The Michigan Philharmonic’s Miniature Masterpieces is an annual collaboration with the Detroit Institute of Arts. This year’s program highlights the expressive beauty of the viola with guest composer and performer Stuart Ross Carlson. The concert also features enchanting works by Claude Debussy and Sergei Prokofiev, as well as a Romantic-era gem by Emilie Mayer, arranged by conductor Nan Washburn.

Twenty-five-year-old Isaiah Collier is a musical virtuoso in the truest sense of the phrase. He began playing the saxophone at age 11, and his intuitive proficiency earned him attention early on. Since then, his band, Isaiah Collier and The Chosen Few, has been turning heads. The New York Times featured him in their Fall Arts Preview in September 2024, and he was also included in DownBeat Magazine’s "25 for the Future" in their 90th Anniversary issue in July 2024. He is the winner of the Rising Star Award in DownBeat Magazine’s critics poll for Tenor Saxophone (2023) and Soprano Saxophone (2024).

As far as he where he plans to take his music, Collier says, “I reach backwards, and forwards simultaneously when creating art and what is ahead of me is the past.”

This tribute performance honors Detroit jazz legend and drummer Roy Brooks (1938–2004), a key figure in the vibrant Detroit jazz scene. Throughout his career, Brooks performed and recorded with jazz luminaries such as Horace Silver, Yusef Lateef, Max Roach, M’Boom, Charles Mingus, and Woody Shaw. He was known for his innovative use of unusual instruments in his performances, including a musical saw and the "breath-a-tone," a drum with vacuum tubes attached to regulate pitch.

In 1972, he formed the Artistic Truth, which featured artists like Sonny Fortune, Eddie Jefferson, and Hamite Blunt. He also created the Aboriginal Percussion Choir, an ensemble focused on combining non-Western percussion instruments with more conventional ones. This performance will feature the music of Roy Brooks, played by musicians who worked with him, as well as a blend of younger-generation musicians who were influenced by his groundbreaking work.

The Five Tangos, originally conceived as a stage production, was set to debut at the Detroit Institute of Arts Film Theatre in November 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic prompted its transformation into a film, shot at four iconic Detroit locations: the Crystal Gallery at the DIA, the Guardian Building Promenade, Meadowbrook Hall, and the Scarab Club.

Inspired by Astor Piazzolla’s Five Tango Sensations, the project explores emotions like dreaming, loving, anxiety, despair, and fear, paralleling the collective struggles of the pandemic. Public health restrictions, such as mask-wearing and avoiding handholds, shaped the choreography, reflecting the yearning for connection during quarantine.

This screening features a live performance of Piazzolla’s score. The Five Tangos was a semi-finalist at the 2022 Inspired Dance Film Festival in Australia and won Best Experimental Film at the 2022 Dancecentric Film Festival in Florida.

See "The Rooster's Crow" Automaton Clock come to life in the DIA's European Medieval & Renaissance galleries during its once-monthly day of operation!

Throughout the day, visitors can see this rare 16th-century clock's mechanical rooster flap its wings and open its beak every fifteen minutes, and witness the figures of seven princes parade around an enthroned emperor as the clock strikes each hour.

Winding the clock for one day each month is vital to maintaining its fully functional condition. This important conservation work offers a unique opportunity to see a work of Renaissance art and technology in motion.

Canada/2024—directed by Paul Schrader | 91 min.

In a raw, surprising, and mesmerizing performance, Richard Gere stars as Leonard Fife, a world-famous documentary filmmaker whose cancer leaves him with only a short time to live. 

In an unexpected turn, Fife agrees to turn the lens on himself to clarify hidden aspects of his life, placing the task of filming in the hands of his former protégé (Michael Imperioli) while insisting that his wife and former student, Emma (Uma Thurman), be on set to hear every confession as he reveals them. 

Based on a book by Russell Banks, this searing, deeply personal work from Paul Schrader—the Grand Rapids native who scripted Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and directed Blue Collar and First Reformed—is a mature and demanding achievement by a master of his art, a film that reverberates in the mind and conscience long after viewing. Featured at the Cannes, New York, and Toronto Film Festivals. 

"Paul Schrader and Richard Gere, reunited for the first time since the 1980 American Gigolo, are at the peak of their powers." –Chuck Bowen, Slant

Iran/France/Germany/2024—directed by Mohammad Rasoulof | 147 min.

Shot entirely in secret, Mohammad Rasoulof’s astonishing, award-winning thriller centers on a family thrust into the public eye when Iman (Misagh Zare) is appointed as an investigating judge in Tehran. As political unrest erupts in the streets, Iman realizes that his job is even more dangerous than expected, making him increasingly paranoid and distrustful, even of his own wife, Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), and their daughters. 

In April 2024, despite his film being invited to compete in the Cannes Film Festival (where it won the Special Jury Prize), the director was sentenced by Iranian authorities to eight years in prison, as well as flogging and confiscation of his property; he has chosen instead to live in exile abroad. 

An official selection of the Toronto, Telluride, and New York Film Festivals, The Seed of the Sacred Fig is also a submission for Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards®. In Farsi with English subtitles.

“A blistering, propulsive thriller.” –Justin Chang, The New Yorker

Schedule

• 1 p.m. Lecture from exhibition curator Kenneth Myers | Lecture Hall
• 1:30 p.m, Tour of the exhibition Painted with Silk: The Art of Early American Embroidery
• 2:15 p.m. Panel discussion | Lecture Hall
• 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. Reception | FJC Dining Rooms

Founder's Junior Council board members and guests will meet to celebrate the holiday season and a successful 2024. The party will take place at The Royce wine bar in Detroit.

Special drawing sessions for Mid Winter Break -

Create a pencil drawing to take home while taking a closer look at the collection. No experience necessary. All supplies provided. For ages 6 and up (children ages 16 and younger should be accompanied by an adult). Capacity is limited.