Minnesota
Two orchestras, two violists: a Minnesota love story
On a recent Friday morning, two star violists readied themselves for a rehearsal.
Rebecca Albers placed one hand on the piano, using the other to scoop up her 16-month-old son. Maiya Papach kneeled on the floor, nestling a small violin beneath their 4-year-old daughter’s chin. For just a moment, their St. Paul home, which had been a blur of kids and dogs, was still.
Then the couple’s daughter began to play.
She bowed the string tentatively at first but by the piece’s end was grinning. As she took a bow, everyone, including their 16-month-old, applauded.
Most weekend nights, you can find Papach, 46, performing as principal violist of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Albers, 40, as principal violist of the Minnesota Orchestra. They’ve played Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. But these are the performances they’re living for, these days.
Their life here, filled with string quartets and wood blocks and walks to the park, is made possible by the fact that the Twin Cities boasts two acclaimed orchestras, a rarity.
“To have two violists of that caliber as principals in the same city — not to mention the fact that they’re married — is pretty incredible,” said Erin Keefe, concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra and a friend so close the three refer to one another as “sister wives.”
Though neither grew up in Minnesota, Albers and Papach have recruited a crew from their Cathedral Hill neighborhood, loved ones who babysit during concerts and bridge the half-hour gaps when their rehearsals overlap.
Papach’s sister, who is pursuing her doctorate in composition at the University of Minnesota, lives two doors down. Albers’ sister Julie Albers became the SPCO’s principal cellist in 2014. Their mother, a Suzuki music teacher, moved nearby. In fact, so many family members have settled in Minnesota that they note which family members don’t live in town, rather than which ones do.
“Pretty huge viola jobs have come up — like once-in-a-generation jobs — and we’ve looked the other way because we like it here,” Albers said. “We have our family, we have our community. We’re really, really grateful to both be able to live and work here.
“Hopefully that continues to be the case.”
‘A haven for each other’
Their love story begins, fittingly, at a classical music festival.
The two had met before, at the Juilliard School in New York City, where they shared a teacher. But they didn’t get to know each other until the summer of 2006, at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. Albers nursed a crush on Papach, who fascinated her, “but you had no idea,” Albers said, sitting on the rug beside Papach, as their son tugged on her shirt and their daughter pressed a picture book into her lap. “No idea,” Papach said.
The next summer, the two greeted one another with a hug. “I wasn’t really thinking about it,” Papach said, “but we hugged and my body was like, ‘I want to stay here.’”
They got engaged just a few months later.
Albers had moved to Michigan to join a quartet and Papach had been freelancing in New York City when Papach nabbed the SPCO job in 2008. Albers decided to follow. Then the Minnesota Orchestra had an opening, and she auditioned, becoming assistant principal viola in 2010. She won the principal position, becoming the orchestra’s lead violist and go-to soloist, in 2017.
“She takes big, bold leaps of faith,” Papach said admiringly. Same goes for having kids: “I always thought I would like to have a family,” Papach said, “but I was a little more of a scaredy-cat.”
On her instrument and in her home, Albers is the natural leader, the organizer. Friends and colleagues describe Papach as the dreamer, the searcher. The physical comedian, too. Explaining why she’ll never switch from a paper score to an iPad screen, Papach pulled her arms tight to her chest and jutted her head forward, mimicking a dinosaur.
“They’re so different from one another, but in the same way they are as players, they really complement each other,” said Keefe, who performs with both violists in Accordo, a string ensemble composed of present and former principal players from both orchestras. “They’re really able to get inside each other’s heads and become a haven for each other.”
A haven for their friends, too. “Our job can be very stressful and personal,” said Steven Copes, the SPCO’s concertmaster. “You need someone you can trust to talk about things with, to put your head on straight.” The two of them, but especially Papach, have “been there for me as I’ve gone through some very difficult times.”
During the Minnesota Orchestra’s lockout, then again during the pandemic’s shutdown, Keefe found herself spending most nights with Albers and Papach. They’re the kind of friends you don’t need to clean for, she said, the friends you can wear pajamas around. To most people, Keefe’s husband Osmo Vänskä is former music director of the Minnesota Orchestra. But to Albers and Papach’s daughter, he’s “ukki,” the Finnish word for grandfather.
Next month, when both Albers and Papach will perform with Accordo, creating “a scheduling nightmare,” as Papach put it, Vänskä will babysit.
Playing together is easy, the pair said. “We have different strengths on the instrument, but similar instincts,” Albers said. “So we might be doing different articulations, but the overall intention is united.”
The respect they have for one another extends to the music, she continued. “I don’t know that we could actually have a solid relationship if one of us didn’t respect the other completely musically.
“It’s a funny thing how much the music bleeds into our lives.”
‘It keeps opening doors’
As Albers gathered boots and mittens, hats and a helmet, Papach slung harnesses on the dogs, an 11-year-old mutt with an underbite and 5-year-old with a brindled coat. After starts and stops, they headed to the park.
Their daughter swooshed down the sidewalk on her bike. Their son toddled sideways toward a stick, then toward a tree. But half a block in, they found a rhythm.
Becoming parents has shifted their lives, their musical lives included. There are the mundane things: the lack of sleep, the scarcity of time. Papach prepares more by reading, by listening. Gone are the pre-concert naps. Albers often practices in the kitchen, once the kids are asleep.
But Albers believes having kids has made her more creative, too. “Being a parent is so much experimentation, just trying to figure out, what is going to get her to put on her jacket today,” she said, laughing.
As a toddler growing up in a musical family in Colorado, Albers tugged at the scrolls of her two older sisters’ instruments. She bothered them so much that finally they gave her a violin.
Papach’s mother, too, was a musician, a flutist — “orchestral music was her religion.” Born in South Bend, Ind., Papach spent much of her childhood in Japan, where she fell in love with music. It means more to her now than it ever has.
“It keeps opening doors,” she said. “The same piece can reveal itself totally differently at different points in life, depending on what you’re doing, what you’re feeling, what you’re going through.” Papach nodded toward her daughter.
“So that’s what I want her to have.”
The Minnesota Timberwolves have one of the brightest futures in the entire NBA with an exciting young core led by Anthony Edwards who looked like the best shooting guard in the league this past season. The Wolves were very aggressive in this year’s draft as they traded up to the eight pick without giving away any key player.
Let’s dive into each selection they made and the summary of their draft.
The Timberwolves traded into the top ten to land Rob Dillingham out of Kentucky. The 6-foot-2 point guard is arguably the best pure shot-creator and shot-maker in the entire draft. He is wired to score as he plays with unlimited confidence and can score it at all three levels. Dillingham’s pull-up jumper is elite as he has deep range and he is also a tough mid-range scorer.
What makes him an easy fit next to fellow stars is due to his elite spot-up shooting. He’s great at converting shots off the catch due to his great shot preparation, quick shot release and elite shooting ability. Dillingham is more than just a scorer as the Kentucky star is a very good playmaker who plays with a ton of flash.
His scoring gravity opens up the floor for his teammates mixed in with his good court vision which allows him to be one of the top playmakers in the draft. His elite handle combined with his quickness allows him to create space from defenders with ease. On the downside of things, he’s very limited as a defender and will likely be a negative defender in the NBA.
With their other pick in the first round, the Timberwolves added more offensive firepower as they selected Terrence Shannon Jr. out of Illinois. The 6-foot-7 wing was one of the most explosive players in all of college basketball last season.
The smooth lefty is extremely dominant in the open floor as he’s too fast and athletic for opposing players to handle him. He was able to score over 20 points per game while being one of the top scorers in the entire country.
Shannon improved as a shooter each year he was in college which opened up the floor for the rest of his teammates. At the next level, he will be able to bring microwave scoring off the bench while also having the tools to be a versatile perimeter defender. The main question for Shannon is the limited handle as he struggles to create space off the dribble if it’s not a straight-line drive.
The Timberwolves arguably had one of the best drafts of any team this year. They landed an elite point guard in Dillingham who has elite star potential. The talented lead guard will be playing behind Mike Conley who is one of the top veterans in the NBA so that will go a long way in Dillingham’s career.
There’s not a better fit in the NBA for Dillingham. Shannon could be a valuable piece to their rotation down the line as he offers three-level scoring while being able to make high-level athletic plays. The Timberwolves added more youth and elite talent to an already well-established roster. Minnesota fans should be extremely excited for the future.
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Minnesota
Texas man swindled northern Minnesota woman out of $100K in gold bars, $36K in cash, charges say
MARSHALL COUNTY, Minn. — A 23-year-old Texas man faces charges for his role in swindling $36,000 in cash and $100,000 in gold bars from a northern Minnesota woman.
Charges filed in Marshall County say that a 66-year-old woman said she sent the money to a man in Texas because he had told her he had access to her Social Security number. She said she’d sent the cash in $100 bills and tucked the money into books, which she sent to two different CVS stores in Texas.
She added that he had also bought $100,000 worth of gold bars online in August of last year. The man told her he would pick the gold bars up outside her home on Sept. 1, charges say.
That day, she received a phone call and the man told her to bring the gold bars outside and put them in the backseat of a white car sitting outside her home. Once she did so, the car drove off and she couldn’t see who was driving.
Documents say the suspect was apprehended in McKinney, Texas. He was seen on video footage picking up the packages from the CVS stores.
He admitted to collecting the packages and delivering them to an unknown individual, charges say. He said he knew what was in the pacakges, and had picked up roughly 40 of them between August and September of 2023.
He said he had been coerced into picking up the packages, and he was being compensated for his work, according to documents.
The suspect was charged with two counts of theft. The theft charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment.
Last week, Jabez Reeves, a sprinter at Minnesota State University – Mankato, stretched by himself on the end of the school’s track. He then ran three full-speed sprints, as his coach at Mankato watched on.
Three days later, Reeves was on a flight to Paris, where he’ll compete on the Liberian Olympic men’s 4×100 meter relay team.
While the team members are clearly tied to Liberia, they also share a strong connection to Minnesota.
“I have a lot of family toward the Coon Rapids, Brooklyn Park area. So for them, just having people that are from Minnesota, putting on and trying to take our name internationally is pretty huge for them,” Reeves said. “It’s just more like an honor thing, just being grateful that I’m allowed to be in this position now.”
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Reeves grew up in Woodbridge, Va., but transferred to MSU when another Liberian sprinter — Emmanuel Matadi — recruited him.
Matadi is also the veteran of the Liberian relay team. He ran at Johnson High School in St. Paul. Akeem Sirleaf was a sprinter at North St. Paul High School and now runs for North Carolina A&T State University. And then there’s Joseph Fahnbulleh, who ran for Hopkins High School in Minnetonka and then raced for the University of Florida.
Jabez Reeves in Mankato before heading to Paris for the Olympic Games.
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
All three of them have state high school championships under their belts.
“When we all talk, we’re all like ‘Yeah, I’m from this part of Minnesota, I’m gonna do what I gotta do to represent this part of Minnesota,’” Sirleaf said. “But when we all come together on that relay, none of that matters. We just focus on the goal, which is to make it to the final and get a medal.”
While the team has a strong Minnesota connection, they rarely get to run together. Getting timing down and baton passes right will be something they’ll work on in Paris before their first race.
But at Olympic Qualifiers in May in the Bahamas, the team looked like a well-oiled machine.
The top two teams in each heat get automatic bids. Liberia was in fifth place as the last leg of the race came, but Fahnbulleh exploded in the anchor leg, pulling his team into second, edging out Switzerland by a hundredth of a second.
The ecstatic team ran to each other on the track, hugging each other.
“That whole relay was just amazing,” Sirleaf said. “I feel like it was a steppingstone for us to put our name out there to the world, to let the world know that, yeah, we’re a small country, but we’re coming.”
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Sirleaf is nursing an injury and will be an alternate in Paris. John Sherman, a 19-year-old from Middle Tennessee State University, will run in place of Sirleaf.
As the Olympic ceremonies open Friday in Paris, the team will come out waving the Liberian flag, a celebration both of their journey and Liberia’s Independence Day, which is the same day.
In 1991, the U.S., and specifically Minnesota, began resettling refugees from Liberia, who were fleeing civil war. Today, Minnesota is home to one of the largest Liberian populations in the U.S., estimated at around 30,000 people.
“The Minnesota connection is really strong,” said Momodou N’Jie, Joseph Fahnbulleh’s cousin and manager. N’Jie grew up with him in the Hopkins area. He says the community is excited to watch the Liberian-Minnesotans compete in Paris.
“There’s a lot of different watch parties, not only obviously here in Minnesota … Rhode Island’s another big place and obviously in Liberia,” he said. “I think it’ll be very cool to see all these different watch parties.”
As of Thursday, the exact location of those watch parties hasn’t been announced.
Many families will also be traveling to Paris, which wasn’t a possibility at the Tokyo Olympics because of COVID-19 travel restrictions.
“I feel like it’s big, because my mom is going to be there. Because [Liberia’s] her native country. So for her seeing me there in Liberia gear, and us on the stage and being the flag bearer and things like that. It’s kind of just huge for her.”
He said racing for the team, representing the country his mother grew up in, will be an honor.
“I grew up around so many Liberians that it almost feels like a duty,” Reeves said. “I kind of felt like I had to run for Liberia just because of where I’m from. And it’s kind of like my birthright, kind of like something that I feel had to be done.”
Jabez Reeves warms up at Myer’s Field House in Mankato.
Kerem Yücel | MPR News
He said it’s not only his family that’s excited, but the broader Liberian-American community.
“The very first time we qualified, I had almost 1,000 messages, just about ‘Congratulations. We’re so proud of you,’” he said. “I’ve had a couple of run-ins at the airport, like MSP, where people are like, ‘Oh, you’re the Liberian guy!’ It’s super cool to see people happy and excited that we’re doing something for not just ourselves, but for them as well.”
The first race for the relay team will be on Thursday Aug. 8. Fahnbulleh will run the first round of the 200 meters on Aug. 5. Matadi will run the first round of the 100 meters on Aug. 3.
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