May 2, 2002 - (Music up, run under, lose under the first couple of sentences of her speaking ) Legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar (RAH-vee shan-KAR), now in his 80's, is in the middle of what he says will be his last tour. While some people know him purely because of his connections to the Beatles, fans of Indian music know him as a prolific composer and performer. Tomorrow night (Friday) he will appear at the Historic State Theater in Minneapolis with his daughter Anoushka Shankar, who is herself an acclaimed sitar player. She began performing in public when she was just a girl. She says she was aware of her fathers fame, but the music has always been more important.
April 30, 2002 - James Lasdun's first novel "The Horned Man" builds on the tiny strange incidents we all experience in everyday life. A misplaced book mark, or someone who claims to know you although you don't remember the meeting. It's a sparse, literary, book, which has developed a big following among mystery fans. Lasdun told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr he didn't intend to write a novel, just a short story....
April 26, 2002 - It has been argued that technology is helping new artists, but it can also make things harder.
April 22, 2002 - British author Michael Frayn begins his new novel "Spies" with the description of a smell. It's the heady smell of a privet hedge in mid-summer. A scent that spurs an old man to remember the events of a war-time summer long ago. Frayn is a novelist and playwright*. He wrote the best seller "Headlong" and his play "Noises Off" is now a theater standard. His most recent play "Copenhagen" won three Tony awards in 2000. He told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr he has been meaning to write the story for years.
April 16, 2002 - The central character of Australian novelist Richard Flanagan's book "Gould's Book of Fish" is a convict who paints fish. Or maybe he's not. Flanagan leaves the reader to wonder whether his story is a free-wheeling tale of life which set in a British penal colony in Tasmania, or perhaps a figment of the imagination of a modern lowlife faking antiques to sell to the tourist trade. The book has been described as a modern masterpiece in Australia, part "Papillion", part "Baron Munchausen".. It is already selling well in the US. Flanagan told Minesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr the novel grew from a single experience.
March 21, 2002 - MPR’s Cara Hetland interviews conductor Leonard Slatkin about National Symphony Orchestra’s residency in South Dakota. In ten days, orchestra members performed more than 100 times. Slatkin explains the lessons on the value of music that the efforts offer, especially for children.
March 18, 2002 - Low income residents of the Red Lake Indian Reservation say the local electric cooperative is discriminating against the Ojibwe band. A complaint filed with the state Public Utilities Commission alleges the cooperative's customer service practices and fee requirements are unfair and illegal. Cooperative officials deny the charges. Mainstreet Radio's Tom Robertson has the story... {
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