Garrison Keillor to perform at Eastman

G arrison Keillor, host of the popular radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion, will come to the Eastman Theatre on Sunday, April 18, at 4:30 p.m. for a special performance to benefit the Eastman School of Music Scholarship Fund. The program will feature one of Keillor's signature monologues--known on his radio show as "The News from Lake Wobegon"--and conversation interspersed among the music of Hanson, Haydn, Poulenc, Porter, Mendelssohn, and others. Internationally renowned conductor Philip Brunelle will guest conduct the New Eastman Symphony, Eastman's graduate-student-managed orchestra.

The performance also will include the premiere of a new work for narrator and orchestra, written by current Eastman undergraduate Tellef Johnson. The work deals (most appropriately) with the catharsis of spring after a particularly grievous winter. The piece was written with Keillor in mind, as a result of a brief meeting between the young composer and the radio host in 1995.

Each week through A Prairie Home Companion Keillor is heard over 400 public radio stations nationwide by more than 2 million listeners. He also hosts a daily five-minute program of poetry and history, The Writer's Almanac. A frequent contributor to Time and The Atlantic Monthly, Keillor is the author of 10 books. His newest book, Me, by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente As Told to Garrison Keillor, has been making headlines for spoofing the rise of Jesse "The Body" Ventura, a former professional wrestler, to governor of Minnesota--Keillor's beloved home state.

Keillor is the recipient of many awards and honors, including a Grammy Award, two ACE Awards for cable television, and a George Foster Peabody Award. In 1994, Keillor was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. With longtime friend and collaborator Brunelle, Keillor has performed with many orchestras, including the Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Dallas, and National symphonies.

University faculty, staff, and students can receive discounted tickets for Keillor's performance. For more information call Eastman's events line, x4-1100.