Peter Ostroushko: with guitarist Arkadiy Yushin

Peter has spent more than 25 years as a frequent performer on A Prairie Home Companion, and for a few seasons served as Music Director for the popular radio show. You may have caught Peter on TV, too. He's appeared on Austin City Limits, Late Night with David Letterman, and even Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

"He's one of the greatest mandolin players going today. He'll get on our wavelength better than anyone, but Pete can play most anything. As the jazz people say, he can swing any way he needs to."
 — Norman Blake, interviewed in The Boston Globe

Peter's talents extend beyond the realm of folk and jazz. He has performed Mahler's Seventh Symphony with the Minnesota Orchestra and, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, a mandolin concerto by 18th-century composer Giovanni Paisiello a well as Vivaldi's mandolin concerto and his concerto for viola d'amore and mandola.

Peter's compositions have been performed by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Sinfonia, the Rochester (Minnesota) Symphony Orchestra, the Des Moines Symphony and the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, among others. Twin Cities Public Television commissioned Peter to provide music for their nationally distributed programs, The Dakota Conflict and Grant Wood's America, and Ken Burns chose music from Peter's Heart of the Heartland for his PBS documentary Lewis & Clarke, and picked Peter's haunting arrangement of "Sweet Betsy from Pike" as the underscore for Mark Twain.

www.peterostroushko.com