Sweet ‘Prairie Home’ in Chicago delivers musical smorgasbord

Never, I’m betting, has so great a variety of music been performed so well in one evening from Chicago’s Symphony Center stage.

Public radio warhorse “A Prairie Home Companion,” now hosted by 35-year-old mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile, served its show live from the home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Saturday evening. An exuberant, sellout crowd heard everything from Bowie to Brahms to Bon Iver, along with some old Irish folk, new American and British folk, the thunder rock of Led Zeppelin, the classic blues of Willie Dixon, a Max Roach drum solo and the “slow burn” contemporary classical of composer Morton Feldman.

Was there a brand-new tune by Thile, a lifelong Cubs fan, that compared manager Joe Maddon’s questionable decision to pull Kyle Hendricks in Game 7 of the World Series for a lefty with what the host interpreted as another panicky move, American voters’ election last November of a righty? Indeed. (“We, Joe Maddon” should be available for download at the “PHC” website by Tuesday.)

Was there whistling, from the talented lips of violinist-songwriter Andrew Bird? Yes, there was whistling. Was there even duet whistling, with Thile — of Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers fame — joining Bird for a few stanzas? You know it.

Did I mention the button accordion?

Maybe you wandered away from the show in the later years of founding host Garrison Keillor, who handed his headset to Thile in October. Maybe you never much visited in the first place. But while you weren’t listening, this enduring homage to oldtime music-comedy radio variety programs, which still draws more than 2 million listeners a week, Thile said, has become must-hear radio for any music fan whose tastes haven’t ossified, whose pleasures come from surprise rather than repetition.

It gets a special impact from the power of being performed live, an extreme rarity in these days of downloads-atwill and other catering to viewers’ demands. Anything could go wrong at any moment, and the fact that it doesn’t adds to the appreciation.

The key to it all, of course, is Thile, who is willing to poke fun at his diminutive instrument of choice, but who does so from a position of strength. He opened Saturday’s show with a nod to the CSO, and in particular a recording made under legendary conductor Fritz Reiner in the 1950s, a taste of the Brahms Symphony No. 3 Opus 90 — not originally written for mandolin — that was breathtaking.

Thile (rhymes with “feely”) sings well and easily across a range of musical styles, an advantage he has over Keillor, whose own singing through the years, while obviously a labor of love, felt like labor, a thing he worked at to get to a place of passibility, usually in the vein of church music.

Thile can and does harmonize beautifully with guests or just augment their tunes with delicate, never-too-insistent mandolin riffs, and they seem delighted to have a player of his caliber joining in. He did so on a new tune by guest Laura Marling, a soulful British singer-songwriter who was, unfortunately, born too late to have been part of the Fairport Convention collective. And he joined Bird, the Chicagoan now living in Los Angeles, for a memorable reading of Bird’s “Pulaski at Night,” in which the singer pleads, “Come back to Chicago, city of light.”

At the center

Saturday once again proved the power of the woman who has become Thile’s musical sidekick and the show’s not-sosecret weapon, the Austin, Texas-by-way-of New York singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz.

Jarosz, as in most weeks during Thile’s tenure, was everywhere. A sampling: She sang backup to Bird; took the lead for her own song, “Jacqueline,” about JFK’s widow and the Central Park reservoir named for her; and joined Thile in harmony singing a version of “Michicant,” a Bon Iver song, in tribute to that band’s singer, Justin Vernon, who was supposed to have been there but had to cancel that appearance (and a subsequent European tour) at the last minute.

Thile is not, as he said in an interview last week, “one of those musicians who is just kind of like, head down, ‘here is my music, shut up and listen.’ ” There is an effervescence to him, an evident joy in being at the center of the show’s hybrid arts gathering, that serves him well as host.

“Prairie Home” live was captured well in Robert Altman’s 2006 film sharing the radio show’s title. As a sketch is ending, musicians are walking on stage into place. As the applause for a song dies down, sketch players walk on and pull on their headphones. At the center of it is Thile, who tosses his script pages onto the floor with a flourish as he finishes with them.

His enthusiasm spreads outward — people like entertainers who like entertaining — and the show has new features that showcase his talents. The song about Maddon was one in the new Song of the Week feature that sees Thile writing something topical for that week’s show. A new weekly reading of musicians’ birthdays lets him and the crack band take on the likes of (last week) Zeppelin, Shawn Colvin, Roach and Feldman.

In-house comedy

Where Keillor’s show had the edge on Thile’s, of course, was in his Lake Wobegon monologues: tales of Midwestern living that were superbly crafted, especially for being done without a script, and had much more of an edge than the casual listener might have realized.

The new “PHC” brings on a new comic each week to try to fill that void. Saturday it was Beth Stelling, another former Chicagoan now in LA, who was sharp and unpredictable on Dairy Queen and her female relatives. “My mom and I, we go way back,” she said. “My parents are divorced, obviously.”

Meanwhile, the show’s in-house comedy clicks occasionally. Sketch comedy is hard, as “Saturday Night Live” has been proving for about as long as “A Prairie Home Companion.” They’ve done a good job under Thile of getting into and out of sketches more quickly, and of finding some regular bits that work. Bertrand Falstaff Heine, an engagingly ridiculous wine critic, and Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian, made appearances Saturday.

The latter was being chosen by President Barack Obama, voiced well by company member Tim Russell, for an unexpected slot at Obama’s forthcoming presidential library on Chicago’s South Side.

In truth, a good portion of the Chicago references — Shedd Aquarium, our hot dogs, Lincoln Park, the Willis Tower Skydeck — likely played fresher to the show’s national audience. What struck this Chicagoan as clever, though, beyond the Maddon song, were a reference to nobody looking good in The Bean sculpture and Thile’s line about not being able to tell where Grant Park ends and Millennium Park begins. Fair point.

What felt off-the-truck fresh were the Chicago musical nods, which also included snippets of a couple of Wilco tunes (if Thile wants to go ahead and do a full cover of “Jesus, Etc.,” that would be fine), and a raucous take at show’s end on Dixon’s “If the Sea Was Whiskey.”

When “Prairie Home” has visited Chicago in years past, it’s typically been to Ravinia, a laid-back summertime venue.SymphonyCenterwas one in a series of touring stops meant to prove the show’s vitality under Thile, who is on the public-radio equivalent of the NBA’s 10-day contract, a 13-week sort of trial season, as he described it, that will end in February.

And the point, I think, was made. After the broadcast ended, the applause continued, and Thile and band came back out for what he said was the show’s “first legitimate encore.” Patrons walked into the night with Jarosz’s channeling of Linda Ronstadt’s “High Sierra” echoing through their heads. As companions go, this one is proving pretty insistent on being heard.

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