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Peg Carrothers

My musical background began forming as a young child, learning songs from the family for every season and occasion, and harmonizing out the window with my mother whenever a rainstorm was brewing. It wasn’t uncommon to find me outside on a windy day making up songs and singing them up high into the trees.

I was lucky to have a dedicated school music program in my formative years, which allowed me to explore my talents further with leading roles in choir and musical programs. My love for song led me to later pursue a music degree at St Catherine’s College and finish up at the University of Minnesota, studying in the classical opera tradition before vocal jazz was a developed curriculum.

It was during these early college years that I first met Bill Carrothers, who would change my life forever in many ways, encouraging me to listen to the likes of Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday. A whole world opened up for me and these voices, along with every sound that enters the heart of what music is, continue to be a great influence and pleasure to explore.

Gradually building a standard repertoire and hanging out with jazz folks, while performing now and again in local venues around Minneapolis / St. Paul for the last ten years, has been a rewarding and enriching experience. The challenge of learning a song and then making it your own to share in a way that brings the listener closer to its essence is what it's all about. It takes an open, curious, sharpened mind and seasoned skill to breathe life into a tune. The time and energy given is rewarded in the act itself. It’s a love affair.

My CD, entitled Blue Skies, is a dream come true. There are some standards with a twist, and some experimental pieces, including the one-take, improvised “Geranium,” a poem by Jane Kenyon that I wrote music for, and the edgy “Wrong, Wrong, Wrong” collaboration by Bill and myself that was inspired by our angry upright piano.

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Album Review

Bill Carrothers: Armistice 1918

Read "Armistice 1918" reviewed by Chris May


As we approach the hundredth anniversary of the start of “the war to end all wars," international conflict blights the planet like never before, and unilateral might-is-right aggression is increasingly replacing diplomacy and consensus. Bad karma rules and history sometimes seems, like the poet said, to be “one fucking thing after another." So Bill Carrothers' Armistice 1918--a deeply affecting creative jazz suite about the horror and waste of the First World War, and by extension any war, performed ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Play Day

Bridge Boy Music
2009

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