Mid-Winter Singing & Folk Festival Community Sing with Dan Chouinard
23 years ago hundreds of people showed up to sing wonderful songs - together - at the first Mid-Winter Singing Festival. On Friday, Feb. 5, the Community Sing will feature song leader extraordinaire Dan Chouinard. Is there a better song leader, anywhere, than Dan Chouinard? This will be Dan's seventh visit to the Singing Festival. Know someone who loves to sing but has not been to a Friday night Singing Festival Community Sing? Now is the time! Lyric sheets provided. (singingfestival.com)
For four decades Dan Chouinard has been pianist and accordionist of choice for a who’s who of Twin Cities performers, an enabler of community singalongs and a writer of hit shows for public radio, concert hall and theatrical stage.
Dan attended St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, then taught French and Italian at the University of Minnesota for four years while getting established as a pianist and accompanist around Minneapolis and St. Paul. Beginning in 1994, his radio series The Singer’s Voice was broadcast live every Sunday evening over six years from the Dakota Jazz Club (then at Bandana Square St. Paul) on KBEM-FM, a.k.a. Jazz 88.
He’s been a writer and host of shows, having created many live programs for Minnesota Public Radio, the MN Historical Society, Twin Cities Public Television and others. In 2013 his original show Steerage Song played in the Twin Cities and on tour throughout Minnesota, a musical co-authored with Peter Rothstein about the Ellis Island era of immigration to the US, as depicted in European folk songs, newspaper clippings and Tin Pan Alley tunes.
His 2014 show Cafe Europa, about bicycling with an accordion from Naples IT to Normandy FR in search of Minnesota WWII stories, was broadcast and televised statewide on MPR and public television. Civil War Homecoming played at the Fitzgerald Theater in April 2015 on the 150th anniversary of the end of the war, was broadcast statewide on MPR and continues to be shown on Twin Cities Public Television.
Rondo ’56: Remembering St. Paul’s Black Main Street, presented a dozen times since its 2010 premiere at the MN History Center, is a portrait in music, stories and archival photos of St. Paul’s thriving Black neighborhood in the 1940s and ‘50s, before it was sliced down the middle to make room for I-94.
His essays have been published in Minnesota Monthly, Saint John’s Magazine, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Showcase magazine and in the Minneapolis StarTribune.
He’s traveled often in France and Italy, with bicycle and without, and has presented French and Italian sing-alongs at the Alliance Française in Minneapolis. He spent the summer 2015 working in Italy on an independent Hollywood film, All You Ever Wanted, written and directed by Minnesota native Barry Morrow, and released in 2019.
He was a guest accompanist on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and is the founder of a classic country band, Lush Country, comprised of Prairie Home Companionalumni. He recently accompanied Garrison Keillor and Prudence Johnson in concerts around the U.S.
Currently, Dan hosts a number Community Sings, including a monthly sing at Loring Park in Downtown Minneapolis, a monthly sing with fellow musician Ann Reed at St. Matthews in St. Paul, a monthly sing at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis, and other quarterly sings throughout the Twin Cities.
Dan’s visit to the 2027 Mid-Winter Singing Festival will be his seventh.
For four decades Dan Chouinard has been pianist and accordionist of choice for a who’s who of Twin Cities performers, an enabler of community singalongs and a writer of hit shows for public radio, concert hall and theatrical stage.
Dan attended St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, then taught French and Italian at the University of Minnesota for four years while getting established as a pianist and accompanist around Minneapolis and St. Paul. Beginning in 1994, his radio series The Singer’s Voice was broadcast live every Sunday evening over six years from the Dakota Jazz Club (then at Bandana Square St. Paul) on KBEM-FM, a.k.a. Jazz 88.
He’s been a writer and host of shows, having created many live programs for Minnesota Public Radio, the MN Historical Society, Twin Cities Public Television and others. In 2013 his original show Steerage Song played in the Twin Cities and on tour throughout Minnesota, a musical co-authored with Peter Rothstein about the Ellis Island era of immigration to the US, as depicted in European folk songs, newspaper clippings and Tin Pan Alley tunes.
His 2014 show Cafe Europa, about bicycling with an accordion from Naples IT to Normandy FR in search of Minnesota WWII stories, was broadcast and televised statewide on MPR and public television. Civil War Homecoming played at the Fitzgerald Theater in April 2015 on the 150th anniversary of the end of the war, was broadcast statewide on MPR and continues to be shown on Twin Cities Public Television.
Rondo ’56: Remembering St. Paul’s Black Main Street, presented a dozen times since its 2010 premiere at the MN History Center, is a portrait in music, stories and archival photos of St. Paul’s thriving Black neighborhood in the 1940s and ‘50s, before it was sliced down the middle to make room for I-94.
His essays have been published in Minnesota Monthly, Saint John’s Magazine, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Showcase magazine and in the Minneapolis StarTribune.
He’s traveled often in France and Italy, with bicycle and without, and has presented French and Italian sing-alongs at the Alliance Française in Minneapolis. He spent the summer 2015 working in Italy on an independent Hollywood film, All You Ever Wanted, written and directed by Minnesota native Barry Morrow, and released in 2019.
He was a guest accompanist on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and is the founder of a classic country band, Lush Country, comprised of Prairie Home Companionalumni. He recently accompanied Garrison Keillor and Prudence Johnson in concerts around the U.S.
Currently, Dan hosts a number Community Sings, including a monthly sing at Loring Park in Downtown Minneapolis, a monthly sing with fellow musician Ann Reed at St. Matthews in St. Paul, a monthly sing at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis, and other quarterly sings throughout the Twin Cities.
Dan’s visit to the 2027 Mid-Winter Singing Festival will be his seventh.