RIVER FALLS – On Sunday, April 3, First Congregational United Church of Christ (110 N. Third St., River Falls) will host a program of music including Gershwin and Porter at 3 p.m. in the sanctuary. It will be open to the public and masks are required. Performers are Maria Jette and Dan Chouinard from the Twin Cities.

Jette began her professional life performing a combination of often excruciatingly difficult yet sometimes beautiful contemporary music and generally beautiful, but often difficult early music. She rapidly branched out into other eras and styles and, as she likes almost everything, has now sung it. She has performed with innumerable orchestras and chamber groups, in operas, and at musical festivals throughout the country and abroad, as well as in her home base of Minneapolis- St. Paul (Minnesota Orchestra, SPCO, Chamber Music Society of MN, Lyra Baroque, Vocalessence et al.). She made many appearances on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” in its last 20+ years and has performed her own production of Rob Kapilow’s mini-opera setting of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham with festivals, orchestras, and chamber groups around the USA. For her service to new music, she was awarded a life membership by the American Composers Forum.

For three decades, Chouinard has been pianist and accordionist of choice for a Who’s Who of performers in the Twin Cities area, including Jette. He is also an enabler of community singalongs and a writer of hit shows for public radio, the concert hall, and the theater. A native of Minneapolis, Dan attended St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., and taught French and Italian at the University of Minnesota for four years. Beginning in 1994, his radio series “The Singer’s Voice” was broadcast live from the Dakota Jazz Club every week over six years. Like Jette, he was a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion.” He has created and hosted programs that blend history, memoir, and music for Minnesota Public Radio, the Minnesota Historical Society, and theaters throughout the region. In 2014 his show Café Europa, about bicycling with an accordion from Naples to Normandy in search of Minnesota World War II stories, was broadcast and televised statewide.

Submitted by First Congregational United Church of Christ