What's New Archives
What's New - December 2008

Composer and instrumentalist Peter Ostroushko returns to the Fitzgerald Theater with his full Heartland Holiday Ensemble. The concert will celebrate the holiday spirit with a musical journey from the beautiful ancient a cappella carols of Ostroushko's Ukranian heritage to Brazilian choros as interpreted by mandolin. This special performance will feature one of the foremost musical voices of the American Great Plains, Chuck Suchy, with stories from Kevin Kling and Playwright and story teller Jim Stowell.

The Heartland Holiday Ensemble features pianist Dan Chouinard, singer Ruth MacKenzie, multi-talented percussionist Marc Anderson, bassist Joel Sayles, guitar player Dirk Freymuth, and singer Natalie Nowytski. (Click to meet the players)

  
This summer also marked the 4th year in a row that I played music for the summer shows at Circus Juventas. Circus Juventas is located in St. Paul Minnesota and is a full time school teaching the circus arts to young people ages 3 to 21. My daughter has been a student there for the last 6 years, specializing in aerial arts. Every summer they put on a show featuring their best students and these shows ROCK! What’s so amazing is that it dawns on you at some point during the show; you are watching the neighborhood kids doing this fantastic magical show.

The past 4 years I’ve been composing and playing the music live for the summer shows. This year we recorded some of the music from the last 4 years. The CD is called “Peter Joins the Circus” and will be for sale under the Big Top during the run of the performance and also right here on my web site.

The recording features some of my favorite musicians to play with; Dan Chouinard on keyboards, Dirk Freymuth on guitar, Joel Sayles on bass, and Marc Anderson on percussion. I also play a fiddle duet with my daughter Anna, as we did 4 years ago during the summer production of “Dyrnwych”. The first time into a recording studio for this father and daughter duet. Hopefully not the last.

I could go on and on about the recording and Circus Juventas but I’ll leave you with the liner notes I wrote for the CD (click here). That will explain a lot!