Claudia and Dean may be sporting a new CD of their collaboration. Take this great opportunity to hear the two of them together live.

Almost four decades as a touring professional have found Michigan native Claudia Schmidt traversing North America as well as Europe in venues ranging from intimate clubs to 4,000 seat theatres, and festival stages in front of 25,000 rapt listeners. She has recorded fourteen albums of mostly original songs, exploring folk, blues, and jazz idioms featuring her acclaimed 12-string guitar and mountain dulcimer playing.

“To say that Schmidt is simply a performer with a talent to entertain would be a miscarriage of understatement. Schmidt takes her audiences into her world as easily as the child who discovers the endless universes that exist in a cardboard box.

From lying on sandy beaches under an endless barrage of northern lights, to the expected anguish and frustration of spinning tires on cars stuck deep in snow, from the age-old struggle of change between adolescence and adulthood to the observation of sheer idiocy, she leaves it to the imagination of her audience to conjure their own images of her storytelling and song. No interpretation of a Claudia Schmidt song or story is wrong-she invites audiences to tie their associations to her style.

Schmidt weaves her way through her concert in much the same manner as a jester. Interwoven anecdotes, revealing her past and present, bring people to expect a relationship between themselves and memories driven deep with the passage of time. The concert is an endless display of self-realization through humor and longing, leaving audience members yearning to become an integral part of her world.”
Door County Advocate

Composer/Guitarist Dean Magraw’s musical passion transcends all boundaries, yet the vital essence of his distinctive style remains, while performing and recording solo, with numerous regional ensembles, and on projects with international notables as diverse as Japanese shamisen prodigy Nitta Masahiro, classical violinist Nigel Kennedy, South Indian virtuoso Nirmala Rajasheker, epic songstress Ruth MacKenzie, Irish supergroup Altan, radio personality Garrison Keillor, jazz bassist Anthony Cox, and many others. (obviously including Claudia Schmidt.)

“Dean Magraw… so liquid, lyrical and effortless it’s like listening to a dancer.” -Steve Tibbetts

“Dean Magraw unveils soulful melodic grooves intricately designed to heal the broken dancer, confuse the boldest mathematician, and eradicate ennui in our lifetime.” -Nick Lethert