This week on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, we're live from the Koussevitzky Music Shed at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts for our final live broadcast of the summer season. With special guests, genre-bending string band Joy Kills Sorrow, singer and songmaker Heather Masse, and harmonizing siblings The DiGiallonardo Sisters. Plus, the Royal Academy of Radio Actors, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman, harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy sits in with The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon.
  • The DiGiallonardo Sisters

    The DiGiallonardo Sisters - Daniela, Nadia, and Christine - started singing together when they were kids Brooklyn. They still call Brooklyn home, and they still love stacking up those three-part harmonies. Now, Daniela teaches social studies at Brooklyn's Mark Twain Intermediate School for the Gifted & Talented; Nadia is a pianist, composer, arranger, and singer; and Christine is a singer and actor. The trio's debut album, Shout Sister Shout, was recorded with Rob Fisher live at the Virginia Arts Festival.
  • Joy Kills Sorrow

    Using traditional bluegrass as a jumping-off point, Joy Kills Sorrow has been honing a sound that wanders into folk, rock, pop, and jazz since they first formed in 2005. The name? It's from WJKS, the call letters of a 1930s Indiana radio station that was once the on-air home of the Monroe Brothers. Vocalist Emma Beaton, guitarist Matt Arcara, Wes Corbett (banjo), Jacob Jolliff (mandolin), and bassist Zoe Guigueno have just released Wide Awake, their new seven-track EP on the Signature Sounds label.
  • Heather Masse

    Growing up in rural Maine, Heather Masse sang hymns and folk songs around home with her family. Now based in New York, this New England Conservatory of Music alum is a one-third of the Juno Award-winning Canadian trio The Wailin' Jennys. Lock My Heart is her recording with piano legend Dick Hyman. A new album, August Love Song - on which she joins forces with trombone great Roswell Rudd - was recently released on Red House Records.
  • Howard Levy

    Multi-instrumentalist Howard Levy is perhaps best known for developing a fully chromatic harmonica style on a standard 10-hole diatonic instrument. Anyone who's ever picked up a little Hohner Marine Band can appreciate the feat. The musical adventures of this Chicago-based Grammy winner include journeys into jazz, pop, rock, Latin, classical, folk, blues, country, and more. He has appeared on hundreds of recordings. His own latest is First Takes (Balkan Samba Records), a dazzling collection of improvisational compositions - recorded in one single four-hour session.
  • The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band - June 29, 2013

    The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band is led by A Prairie Home Companionmusic director Richard Dworsky. Keyboard player, composer and improviser in any style, he also writes all the script themes and underscores. His latest CD is So Near and Dear to Me. Chet Atkins called Pat Donohue (guitar) one of the greatest fingerpickers in the world today. And he writes songs too - recorded by Suzy Bogguss, Kenny Rogers, and others. Nobody's Fault and Vicksburg Blues (a collaboration with Butch Thompson) are the most recent of Pat's albums. Gary Raynor (bass) has performed with the Count Basie band and Sammy Davis Jr., with whom he toured for several years. He was first call for dozens of touring Broadway shows, including the first presentation of The Lion King. Gary teaches at the McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul. Peter Johnson (percussion) has played klezmer music with Doc Severinsen and jazz with Dave Brubeck. He was a drummer for The Manhattan Transfer and for Gene Pitney. He has toured the world, but he always comes back to home base: Saint Paul. Richard Kriehn is principal second violin for the Washington/Idaho Symphony. But it's not all classical all the time; he is equally at home playing bluegrass fiddle and mandolin. He was a member of the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble and the bluegrass group 1946.