Yearning for the Sunshine

"Imagine the angelic Andrews Sisters singing in top form - and then ripping into a nimble fiddle breakdown." That's how The Washington Post described the Ft. Worth-based Quebe Sisters Band: fiddlers Grace, Sophia, and Hulda Quebe, along with Joey McKenzie on guitar and Drew Phelps on bass. The sisters' instrumental mastery and mesmerizing three-part harmonies have wowed audiences at festivals and concert halls across North America, from the Grand Ole Opry to Lincoln Center. Timeless, their latest recording, is on FiddleTone Records.

One of America's premier opera singers, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham was born in Roswell, New Mexico. When she was 13, her family moved to Midland, Texas, a city that in 2006 declared September 5th as Susan Graham Day-in perpetuity. After completing her studies at Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, and the Manhattan School of Music, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1991. Since then she has sung leading roles in the world's great opera houses - Milan's La Scala, London's Royal Opera House, Vienna State Opera, Opera National de Paris, and the Met, where this season she stars opposite Placido Domingo in the title role of Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride. Her new DVD is Susan Graham: French Songs.

Garrison Keillor was born in 1942 in Anoka, Minnesota. He went to work for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969, and on July 6, 1974, he hosted the first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion in St. Paul. He is the host of The Writer's Almanac and the editor of the Good Poems series of anthologies from Viking.

The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band is led by A Prairie Home Companion music 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. Freewayman (Bluesky Records) is the most recent of Pat's nine albums. Gary Raynor (bass) has performed with the Count Basie band, Sammy Davis Jr. - with whom he toured for several years - and the Minnesota Klezmer Band. He teaches jazz bass 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.

One minute he's mild-mannered Tim Russell; the next he's George Bush or Julia Child or Barack Obama. We've yet to stump this man of many voices. Says fellow APHC actor Sue Scott, "He does a better Ira Glass than Ira Glass." A well-known Twin Cities radio personality and voice actor, Tim appeared in the Robert Altman film A Prairie Home Companion and the Coen brothers' A Serious Man. Tim has also been reviewing films professionally for over 10 years.

On APHC, Sue Scott plays everything from ditzy teenagers to Guy Noir stunners to leathery crones who've smoked one pack of Camel straights too many. The Tucson, Arizona, native is well known for her extensive commercial and voice-over work on radio and television, as well as stage and movie roles, including the part of "Donna" in Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion.

Sound effects man Fred Newman is an actor, writer, musician, and sound designer for film and TV. Turns out, no one is more surprised than Fred that he's made a career out of doing what he used to do behind the teacher's back -crossing his eyes, making sounds, and doing voices. He readily admits that, growing up, he was unceremoniously removed from several classrooms, "once by my bottom lip."