alone. At this point in my career I have a lot of relationships, so it's a joy to keep making those connections.

Mathew: And on marketing? 

Kate: it really comes down to storytelling and partnerships, and the artists' own voice. In a world with too much information competing for attention, an ad doesn't break through the way direct storytelling does. I've kept a blog on the Liquid Music website for years, not as active as I'd like, but I commission writers for reflective pieces, off-center artist interviews, artist-to-artist conversations, lifting up the spirit of the work in a way I wish more publications did. I'm hoping to build something similar at the Boston Symphony, because there are so many stories worth telling from inside an organization.

Maija: In my first year at the Capri (I started in June 2025), our marketing director retired on my first day, and the position stayed open for about six weeks. So my strategy has really just been to activate the space constantly: gallery openings, bringing in visual artists, talking about what's happening on stage, trying to get people to understand this is a place where something is always going on. Check the newsletter, check the website. I think the Twin Cities has a real gap: there's no central calendar people go to for the flood of things happening here. People go where they're already used to going, or wherever the algorithm feeds them.

Mathew: Right, you only see what one platform decides to show you.

Maija: Exactly. So I've leaned hard into the personal: telling people about events when I'm out. I was at the mayor's inauguration last night, meeting new people, handing out a flyer for Saturday's festival. It's closer to organic, person-to-person enchantment than anything algorithmic.

Mathew: It really does feel generational. I post to 7,000 followers on Instagram and have no idea if it's landing anymore.

Maija: It's not the answer it used to be. Paid social ads don't seem to work either. When my clients' events are full, it's usually because I called or texted people directly, an invitation, at minimum a direct email from a real person. I'd also say partnerships matter enormously. Going it alone is exhausting. I'm grateful for years of work with the Walker, Northrop, SPCO, and this fall I have something with Cruise, a new gallery in Uptown. Those ongoing relationships are what make the extra reach possible.

Kate: We're not one thing pulling in one direction; we need our tentacles out in ten directions. Better community partners means more people at the table, and I think we lost that for a while. Maybe now's the time to bring it back.

It's more than a marketing tactic, too, it's bringing in different expertise. When I work with Cruise, they speak to visual art in a way I can't. That multiplicity of voice is genuinely valuable. Some organizations get territorial, "we can fundraise this ourselves, why complicate it with a partner," but what you lose is every other way into understanding the work. My projects are usually multidisciplinary, and no single institution gets at all of that alone.

Mathew: Does the label "music series" ever feel too narrow for what you're actually building?

Kate: It doesn't bother me: music is always the center, or at least the starting point. Plenty of projects are simply music events. But there's always consideration of space, atmosphere, the welcome you're creating. Even if there's no filmmaker or choreographer involved, you're thinking about lighting, about the space itself and who owns it. It's a holistic approach no matter what.

Mathew: I think about the Perfume Genius show you did at the Walker a few years ago. I was in tears, but it wasn't just the music. It was the whole scenery, the vibe. That was the first time I really saw a multi-generational, mixed audience in one room.

Kate: I loved that project. It was the last Liquid Music event I did under the SPCO umbrella, and I was proud to go out on it. It was new music from Perfume Genius, later released as an album, and a completely new way of working for them. I love when artists who are excellent at what they do want to take a real risk, and we get to help develop and premiere it. The way Perfume Genius approaches their art now is different because of that project. We're actually doing a follow-up this spring as part of the Liquid Music season, this time releasing the music alongside the live premiere, rather than a year later, thanks to what we learned the first time.

Mathew: New topic: Minnesota, or "the Midwest," as a place to build from. Kate, you've had national and international recognition working from here. Maija, you're running a very regional space. Has place ever felt like a liability?

Kate: I could talk about this for two hours. This place gave me the creative freedom and culture to build what I've built, a lot of premieres have happened here through Liquid Music before going on to East and West Coast dates and beyond. Where I've felt frustrated is press: a project can premiere here and go unreviewed until a year later, when it's in New York. That's a lost opportunity, in a place that prides itself on caring about arts and culture. I don't think we always recognize the talent right in front of us, or where it lands in the wider landscape.

Maija: One of the things I'm hoping to build at the Capri is a home for process, not just product. I've worked all over: Broadway, Carré in Amsterdam, and also grassroots, site-specific work, and I think the Capri is positioned to house the kind of new-work development that Liquid Music does: work by artists with an unconventional vision, "unbound by precedent," as Kate put it. The question is who the audience is for that, and how you bring them along.

Mathew: There's no "underground" here because everything's above ground immediately, and there's a gatekeeping layer, media, certain circles, that keeps only certain stories in play. Coming from LA, I see talent everywhere and want to make people into stars. There's a little imposter-syndrome pushback: "don't get ahead of yourself."

Kate: I want to walk something back: when I said we lack perspective on the landscape, I meant press specifically, not audiences. Our audience understands that something new won't be perfect the first time out, and they're proud to say they saw it here first before it plays the Barbican. I'd love if local press understood that too, that we're building something here that matters locally, nationally, and internationally.

There's also a humility factor. When I first moved here, I felt like I had to downplay having worked in New York; people were skeptical that outside experience meant anything, almost defensive about it. There's a "we know what's up here, pay your dues" attitude. Which is fine, I'm a hard worker, but it's real.

Mathew: It's almost an import-export tension: what you bring in and take out, and friction between people who left and came back versus people who stayed. How does that play out in the work?

Maija: I was recruited from New York to the Guthrie in 2018, to direct what I thought would be my final choreography project, West Side Story, which became their most successful show ever. During that run, they offered me a full-time role directing professional training. I said yes, thinking I'd build toward directing there. But what I learned arriving here was that I'd been boxed in immediately as "the choreographer"; there was very little interest in who I actually was as an artist, or in the multidisciplinary work I'd done in New York. It was disorienting. Kate's one of the few people who's seen the fuller range of what I do.

I think the Twin Cities arts world is highly organized, with strong foundational structures, but that structure can also be limiting: for artists trying to grow past a silo, and for audiences who never cross over from orchestra to opera to theater. It's an ecosystem, and we have to remember all boats rise together, rather than each institution holding tightly to its own lane.

Kate: Maija and I met at SPCO and the Guthrie, respectively, and knew right away we were kindred, in art and in life. We push each other, because we know we'll get boxed in unless we take the initiative to work beyond it. At SPCO, I asked for room to do outside work; I gave them everything I had within the frame they could offer, but keeping my independent practice alive kept me from hitting a wall there, and gave me the well-roundedness I needed to keep growing. Maija's done the same, saying yes to directing elsewhere when it makes sense. It's not easy to juggle, but it's been necessary.

Mathew: Does language like "flyover," "heartland," or even "the North" affect anything, good or bad? New York and LA claim their identity loudly and fight for cultural currency. We have more merch stores per capita than anywhere I've seen, but also a strange quietness about owning it, like the branding doesn't translate into a bridge, just reinforces the bubble.

Kate: I'm personally proud to say I'm from here, and that projects were built here. Artists who've worked on projects built here see the power of working outside the major world centers. But I also have to think beyond here; I'd love for people to fly in for a premiere, but realistically I need a project to also land in New York or elsewhere to get coastal eyes and ears on it. A lot gets built in places like Minneapolis and gets claimed by wherever it's reviewed. I wish reviews acknowledged the years of development that happened before a project ever reached them.

Mathew: Maybe that's a press-release fix, making sure the "where" shows up in the who-what-when-where.

Kate: Right, like Maija said about talent here: these cities have an extraordinary wealth of creative people. I was astonished when I first arrived; I had no idea the Black Arts Movement, or the regional theater movement, had been so centered here. These are movements that reshaped the national arts landscape, and we don't celebrate that the way LA would, whether they'd done it or not.

Maija: A former Guthrie marketing director once told me, essentially, that keeping our creative scene under-the-radar was intentional, a "deep, dark secret." I never understood why.

Mathew: Kate, your work is about artists and audiences being transformed. When have you actually felt that happen in a room?

Kate: A recent example: a site-specific piece by John Luther Adams in southwest Utah, in a natural amphitheater, a 40-person musical event drawing on the terrain, performed by local musicians, with the audience hiking in. There was a real sense of pilgrimage and communion with the space. Park rangers, student musicians, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer coming together in a space that felt made for it.

After a project like that, there's a real letdown afterward, not quite depression, but close. I keep scanning for where the next call is coming from.

I love the tight parameters of a series like the one I run at Northrop, building magic within constraints, but also the open-endedness of finding a place and listening to what wants to be built there. The organ at Northrop, specifically, has been a gift, an instrument that can bring people together in a way most people don't even know is possible.

Mathew: What's the boldest thing you've ever said yes to, not knowing if it would work?

Kate: Honestly, I'm usually the one proposing the leap. Right now it's a project involving a tower in Topanga. I genuinely don't know how we're going to make it work sonically, but I know it's a good idea, and I'll figure it out alongside sound designers, the LA Philharmonic, and my collaborator Dimitri. I always look for real buy-in from collaborators, not just my own conviction. There's also a project I did at MASS MoCA, "Eon Ritual," that brought a lot of artists together for the first time, new bands, new ways of working formed out of it. It never toured anywhere else, and yet it may be one of the more important projects of my life, because it was entirely relational. The value wasn't in where it went next.

Kate: After a project like that, there's a real letdown afterward, not quite depression, but close. I keep scanning for where the next call is coming from.

I love the tight parameters of a series like the one I run at Northrop, building magic within constraints, but also the open-endedness of finding a place and listening to what wants to be built there. The organ at Northrop, specifically, has been a gift, an instrument that can bring people together in a way most people don't even know is possible.

Mathew: What's the boldest thing you've ever said yes to, not knowing if it would work?

Kate: Honestly, I'm usually the one proposing the leap. Right now it's a project involving a tower in Topanga. I genuinely don't know how we're going to make it work sonically, but I know it's a good idea, and I'll figure it out alongside sound designers, the LA Philharmonic, and my collaborator Dimitri. I always look for real buy-in from collaborators, not just my own conviction. There's also a project I did at MASS MoCA, "Eon Ritual," that brought a lot of artists together for the first time, new bands, new ways of working formed out of it. It never toured anywhere else, and yet it may be one of the more important projects of my life, because it was entirely relational. The value wasn't in where it went next.

Mathew: What's a risk either of you took that you probably shouldn't talk about?

Maija: I don't use "shouldn't"; it either shames you or creates shame, and I refuse both. But I'd say: I've self-produced most of the projects I believe in most, the ones that went furthest out on a limb, often without guaranteed buy-in from anyone but the artists willing to take the leap with me. My approach has usually been reciprocal: I need your expertise, and I want to give you room to grow in return. That's usually what's most transformative: when people know their ideas and aesthetics are genuinely present in the work. The feeling an audience gets, like what you described at Perfume Genius, usually comes from that risk, even if the audience can't name why they're moved.

Kate: There's something beautiful about building these idealistic little families and universes. Projects Maija and I talk about start from a call we can't let go of. With Topanga, it started feeling real once the tower's owners got excited, once Dimitri had movement ideas, once musicians got involved; you start to feel a world coming together, even without knowing why it matters yet. You can't know in advance if it'll be a hit. I do sometimes ask myself whether a new pull is a distraction from my other commitments, or a genuinely important new direction. Right now I'm building something with Dimitri that's deliberately separate from both Liquid Music and the Boston Symphony, and I'm trying to be thoughtful about not spreading too thin across too many names.

Mathew: Last one: if you could break something about how this field works, what would it be?

Maija: I'd fix how people break in. So many extraordinary minds never get exposed to the idea that this kind of world-building is even possible. I'm trying to rally support for a Twin Cities-wide initiative to train people in the production arts. Early in my career, grant money would go entirely to production staff, lighting, sound, while the artists who'd developed the work for months got nothing. That valuation needs fixing. I also want to seed the field: if someone's curious about lighting design, where do they even start? The Capri isn't a union house, so anyone can train in production arts while helping build new work. Support for artists and support for production-arts training need to happen together; right now the production side doesn't have a voice at the table, despite being a real career path.

Kate: Along those lines, mentorship matters enormously. Neither of us found a traditional route into this work, so we've made our own way, and we both feel a real pull to share that path with others. More formal mentorship structures would help.

I'd also say there's real value in a segmented career. I've moved between full institutional support, which is helpful but slow and sometimes exhausting in its own way, and total independence, which is freeing but exhausting for different reasons. Burnout is real on both sides. Right now I'm balancing a 50% institutional role with independent work, and I think institutions should be more open to that kind of portfolio career. I credit SPCO, and now BSO, for encouraging outside work rather than being threatened by it. A lot of institutions still take the position that if they're paying you, they don't want to hear about anything happening elsewhere. More openness there would serve everyone.