Among the unheralded themes of the U.S. radio program A Prairie Home Companion has been its intermittent treatment of classical music, which host Garrison Keillor seems to want to rescue from the clutches of formality. On the program itself he has featured opera singers, violin virtuosos, male quartets, college choirs, and more, all with the aim of showing the ways classical music has been and remains integrated into the fabric of American life. This two-disc release, a recording of a live event from late in the year 2004 ...
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Among the unheralded themes of the U.S. radio program A Prairie Home Companion has been its intermittent treatment of classical music, which host Garrison Keillor seems to want to rescue from the clutches of formality. On the program itself he has featured opera singers, violin virtuosos, male quartets, college choirs, and more, all with the aim of showing the ways classical music has been and remains integrated into the fabric of American life. This two-disc release, a recording of a live event from late in the year 2004 (Keillor works in a few cracks about the re-election of President George W. Bush that fall), expands on this theme. It's a bit hard for the potential buyer to get an idea of the contents from the cover. This is not a collection of Thanksgiving songs, although Keillor's spoken material is centered on the holiday. Nor is it a Prairie Home Companion episode, although it comes complete with a monologue about Keillor's fictional Minnesota hometown of Lake Wobegon on disc two. Instead,...
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