Cooking with Studs from 1998

This week, we revisit a show from May 16, 1998, a live broadcast originally performed from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Special guests: American writer and broadcaster Studs Terkel, fiddler and mandolinist Peter Ostroushko, and the Ensemble Singers of the Plymouth Music Series.

Highlights include Garrison’s ode to spring in sonnet form; Peter Ostroushko dazzles with “Miracle”; a memorable cooking sketch with Studs Terkel, along with some great conversation; VocalEssence (Ensemble Singers of the Plymouth Music Series) adds in a medley of college songs for graduation season and contributes to the Guy Noir sketch; a tour of Minnesota colleges; and the latest News from Lake Wobegon. It’s such a great show, you should get a degree for spending the next two hours with us! Listen to the show.

More about our guest performers:

Studs Terkel called himself a “disc jockey,” a reference to his role as host of the Peabody Award-winning talk show The Studs Terkel Program, heard for 45 years on Chicago’s WFMT. After broadcasting his last regularly scheduled radio show, he worked on the Studs Terkel-WFMT Archive, a Chicago Historical Society collection of 7,000 hours of interviews. Before starting with WFMT in 1953, Terkel starred in Studs’ Place, which began airing in 1950, the year that Joseph McCarthy began claiming that he had a list of Communist Party members in the U.S. State Department. The popularity of Studs’ Place couldn’t keep it on the air: the program was dropped by NBC when Terkel wouldn’t reverse his “pro-Communist” positions in favor of price and rent controls and against the poll tax and Jim Crow laws. By the mid-1960s, Terkel’s interviews on WFMT began to be noticed outside of Chicago. In 1965, his first oral history was published, Division Street: America, about class differences in Chicago. Terkel called his writing “bottom-up history ... [interviews with] ordinary people who have something real to say about themselves.” He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1985 book, The Good War, the story of World War II told through soldiers and civilians on both sides. Terkel was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Book Foundation honored him with a medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The award is given to an individual who has enriched the nation’s literary heritage through a lifetime of work.

Mandolinist, composer, arranger Peter Ostroushko, who made his first Prairie Home Companion appearance in 1974, grew up listening to tunes played at family get-togethers in the Ukrainian community of northeast Minneapolis. It’s the music that provided the basis for many of his compositions — works that have been performed by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, among others. Peter won an Emmy for the score of Minnesota: A History of the Land. He passed away in 2021.

The VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, formerly known as the Ensemble Singers of the Plymouth Music Series, first sang together in 1991. The 26-voice Ensemble Singers are chosen for their musicianship, vocal qualities, and flexibility in singing many styles of music. Innovative explorers, the Ensemble Singers embody the adventure and enthusiasm of VocalEssence. They are the professional core of the larger VocalEssence Chorus, which, for more than half a century under the direction of founder and artistic director Philip Brunelle, has grown to become one of the premier music organizations in Minnesota and beyond.

The most comprehensive collection of music from the A Prairie Home Companion archives — plenty to listen to, from early favorites to many performances from the LIVE 40th Anniversary Festival from St. Paul. Over four hours of great music from some amazing artists who have graced the Prairie Home stage. Get the CDs.

Spring cleaning is time to clear out some old merchandise so we can make room for a few new items that we will be adding soon. Check out deep savings on many classic favorites in our Garage Sale/Clearance section of the store.