Dean Magraw studied at the University of Minnesota and Berklee College of Music in Boston. He spent five years in Beantown, playing professionally and teaching. After returning to his hometown St. Paul, he's had a life of music—playing, composing, arranging, producing, and recording. Magraw’s music is impossible to pigeonhole. For 15 years, he was half of a duo with mandolinist Peter Ostroushko. He has collaborated with Masahiro Nitta, who plays the traditional Japanese shamisen; with Nigel Kennedy, Britain’s bad boy of the classical violin; with Nirmala Rajasekar, South Indian vocalist and player of the vina; with the singers Bruce Henry, Ruth MacKenzie, and Claudia Schmidt; with the Irish supergroup Altan. As a jazz cat, he leads his own trio; performing with Chris Bates and Jay Epstein as Red Planet; and, more recently, has formed BluLuna and SunShip.

For several decades the Minnesota native Eric Peltoniemi has covered the musical waterfront: touring artist, singer/songwriter, award-winning lyricist/composer for the music theater, record producer and record label executive at acclaimed Red House Records. He has performed throughout the US, as well as in Canada and northern Europe. 

In 2018 he appeared in the multiple award-winning Finnish film, Ikitie (the Eternal Road) singing a song he wrote for the production. His songs have been covered and recorded by a number of folk and roots music artists over the years.

 "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

 “There aren’t enough superlatives for the power and feeling in Peltoniemi’s haunting songs.”—Star Tribune