A Prairie Home Companion Cast Photo. FROM LEFT: Fred Newman, Tim Russell, Sue Scott, Garrison Keillor. Photo Credit: Dana Nye.

Yavapai College Performance Hall has just released their list of upcoming shows for the 2008/2009 season, and there are some exciting events coming to town.

August 15^th and 16^th Yavapai College will host the annual Cowboy Poets gathering. Tickets are $16 for the evening shows. The day sessions are free, and will be at approximately 8 venues across the campus. Friday the poets and musicians will entertain from noon until 5 pm, and Saturday from 9 am until 5 pm.

September 28^th the Capitol Steps comedy group will be here. With the elections close at hand they are sure to have a lot to talk about. The group of former Federal Senate and House staffers have a combined 62 years of experience in politics and use song parodies to poke fun at politics in general. Their latest album is called Springtime for Liberals, and includes such songs as “Buy, Buy American Pie,” “76 Unknowns,” and “Help me Fake it to the Right.”

The Temptations will be performing on October 3, 2008. The group has gone through many personnel changes over the years, (as far as I could decipher, only Otis Williams remains from the original group), but they are still winning awards. Their 2000 album won the group’s third Grammy award, and they have been inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.

Can you believe that Yavapai College is 40 years old? Well, it is and they will have a 40^th anniversary Gala on October 10^th. The event will feature singer Bill Medley  (half of the Righteous Brothers duo), and Jay Johnson.

The Country Rat Pack, (which features Tracy Byrd, Tracy Lawrence and Richie McDonald) will be here November 16^th.  And more country music will come into town with the arrival of the quartet Riders in the Sky November 21^st. The group recently celebrated their 30^th anniversary and on their website bio state that between them they’ve recorded 35 albums, (two of which won Grammy’s) had 11 wives, 19 kids and 8 elective surgeries.

Oscar winning, Grammy winning, Tony winning, Emmy winning, Golden Globe winning and Pulitzer Prize winning composer/performer Marvin Hamlisch will be in town March 13^th, 2009. He composed the music for the plays, The Goodbye Girl and A Chorus Line, among others. His film credits include The Sting, The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, Funny Lady, Sophie’s Choice and The Way We Were.

Irish Tenor Ronan Tynan will perform his “Holliday Show” on November 22^nd. Known to sports fans for singing the Star Spangled Banner at “important” baseball games at Yankee Stadium, Tynan is much deeper than that. He was born with a lower limb disability and at the age of 20 was in a car accident that further damaged his legs. He opted to have both legs amputated. Within weeks of the accident he was climbing the stairs at his college dorm, using his new artificial legs. He has written a book called “Halfway Home: My Life ‘til Now”. He is also a motivational speaker.

Pianist David Syme will be performing January 23^rd 2009.  He has performed with various world-renowned orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, and the Czech National Symphony. He has performed all over the world, including the Lincoln Center, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Kennedy Center, and Yavapai College Performance Hall.

The Three Redneck Tenors will perform their musical comedy show which their website declares combines “NASCAR with Beethoven and ‘lite’ beer with Puccini” on February 21^st. Other notable artists coming to the Yavapai College Performance Hall include Marvin Hamlisch on March 13^th and the Glenn Miller Orchestra on March 29^th

And then well known PBS radio personality and author Garrison Keillor, famed for his Prairie Home Companion show will be in Prescott on May 11^th 2009. This one is sure to sell out. Keillor’s show started in 1974 with an audience of 12, and now over 4 million people listen to his weekly 2-hour show. He is often described as “folksy” but his sharp wit and keen sarcasm make him much more than that. His weekly show includes segments sponsored by the fictitious “Ketchup Advisory Board”, where every problem known to humankind can be solved with a little ketchup, a segment that follows the life of a private detective called The Adventures of Guy Noir, to the “News from Lake Wobegon” (Minnesota) where there’s a lot of talk about the cold weather, Norwegians, and bachelor farmers. Each “News” segments ends with, “That’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

Ticket prices for the all the events are not yet posted.

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