Album Notes

Pianist, accordionist, bike travel writer and monologuist Dan Chouinard is a Minneapolis native who plays, tours and records regularly with lots of local and national performers.

Dan regularly creates special programs for Minnesota Public Radio which blend storytelling, interview and music. Recent live shows like \"Cafe Europa\" I and II (2005 and 2008) and \"Mambo Italiano\" (2006) have aired on Twin Cities public televison and been broadcast statewide on MPR.

He’s also called on to work the occasional \"A Prairie Home Companion\" show with Garrison Keillor, and served as rehearsal accompanist to Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Lindsay Lohan on the set of the 2005 Robert Altman-directed movie of the same name.

From the early 1990s until January 2007 he was co-director of music at the progressive and transgressive Church of St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis where he helped build the church’s reputation for musical quality and eclecticism. He continues as music advisor and co-producer of the SJA Concert Series.

In 1994 he created the acclaimed weekly radio series \"The Singer’s Voice,\" broadcast live Sunday nights from the Dakota Jazz Club, then in St. Paul, hosting song-laced conversation from the piano with a different singer each week, some 200 in the six years of the show’s tenure.

Dan grew up in a musical family, attended St. John’s University in Collegeville MN (1985) and spent four years as a teacher of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota.

Recent CDs include \"Collaborationist,\" \"Duets\" from \"A Prairie Home Companion\" with Garrison Keillor (2006), Peter Ostroushko’s \"Postcards\" (2006), and Ann Reed’s \"Telling Stories\" (2006).