As Washington’s Frank and Indiana Brinton brought their traveling entertainment across the Midwest over a century ago, a local historian and music ensemble are taking their own show on the road this spring for the first time since the pandemic.

Michael Zahs and Red Cedar Chamber Music presented “Brinton Surprise” to a hometown crowd at the Ainsworth Opera House and Community Center Thursday night, which featured a homemade Venetian dinner that related with some of the Brinton collection films that were shown. The Marion-based group that has performed in Ainsworth for over 20 years played tunes that have waited for four years to be heard alongside some of the world’s oldest films and magic lantern slides. This is the fifth performance series for Zahs and Red Cedar, and he encouraged the audience to imagine how people felt when watching some of these productions 120 years ago, “Put yourself in the position that those people maybe were in, maybe they had never seen a projected image. Maybe they had seen a projected image, but never one that moved, or one that was colored. So let yourself be loud! It’s perfectly okay to be loud.”

Cellist Carey Bostian stated that this program is about dreams, innovations, and putting together pieces of culture to tell stories, “Frank Brinton was a storyteller, he was a dreamer. He thought he could land airships on his roof. George Méliès was a dreamer, he wanted to do so many things. And thankfully for all of us Michael Zahs is a dreamer.”

There are 13 more scheduled performances around Iowa of “Brinton Surprise” and you find more information here.

Mike Zahs helps serve dinner before the “Brinton Surprise” concert.