Listen to composer Peter Schickele's New Year's Eve radio party with Lynne Warfel

Composer Peter Schickele, aka P.D.Q. Bach, died Jan. 16 at 88, leaving behind a legacy of musical brilliance, ingenuity and hilarity. He was a fixture at Minnesota Public Radio over the years, including co-hosting a fun 1993 New Year’s Eve radio party with Lynne Warfel, which you can listen to using the player above.

After news of Schickele’s death, many hosts reminisced about his time at MPR.

Michael Barone, the host of Pipedreams, recalled one of Schickele’s great programs.

“For some years, Peter was a regular presence in the MPR studios, working with Tom Voegeli to put together a program called Schickele Mix, which aired on our stations for the several years it was in production, beginning in 1992,” Barone said. 

Program director Julie Amacher recalled seeing Schickele perform with the Empire Strikes Back Brass at the Fitzgerald Theater: “So memorable!”

Host Mindy Ratner had a more personal recollection.

“The very first date I ever went on as a teenager was to see Peter Schickele do his P.D.Q. Bach routine at Carnegie Hall,” she said.

She noted one of his hilarious compositions, Go for Broke – A Comedy for Chorus, which was first performed by Minnesota’s Dale Warland Singers in 1989. The work was featured in a 1997 episode of MPR’s Artists in Concert, which Ratner hosted and produced.

“He was brilliant and funny and kind,” she added.

But Schickele’s biggest contribution to the MPR archives was arguably a New Year’s Eve broadcast he did with host Lynne Warfel in late 1993.

“In my early years at MPR, Peter and I did a nationally distributed show called A Classic New Year's Eve,” she recalled. “Dale Connelly and I co-wrote it. It was performed in Studio M for a live audience with food and wine, a la cabaret. Musical guests were Jon Kimura Parker, Tony Ross and a quartet from the Minnesota Orchestra, and the King's Singers. It was a comedy and music show with an ongoing sketch about how we all got stranded on some Great Plains farm on New Year’s Eve with all these musicians.”

The cast also included Connelly, Tom Keith, Bill Morelock and Beth Gilleland.

“It was a big deal and fun,” Warfel said.

Tom Crann, a former classical host who now can be heard on MPR News, remembered that New Year’s Eve extravaganza and his own production with Schickele.

“I loved him and am still proud all these years later of a Composer’s Voice program profiling him,” Crann said. “It had some great moments of him talking about growing up in Fargo and playing clarinet on the radio.”

He added: “I loved bumping into him around here. He was a singularly brilliant guy — and so genuine.”