Sing Out

Artsy group's new season makes choral music hip — and adds beer for good measure

Verdigris Ensemble uses original staging and multi-sensory collaboration in its choral concerts.

Photo courtesy of Verdigris Ensemble

The choral group Verdigris Ensemble has announced its 2019-20 season, titled "The World Within Me Is Too Small." It includes three world premieres, one Texas premiere, and plenty of local collaborations.

Founded in 2017 with the mission to make choral music accessible and even fun, Verdigris is also launching a new community initiative called Drink & Sing, which will gather in several local Dallas breweries and teach participants how to sing drinking songs from around the world.

In collaboration with Anita N. Martinez Ballet Folklorico, visual artist Ofelia Faz-Garza, and choreographer Alexandra Hernandez, the first offering is Dia De Los Muertos October 31-November 2, 2019, at Arts Mission Oak Cliff. From mystical legends to celebratory rituals, Verdigris Ensemble will open a portal into the spirit world to celebrate with our ancestors through Latin American choral music, dance, and visual art. Verdigris founder Sam Brukhman directs.

'Twas The Night Before Christmas is next, being performed December 6-8, 2019, at Royal Lane Baptist Church. Poems, hymns, narrated story, and even a sing-along form the basis for this world premiere by Kirsten Broberg and Blake Henson, with accompaniment by Chris Brunt and direction by Brukhman.

With music by Anthony J. Maglione and libretto by Ron Witzke and Brukhman, Dust Bowl is a world premiere piece that mixes bluegrass music, video projection (by Ariana Zhang), and choreographed movement to tell the stories of this 1930s man-made environmental disaster while asking the question: how did this happen, and have we learned from our mistakes? It runs February 27-March 1, 2020, at St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church.

A new piece for next year's Soluna Festival will be directed by Joshua Peugh, of Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, and done in collaboration with Voices of Change and UTD ATEC LightSquad members Omar Davila and Pablo Reyes. The untitled piece will run at Hamon Hall April 19-21, 2020, and will be an immersive, intimate, and thought-provoking contemporary performance. It will be Verdigris' most ambitious collaborative production since its inception, and a full announcement with more details coming on January 15.

As for the Drink & Sing series, here are times and places:

Oktoberfest: October 18, 2019, 7 pm at White Rock Alehouse
Christmas Cheer: December 1, 2019, 7 pm at Peticolas Brewing Company
Valentine's Day: February 7, 2020, 7 pm at Steam Theory Brewing Company

Verdigris Ensemble season VIP subscription passes are $70 for general admission, $56 for seniors (50-plus), and $28 for students and Teachers (ID required). In addition to receiving a 30 percent discount on the season, subscribers receive one rare behind-the-scenes rehearsal and lunch with Verdigris Ensemble, one invitation to the exclusive Verdigris Ensemble season launch party on September 19, and one complimentary ticket and VIP seating to Drink & Sing events.

Single ticket prices range from $10-$25 for all regular season productions. Single tickets for the Soluna Festival show are $35. Drink & Sing admission is $7 online and $10 at the door.

concerts music dance craft-beer holidays festivals drinks

Mural News

Netflix House will debut in Dallas with murals from acclaimed artist

Netflix House

Jeremy Biggers at Netflix House

A long-awaited immersive venue is opening in Dallas, and it will debut with local art on its walls: Netflix House, a year-round exhibit revolving around Netflix shows and movies, will open at Galleria Dallas on December 11, with two murals from award-winning Dallas multi-medium artist Jeremy Biggers.

Netflix House is an immersive dive complete with merchandise store, film house, arcade, and restaurant-bar. When it opens, Dallas will be the second location in the U.S., following Philadelphia, where it debuted in November 2025, also with murals from a local artist.

A graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts, Biggers is a renowned artist whose murals can be found spashed on walls across Dallas. Many, such as the Selena portrait on the wall outside Top Ten Records at 306 S. Bishop Ave., have become local landmarks.

He's a logical choice, having worked with a number of corporations including Nike, Adidas, the Dallas Mavericks, and IBM, for whom he created the "THINK" mural in their Dallas corporate office. His works have also been exhibited nationally, including a 2024 solo exhibition "be safe out there bro" at Band of Vices, a gallery in Los Angeles.

"Being chosen to be the artist to paint this mural, it would have been a disservice to myself, as well as the art scene in the city, not to try to infuse myself into it," he says.

$\u200bJeremy Biggers at Netflix House$ Jeremy Biggers at Netflix HouseNetflix House

Biggers did two murals featuring his interpretation of Netflix figures including the Squid Game Young-hee doll, characters from KPop Demon Hunters and megahit series Stranger Things, plus Pandy and DJ Catnip, the best friends in the interactive series Gabby’s Dollhouse.

Both murals are intensely colored works that incorporate Biggers' signature motif: a grid of polka dots spread across the image.

One is on the exterior of Netflix House, at the parking entrance, a colorful collage of characters, measuring 38 feet x 50 feet — the tallest mural Biggers has tackled. He painted it with aerosol; it took him two months to complete.
The other is on the interior, on the mall side entrance of Netflix House, measuring 57 feet x 12 feet — a study in moody blacks and blues, with accents of neon-red that give it a 3D effect.

“I'm trying to tell the story of Netflix, and the story of where Netflix has been historically, where Netflix is headed in the future, and then also infusing my own narrative and my own language visually into that story,” he says.

“They could have opened this anywhere, so for Dallas to be one of the very first locations — that’s a testament to us as a market, as consumers of arts and consumers in general," he says.

Jeremy Biggers at Netflix HouseNetflix House

galleries openings