Peter Ostroushko

[HarrisonMandolin]

Hi everyone!

Yesterday was the anniversary of Peter Ostroushko's passing and I just wanted to post today in memory of him and his music. If you are looking for beautiful music to inspire you today, please add him to your playlist.

This performance was televised back when I first started playing the mandolin and I return to it often to hear Peter's masterful, sensitive musicianship.

Hope you all have a great day.

[DougC]

Thanks for the reminder. He was a dear friend who was proud of his heritage and at the same time a great 'American' in the sense that he maintained that everyone is worthy of respect.

[tmsweeney]

for me Pete is right up there with the great mandolin players of the era - Grisman, Bush, Mike Marshall, Evan Marshall, Andy Statman, Mike Compton, Radim Zenkle, Tim Ware and so on.
very influential on my playing and musical tastes.
He is the reason I tried making BORSCHT and wound up loving it!

[Louise NM]

He was also proud of his Ukrainian heritage, especially poignant this week.

[Sheila Lagrand]

He was also proud of his Ukrainian heritage, especially poignant this week.

I've been needing a good cry over this week's horrors. That comment did the trick. Thanks, Louise. (I mean that sincerely. It's like my sorrow and everything was stuck in my throat.)

[Don Grieser]

Thanks, Louise, brings it all home.

[ColdBeerGoCubs]

This guy never ceases to amaze me, as far as I'm concerned he has one of the best picking hands out there and also never really got the attention he deserved.

Appreciate you posting this, thank you.

[gardenmaid]

This is very beautiful, thank you for sharing. Does anyone have any Ukrainian tabs/sheet music? I have been very sad over everything going on and would love to play some.

[Big Joe]

I heard he gave mandolin lessons, so I called him and set a time for the lesson. I drove to his place and he welcomed me in. He was a very nice man and I enjoyed his ties to his heritage. He asked what I wanted to learn. I said I wanted to be a good bluegrass mandolin player. He said he wasn’t too familiar with bluegrass but he tried his best to help this ignorant student learn something. I was amazed that a guy this famous lived in a house in a neighborhood like most of us regular people lived. I can’t say the lesson was much help to me musically, but I learned a most important lesson that helped me for the rest of my life to this point. It’s easier to be nice to people and treat them with respect and that is more important than being a great mandolin player. He did love mandolin and I liked that. That was a very long time ago. It was years before I moved to Nashville, and that was 30 years ago. I always had a nice place in my heart for Peter and felt like he was my friend from that day on. We talked about that lesson about ten years ago. Of course he didn’t remember that lesson, but I don’t think I ever will. He was the first “pro” mandolin player I met, and I have had the pleasure to know a good number of pro players, and with few exceptions they all are as nice as Peter. I am a blessed man. I have played the best mandolins and know the best players. What more could one ask?

[mandocrucian]

https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/a...hp?albumid=563

[Marcus CA]

Ostroushko's three-cd The Mando Chronicles shows the breadth of his musical interests and talents. It's really a tremendous collection.

I met him the year that he taught at Mandolin Symposium. He gave a great class on Norman Blake's Original Underground Music from the Mysterious South, on which he played mandolin. I could have done without his digressions into cooking and gardening, encouraged by some of my classmates, but his musical stories and instruction were most excellent.

At his evening show, he did an absolutely stunning version of "Girl from the North Country," backed up by Marshall (on mandocello, I think) and Anger. This is my favorite video on YouTube of him doing the song, but I liked it better with just a couple of instruments in the hands of masters.

[tmsweeney]

finally learned this deep cut from Minnesota a History of the Land, "Swede Hollow Lament" performed here on a 2022 Northfield Archtop Octave, a 1920 Gibson F4 and a 1917 Gibson A1. I tried the melody on a few different mandolins but that old European stye just called for the two old Gibsons.