Our 2023 Spring Concert Series continues with Eric Peltoniemi live in concert! Join us in the Cultural Center’s intimate listening-room-style gallery space on Saturday, April 22, 2023. Once you attend a concert here, you won’t want to go anywhere else for live music!
Adult tickets are $10 in advance or $12 at the door (members get a $2 discount!); students $5 (can be paid at the door). Doors open at 7:00 pm and the concert begins at 7:30. Cash bar and light refreshments will be available.
Big thanks to concert sponsor Wadena Hide & Fur / The Paper Brothers for helping to make this event possible and accessible!
Get Eric Peltoniemi Tickets Today! >
“A delightfully sumptuous fusion of traditional and original music…if you’re looking for intellectual substance embracing highly original and unforgettable music, Peltoniemi will deeply satisfy you.
– Sing Out! Magazine
Since the early 1970s in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minnesota, and Finland, Eric Peltoniemi has worked multiple sides of the music world as a singer/songwriter, guitarist, lyricist, and composer for the music theater, and for three decades an executive at acclaimed indie roots label, Red House Records.
Growing up in rural Minnesota, Eric began writing his own songs at a young age, playing with friends at county fairs, dances, township halls…and even a boxing match. Since those early days, he has gone on to perform (solo and with a band) at theaters, festivals, and clubs across the US, as well as Canada, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
His original songs have been covered and recorded by a number of artists, including Robin & Linda Williams; Claudia Schmidt; Gordon Bok, Anne Mayo Muir & Ed Trickett; NYC cabaret singer Lisa Asher; and young Finnish folk star, Topi Saha – to name a few.
“We’ve known what a remarkable singer and songwriter Eric Peltoniemi is for several decades now… There’s never a false word, never a false note.”
– Robin and Linda Williams (well-known stars of A Prairie Home Companion)
“Eric Peltoniemi brings so much to the music he writes and performs: creativity, musicality, a great aesthetic sense, and an understanding of what goes into making a song work. He also brings a richness to the music that comes from being well-read, well-traveled, and an appreciative observer of life.”
– John Gorka
Peltoniemi moved to New York City in the early 1970s, and eventually Los Angeles and San Francisco, later returned to Minnesota, and in 1983 began collaborating with playwrights and theaters, writing music and lyrics for eleven musical plays, including the regional hits: Ten November (with Steven Dietz), a musical drama about the sinking of The Edmund Fitzgerald, nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Music in the 1987-1988 Chicago theater season; Plain Hearts (with Lance S. Belville), a musical play about prairie women and winner of the Twin City Drama Critics Circle Award (Kudo) for Best Music of the 1982-1983 theater season), and, in 2000, Heart of Spain (with Peter Glazer), a musical drama about the Spanish Civil War, underwritten in by the National Endowment for the Arts (revived in 2016 at the Zellerbach Playhouse in Berkeley, CA.)
“There aren’t enough superlatives for the power and feeling in Peltoniemi’s haunting songs.”
– Peter Vaughn, Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St. Paul)
From 2005 to 2015, Eric and colleagues Prudence Johnson, Claudia Schmidt, and Ruth MacKenzie, actor Kevin Kling, mandolin and fiddle master Peter Ostroushko, Dan Chouinard, and Jeffrey Willkomm, toured large Midwest Performing Arts Centers performing a concert version of Ten November music under the name, Gales of November (to differentiate it from the actual play).
In 2017 Eric appeared in the award-winning Finnish film, Ikitie (Eternal Road), singing his original song, “Punainen” [click to watch & listen: IKITIE: Eric Peltoniemi – Punainen]. He and friends have twice performed four-evening retrospectives of his music – in 2019 at the Open Eye Theatre in Minneapolis [click to listen: May Your Enemies Surrender] and in 2022 at the Gremlin Theatre in St. Paul.
“Peltoniemi’s music and its strange little twists and searches reach softly for some inner spirit of an all-important way of life and part of history.”
– Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune
A second career working with folk visionary Bob Feldman in at his record label, Red House Records, began in 1985. For the next two decades, their combined taste and vision, and a renowned artist roster, turned Red House into a major roots music label in the US and Europe. When Bob passed away in 2006, Eric took over the company’s reins, continuing their mission until 2016, when he left to refocus on personal artistic endeavors.
Eric’s much anticipated return to New York Mills on April 22, 2023 is sure to be an unforgettable evening. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. and music begins at 7:30. There will be refreshments and a cash bar. All are welcome! Tickets are $10 in advance or $12 at the door ($2 member discount); students $5.
Get Eric Peltoniemi Tickets Today! >
“Eric Peltoniemi has a sly ability to observe and inform with unstinting clarity bordering on harshness, yet the way he enfolds it all musically allows the heart to fall wide open, so the experience is a wonderful balance of feeling and understanding. Listening to his work is a delightfully humanizing experience.”
– Claudia Schmidt
This concert is sponsored by Wadena Hide & Fur / The Paper Brothers.
We are grateful for this sponsorship support!
Interested in sponsoring a concert or event? Contact betsy@kulcher.org or call 218-385-3339.
You won’t want to miss this live music experience at the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center on Friday, March 24, 2023. All are welcome! Call the Cultural Center with questions: 218-385-3339.
