A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Walter Bobbie

WALTER BOBBIE directed last season's Footloose and before that Chicago, and was artistic director of City Center's Great American Musicals. He produced Call Me Madam, Out Of This World, DuBarry Was A Lady and One Touch Of Venus. He also directed For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls at Ensemble Studio Theater, Durang Durang at Manhattan Theater Club, Nude Nude Totally Nude at the New York Shakespeare Festival.

He acted in Guys and Dolls, Assassins, Getting Married, Anything Goes, Cafe Crown, Driving Miss Daisy, Up From Paradise, I Love My Wife, A History of the American Film, the original Grease, Dames At Sea and the big GMHC benefit Anyone Can Whistle at Carnegie Hall.

Movies include The First Wives Club, Stephen King's Thinner and HBO's Edie And Pen, and he's been on TV in Hill St. Blues, LA Law, The Equalizer, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, New York News and daytime's Loving, where he portrayed both brothers Denny and Wally Anderson. aybe a little humor thrown in.

Joshua Bell

JOSHUA BELL was born in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1967, and he hit the ground running, starting on the violin at the age of five and winning the Indiana State Tennis Championship Junior Division when he was ten. He won a Grammy for Best Soloist With an Orchestra for his 2001 recording of the Maw Violin Concerto, adding to the Oscar he won for the Best Original Score of The Red Violin in 2000.

In 1981 he won the Seventeen Magazine/General Motors competition, leading to his orchestral debut with Ricardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His debut at Carnegie Hall brought him an Avery Fisher Career Grant and led to his signing with London/Decca, for whom he recorded 13 albums. He went with Sony Classical in 1996, doing three more albums and two movie sound tracks.

He does a hundred concerts a year, all over the world, and was named by People Magazine as one of the World's 50 Most Beautiful People in 2000. He could be our first one in that category.

David Frishberg

DAVID FRISHBERG was born in St. Paul on March 23, 1933; part of the country's recovery from the Great Depression. He's recorded 11 albums, the most recent of which are By Himself in 1998 and Not A Care In The World in 1997. He began his career as a journalist, playing music part time, and then got a job as intermission pianist at Eddy Condon's. He gave up the jackal trade and stayed at Eddy's for a year, moved on to Bud Freeman's quartet and then to Gene Krupa and to regular gigs at the Metropole. He began writing songs, including an early hit recorded by Blossom Dearie, titled Peel Me A Grape.

He worked in the 1960s for Ben Webster and for Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, including a long stay at New York's Half-Note; he also played for Carmen McRae, Kai Winding, Bobby Hackett and others. He left in 1971 to write for a weekly TV show and suddenly found himself with an offer to join Herb Alpert. He was quoted: "When I heard the personnel I jumped at the chance. I loved it - it was the most fun I'd had. I got a solo spot and played some of my Jelly Roll Morton stuff."

He's written hundreds of dry and clever songs, as in "Blizzard of Lies":

We'll send someone right out
This won't hurt a bit
He's in a meeting now
That coat's a perfect fit.