Verdigris Ensemble

An evening in the Inner Circle

InnerCircleDinner

Reserve your seat Discover the story

Gather around a shared belief in what music can become.

Guests share conversation around a dinner table at Salum.

An intimate gathering for the people who help Verdigris bring ambitious ideas to life. Get closer to the ensemble—and to the story of Betty’s Notebook.

When
Sunday, November 15, 2026
Where
Salum RestaurantDallas, Texas
Join us
Inner Circle DinnerReserve your seat

The evening

Around the table.
Closer to the work.

The Inner Circle Dinner brings our community together around the work we make—and the possibilities ahead.

Join us at Salum Restaurant in Dallas for dinner with people who share a curiosity about music and a commitment to the artists who create it.

A story at the heart of Verdigris

From a teenager’s handwritten notebook to a programmable digital artwork and the SWACDA stage, Betty’s Notebook traces an extraordinary path. Follow it below.

A musician plays keyboard at the Salum fundraiser.
Guests gather around a dinner table with a Verdigris Ensemble backdrop.
Tables set for the 2026 Salum dinner beneath the restaurant lights.
Two guests converse at the 2026 Salum reception.
A chef plates dinner in the Salum kitchen.
A row of plated dishes ready to serve at Salum.
A smiling guest seated at the 2026 Salum dinner.

The history of Betty’s Notebook

One notebook.
So many ways to listen.

A presenter gestures toward projected pages of Betty Klenck’s handwritten notebook.
The notebook at the heart of the work. Archival photograph by Richard Hill, 2019.

1937 · A voice in the static

It began with listening.

In 1937, fifteen-year-old Betty Klenck heard a voice on her shortwave radio that she believed belonged to Amelia Earhart. She wrote down what she heard. Her notebook became a compelling and contested part of a mystery that remains unresolved.

Nicholas Reeves’s musical adaptation draws us into that world through choral voices, jazz, and radio interference. The fragments become music; the act of listening becomes the story.

Read the story behind the score

2019

Premiere

Verdigris commissioned Betty’s Notebook in 2018 and premiered it in Dallas in February 2019. That first live chapter became the starting point for a work that would continue to change form.

Verdigris Ensemble and conductor perform Betty’s Notebook beneath the projected words ‘Help me.’
Betty’s Notebook in performance, 2019. Photograph by Richard Hill.
Verdigris Ensemble singers before enlarged fragments of the radio transcript in an archival 2019 performance of Betty’s Notebook.
From the original 2019 production of Betty’s Notebook. Photograph by Richard Hill.

2021

The original 2021 Betty’s Notebook artwork by Bryan Brinkman in collaboration with Verdigris Ensemble.
Betty’s Notebook (2021). Artwork by Bryan Brinkman, in collaboration with Verdigris Ensemble.

NFT

In 2021, Reeves’s score and Verdigris’s performance met the visual world of artist Bryan Brinkman. Together, they became a programmable music NFT: a digital artwork whose musical layers could be reconfigured.

Four independent layers, each with three settings, created 81 possible combinations. Changes to the music also changed the visuals, making the work an invitation to listen again.

The master artwork and four stems sold at auction in May 2021 for more than $375,000 combined.

Music
Nicholas Reeves
Visual art
Bryan Brinkman
Performance
Verdigris Ensemble
Explore the original NFT

Listen and interact through the artist’s restored player.

2022

SWACDA premiere

The digital chapter became part of a larger live-performance story.

In 2022, Verdigris brought Betty’s Notebook to Little Rock for the Southwestern American Choral Directors Association conference. With artistic director Sam Brukhman, the ensemble shared the work with the region’s choral community.

Across each new setting, the central invitation endured: listen closely to a voice that might otherwise disappear into the static.

Explore SWACDA 2022

The next chapter begins with people

A place at
the table.

Work like Betty’s Notebook begins with curiosity. It grows through the people willing to believe in it.

Join Verdigris for the Inner Circle Dinner and be part of the community that makes new possibilities for choral music real.

Reserve your seat

Can’t join us? Support Verdigris.

Questions? info@verdigrismusic.org