A Prairie Home Companion: February 26, 2005

Special Guests
Saturday, February 26, 2005

The College of St. Catherine Women's Choir

Dr. Patricia Cahalan Connors, director
Denise Redman, accompanist
The choir is 25 voices strong and is the main choral ensemble at St Catherine’s. Membership is by audition and they perform throughout the year, on and off campus. Last May they made their first concert tour of Europe, performing in Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Italy. They do works written in every style period, often choosing music by contemporary composers, particularly women. Patricia Cahalan Connors holds masters and doctoral degrees in choral conducting from Indiana University and the University of Iowa, respectively, and a bachelor of Music Education from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana. Denise Redman is a 1997 graduate of the College of St. Catherine with a BA in piano performance.

Sally Dworsky

Sally is a St. Paul bred singer-songwriter, now living in the L.A. area. Releases include a solo EP called Habit Trail (Merm Records), and an album with the band Uma called Farewell (MCA/Refuge Records). She has also performed and recorded as a background singer with artists including Jonatha Brooke, R.E.M., Peter Gabriel, Don Henley and Peter Himmelman. She provided the singing voices for several animated characters in films including The Lion King, The Prince of Egypt, and Shrek.

She's now working on new music of her own, and is recording a collection of favorite cover songs with her brother, Rich.

Prudence Johnson

Prudence Johnson's 25 year career in music has taken her from nightclubs and honky-tonks to Carnegie Hall, from the theater stage to the Silver Screen (Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It), from the Midwest to the Middle East. Her 10 album releases include Little Dreamer, a collection of international lullabies, Moon Country, which features the music of Hoagy Carmichael, and S'Gershwin, a collaboration with pianist Dan Chouinard. She recently collaborated with four Minnesota composers to create A Girl Named Vincent, a presentation of the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay set to music, to be released on CD this year. She is a 2001 recipient of the McKnight Artists Fellowship for Performing Musicians and enjoys a steady schedule of concert appearances across the country.

Butch Thompson

He first became interested in jazz during his childhood in Marine-on-St. Croix, Minnesota, where he discovered the piano at age three. In high school he collected jazz LP records and in 1956 went with his father to see Louis Armstrong at Northrop; stood in a long line to meet him afterwards and got his autograph. He led his first band, Shirt Thompson and his Sleeves, and played his first professional engagements as a teenager. In 1962 he joined the Hall Brothers New Orleans Jazz Band on clarinet and began a series of pilgrimages to New Orleans. He studied with clarinetist George Lewis and became one of the few non-Orleanians to guest at Preservation Hall. His playing was described by the Wall Street Journal as “. . . the incomparable jazz piano of Butch Thompson.” He writes articles and reviews on jazz and produces his own weekly show, Jazz Originals, on KBEM radio in Minneapolis. His writing has appeared in Down Beat, The Mississippi Rag, Keyboard Classics and New Orleans Music.

John Niemann

He got started in music at the right time and place, and for the right reasons; he was in high school and there were girls there. He began with Leo Fender's gift to the world, the electric bass, and started a rock and roll band. In college he discovered acoustic music on the West Bank in Minneapolis and learned the guitar, fiddle and mandolin, eventually finding himself playing a 1920s Gibson mandocello in Peter Ostroushko's band, the Mando Boys. He played kick-butt fiddle for seven years in the Stoney Lonesome bluegrass band, did a number of guitar gigs with various honkytonk bands around the cities, and for three years was in "the house band at a place called Billy Bob's, or something," at Riverplace. After years spent as a road musician and working in construction, he has settled into the relatively quiet St. Paul life of a finish carpenter. He keeps his music honed with jam sessions in the basement.