Richard Dworsky
Keyboardist, composer, and arranger Richard Dworsky is APHC’s music director. He leads the band, composes themes, improvises script underscores, and collaborates with such diverse guests as Yo-Yo Ma, James Taylor, Brad Paisley, Kristin Chenoweth, and Sheryl Crow. He has released many recordings of original material and has provided music for documentaries on HBO and PBS.
JT Bates
JT Bates started playing drums when he was seven. By the time he was 15, he was sitting in with his dad’s big band. Since then, he has backed up countless musicians, as well as working with a number of Twin Cities-based bands, including Fat Kid Wednesdays and Poor Line Condition.
Jeff Carney
Bassist Jeff Carney is always in demand — in Broadway orchestras, on jingles and film soundtracks, and as accompanist for jazz giants and popular music stars. A professor of bass and at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, he is principal bassist with the New York Pops Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
Richard Kriehn
When Richard Kriehn turned 10, his mom bought him a mandolin; at 19, he’d won the Buck White International Mandolin Contest. He went on to play with the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble and bluegrass group 1946. On the classical side, he has performed with numerous orchestras and was principal second violin for the Washington/Idaho Symphony.
Dean Magraw
Guitarist Dean Magraw studied at the University of Minnesota and the Berklee School of Music in Boston. His first recording, 1994’s Broken Silence, won the NAIRD award for Best Acoustic Instrumental Album of the Year. Dean has since turned out an array of dazzling albums. For his latest, he joined forces with drummer Erik Kamau Gravatt to produce Fire on the Nile (Red House Records).
Joe Savage
Pedal steel ace Joe Savage may think of himself as a Perennial Sideman (title of one of his albums), and it is true that he has performed with a long list of artists in addition to being a go-to studio musician. But solo or sideman, Joe has been a welcome fixture on the Twin Cities music scene since moving from Cloquet, Minnesota, to Minneapolis in the 1980s.
