A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media

Special Guests
Saturday, December 3, 2005

Renée Fleming

Soprano Renée Fleming was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Rochester, New York. Both her parents were voice teachers. "My parents discussed singing every night over the dinner table; I had a tremendous music education," she says. While studying at the State University of New York, she sang with a jazz trio and was discovered by jazz legend Illinois Jacquet, who asked her to tour with his band. Instead, Fleming went to graduate school, focussing on classical music at the Eastman School of Music and The Juilliard School. Her professional break came in 1988 when she was invited to sing the role of the Contessa in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro with the Houston Grand Opera. In 1989 she made her New York City debut in La Bohème and her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1991. Since then, the two-time Grammy Award-winner has created many roles for the operatic stage and has premiered numerous songs written for her. She has performed in the world's most distinguished venues with today's foremost orchestras and conductors, and has recorded numerous award-winning discs. In 2004, Renée Fleming's first book, The Inner Voice, an account of her career and the creative process, was published in the United States by Viking Penguin. Her recent CD releases include Sacred Songs and Haunted Heart, both on the Decca label. She is accompanied tonight by Kathy Kelly.

Kaki King

When Kaki King was four years old, she started guitar lessons-only to quit the next year. But by the time she was nine, she was pursuing her real passion: drums. She went back to guitar from time to time, but always thought that if she made it in music at all, it would be as a percussionist. That's pretty much the case. Yes, she has made her mark as a guitarist and composer, but for Kaki King the guitar is a percussion instrument- "somewhere between funk and flamenco," one reviewer said. After leaving her Atlanta home to study at NYU, she started playing little gigs around the city. Following graduation in 2001, she began playing in the subway, and-commuter by commuter-her popularity rose. Soon she had steady gigs, even a stint in the band of the New York production of Blue Man Group. Now she's touring nonstop. She was named one of the top 50 favorite players in Acoustic Guitar Magazine's Reader's Poll. King's latest CD is Legs to Make Us Longer (Epic).

Laura Cantrell

Elvis Costello put it this way: "If Kitty Wells made Rubber Soul it would sound like Laura Cantrell." Cantrell, who grew up in Nashville, moved to New York in the 1980s to attend Columbia University. It was at the university station that she started her work in radio. In 1993, after graduation, she began playing old country records at New Jersey radio station WFMU, where her program, "Radio Thrift Shop," has earned her a loyal following. She paid her performing dues doing bar gigs and finally released her first album, Not the Tremblin' Kind, in 2000. In order to support her musical endeavors, Cantrell took an administrative position at a Wall Street investment firm. After surviving a series of mergers and acquisitions during the 1990s, she found herself the Vice President, Business Manager of Banc of America Securities Equity Research Department. Such a demanding job left little time for singing, and in the spring of 2003 she resigned her position to concentrate on music full time. Laura Cantrell's latest CD-her fifth-is Humming By The Flowered Vine (Matador Records).

Erica Rhodes

When Erica Rhodes first appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, the young actress had to stand on a box in order to share a mic with the other performers. Since then, she has grown up, studied at Boston University's College of Fine Arts and the Deena Levy Theatre Studio, and is currently enrolled at the Atlantic Theater Conservatory in New York. She toured with the children's theater company TheatreWorks/USA in a production of Ramona Quimby, and on television, she has appeared on Film Fakers (AMC). Recently, she and some acting colleagues started a theater group. It will launch in February when they present a series of one-act plays at The Next Stage in Manhattan's West Village.

Andy Stein

Violinist and saxophonist Andy Stein was a regular member of Guy's All-Star Shoe Band on A Prairie Home Companion from 1989 to 2001. He collaborated with Garrison Keillor to create the opera Mr. and Mrs. Olson. He has appeared on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman, and has performed with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, Eric Clapton, Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Joel, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, and many others.