Mayo Clinic Announces Three September Performances for the Rosemary and Meredith Willson Harmony for Mayo Program

Monday, August 31, 2009

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Cooler weather is at hand and, with it, the September Rosemary and Meredith Willson Harmony for Mayo Program concerts will be held indoors. Community members are invited to join Mayo Clinic staff and patients to hear three concerts on Mondays from 12:10 to 1 p.m. at locations around the Mayo Clinic campus. The schedule is:

Sept. 7: Labor Day (no concert)

Sept. 14: Peter Ostroushko will perform acoustic folk music in Barbara Woodward Lips Atrium, subway level, Rochester Methodist Hospital, Charlton Building, 10 Third Ave. N.W. Ostroushko, who lives in Minneapolis, is an accomplished instrumentalist and composer whose music reflects styles from around the world, with a special emphasis on his Ukrainian heritage. Ostroushko formerly was music director for Garrison Keillor's radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion." He is regularly featured as a soloist with chamber and symphony orchestras, and he has performed with Bob Dylan, Chet Atkins, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, and many other musicians and recording artists. His compositions have been performed by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Sinfonia, the Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Des Moines Symphony. His latest recording, a collaboration with Norman Blake, is "Meeting on Southern Soil."

Sept. 21: Timothy Schorr and Mary Ellen Haupert will perform four-hand classical piano music in Hage Atrium, subway level, Siebens Medical Education Building, 100 Second Ave. S.W. Both artists are professors of music at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wis. Schorr is a piano soloist and collaborator throughout the United States and Europe. He has performed at New York's Weill Recital Hall, the Schubert Club Courtroom Concert Series, Wisconsin Public Radio and Kunst Universität in Austria. Haupert has been a guest piano soloist for the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra, the University of St. Francis and the Schubert Club Courtroom Concert Series. She has also studied classical flute, harpsichord and fortepiano.

Sept. 28: The Gonda Singers will perform Broadway tunes and jazz music in Nathan Landow Atrium, subway level, Gonda Building, 100 Third Ave. S.W. Each Monday and Thursday morning, community volunteer and pianist Jane Belau plays Mayo Clinic's Bosendorfer grand piano in Nathan Landow Atrium to entertain patients and visitors. She is often joined by local singers and Mayo staff who stop by to sing a tune or two. Now, Belau, along with several guests from her weekday morning performances, will be featured at a Rosemary and Meredith Willson Harmony for Mayo Program concert. They are known as the Gonda Singers.

Sponsored by Mayo Clinic Center for Humanities in Medicine, the Rosemary and Meredith Willson Harmony for Mayo Program is coordinated by Choral Arts Ensemble of Rochester. The series is generously funded by Rosemary Willson in memory of her late husband, Meredith Willson, who wrote the Broadway musical "The Music Man." The gift is made in gratitude for the couple's care at Mayo Clinic. More information can be found online (www.mayoclinic.org/humanities-in-medicine).

###

About Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. Doctors from every medical specialty work together to care for patients, joined by common systems and a philosophy of "the needs of the patient come first." More than 3,700 physicians, scientists and researchers and 50,100 allied health staff work at Mayo Clinic, which has sites in Rochester, Minn; Jacksonville, Fla; and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz. and community based providers in more than 70 locations in Southern Minn., Western Wis. and Northeast Iowa. These locations treat more than half a million people each year. To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to www.mayoclinic.org/news. For information about research and education, visit www.mayo.edu. MayoClinic.com is available as a resource for your health stories.