Best way to buy tickets for the Banquet on Friday, April 10? BECOME A MEMBER of The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame!

The Annual Museum Open House will be held the next day Saturday, April 11th from 10AM to 2PM (open house has free admission!).

Save both dates!

Save both dates!

This week we will be sharing the Legacy of Leon Olsen by playing his music at The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in the museum. Leon Olsen was inducted to the MMHF in 2013, and was on the Board of Directors.

New Ulm Journal newspaper tribute Thursday, October 23, 2025

Stop by and check it out! 10am-2pm Thursday, Friday, Saturday. 27 N. Broadway, New Ulm, Minnesota.

  James Donna, one of the original founding members of The Castaways, will be signing copies of his book LIAR, LIAR: From Garage Band to Rockstars, The Story of Minnesota’s Castaways in the 1960’s. The book tells the amazing story of The Castaways from 1963 to today.

The 2025 Induction Ceremony and Awards Banquet will be held 5pm Friday, April 25, 2025 at Turner Hall, 102 S. State St., in New Ulm. A semi-formal event.

Tickets are sold in advance VIA EMAIL AT mmhf@newulmtel.net Tickets are $55 for members, $60 non-members. This includes dinner and program.

FRIDAY

5:00 PM Social Hour

6:00 PM Dinner

7:00 PM Induction Ceremony

SATURDAY

Showcase Day 10AM-2PM, Saturday April 26, 2025 at The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, 27 North Broadway, New Ulm. Admission is FREE on Saturday at The MMHF Museum; we will have entertainment and light refreshments.

Inducted 2025

  Marv Nissel started his interest in music in 1947 at the age of nine when his grandfather (William Nissel) and his father (Harold Nissel) were playing with The Christy Hengel Band of Wanda, Minnesota.  Marv began taking concertina lessons from Wenzel Fischer at the age of 13, and played his first dance job in 1953 at the age of 15.  He continued to play until 1961 when he entered the service.

  After his honorable discharge from the army in 1963, Marv bought his first Hengel concertina and moved to New Ulm, Minnesota where he played with various bands such as The Slim Kalz Dance Band, Norm Wilke & The Little Fishermen, Fezz Fritsche & The Goosetown Band, Lester Schuft & The Country Dutchmen, and The Cliff Hermel Polka Party Band. One of Marv’s most impressive honors was his performance for Vice President Hubert Humphrey at his campaign dance in 1968.

  In 1976, Marv began teaching concertina to ten students, which quickly grew to a cadre of over 60. Marv has composed two original songs for the concertina, “The St. George Polka,” and “Nissel’s Hoolerie,” and has also written over 500 arrangements for the concertina. In 1978, Marv and his wife, Carol, formed The Marv Nissel Band, and started traveling throughout the Midwest.  In 1986, Cliff Hermel, owner and operator of the Gibbon Ballroom, joined Marv’s band on drums, as did Marv and Carol’s two daughters, Lori and Jodi.  In 1987, the Minnesota Ballroom Operators Association (MBOA) awarded the band as the No. 1 Variety Band for the State of Minnesota. Between 1981 and 2002, the band won MBOA awards over 11 years for their outstanding contribution to the ballroom music industry.  In 1993, Mike Moldan joined the band.  During the mid-1990’s, the Nissels appeared at over 170 jobs annually and traveled nationally.

   Since 1995, Marv and Carol have had their own weekly radio show on AM-860 KNUJ Radio in New Ulm. In 2005, Marv was inducted into the World Concertina Congress; and in 2024, The Marv Nissel Band released their 28th album entitled Homecoming, which featured Marv on concertina, Carol on keyboard bass and piano, daughter Lori on trumpet, fiddle, and concertina, and both Jim Bartusek and Marv and Carol’s grandson, Chris Ebel, on drums. Marv Nissel is a well-deserved inductee to The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame with over 70 years of both performing and promoting polka music!  He has performed in 21 states, traveled over a million miles, and taught concertina music hundreds of students. His precise style of playing is easily recognized in the polka industry.  At almost every dance job, Marv is requested to play the “Ellen Polka”, a concertina solo usually played in the key of D.  Even though it is much more difficult to play the song in the key of E, Marv chooses to do so, because he thinks that it sounds prettier, and the dancers obviously agree because he is often told, “Nobody plays the Ellen Polka like you do, Marv”.

Inducted 2024

Friedrich “Fritz” Otto Reuter was born on October 11, 1863 in Jahnsbach, Saxony, Germany. He had shown a talent for music in his early childhood. In his music education, Retuer studied with well-known teachers of his day, including Bernhard Reichart in Waldenburg, Theodor Schneider and Gustav Schreck in Leipzig, Joseph Rheinberger in Munich, and Karl Thiel in Berlin. Reuter completed his formal training in music at The Akademische Institut für Kirchenmusik in Berlin where his studies emphasized composition. Reuter’s teachers could boast a rather impressive lineage. Reichart’s teacher was Johann Toepfer, who was taught by August Mueller, whose teacher was Johann Christoph Bach, whose teacher (and father) was J.S. Bach, the Lutheran church musician who many still regard as the world’s greatest composer. As a result, any student of Reuter and any student of a Reuter student has a direct link in their music education to Old Bach. Although Reuter had held some rather prestigious positions as teacher and church musician in his home country, he had at times found himself out of fellowship with his state church. His continuing concern over theological controversies in Germany led him to seek positions in North America.

Through connections of his brother, Karl, he was able to make contact with a church and school in Winnipeg, Canada. Clara Tekla Sonntag Reuter, spouse to Fritz and mother to their eight children, fulfilled the immeasurable and often silent and less-than-fully-appreciated role of women in that era. Leaving Germany with her husband, she totally left her family of origin behind, never to see them again. As they boarded the ship for America with five little girls under nine years of age, she was also carrying their next soon-to-be-born child. Upon landing in Canada, Fritz Otto contracted typhoid fever and recovered. Tragically, Ida Hanna (age 7) and baby Katherine (6 months) also contracted the disease and were buried in Winnipeg. The new baby, Fritz Gustav, was born in July of ’06. All those events would be more than enough to bear, if one were surrounded by loving and supportive family and friends; however, such family and friends being totally absent, here she was in a strange land, with no knowledge whatsoever, much less fluency, of the English language and her husband fully occupied as the family bread-winner. After serving in Canada a few years, Reuter accepted a position with the Missouri Synod in Chicago in 1907. Reuter became known to the Dr. Martin Luther College faculty through joint teacher’s conferences of the Wisconsin and Missouri Synod. Reuter’s assignment as the first full-time music teacher of the college was to chair the music department and to develop the music curriculum. He was forty-four years old when he came to New Ulm, Minnesota. Reuter came to DMLC highly qualified in keyboard, choral conducting, music history, stringed instruments, music theory, composition, and pedagogy. He arrived in April of 1908 and began his work right away. Reuter even presented a concert in New Ulm’s Turner Hall before the end of the school year.

Fritz Reuter gave music “a place and a dignity hitherto unknown at the college” (Morton Schroeder, Gifted Musician, The Northwestern Lutheran, June 1997). He began singing classes, started mixed and male choirs, taught a 32-hour course load per week, gave keyboard and violin lessons, and, when he could, he composed his own music. During his first years at DMLC, Reuter’s choirs sang music from Elgar, Händel, Mendelssohn, Schütz, and J.S. Bach. Two of Reuter’s works that were sung early on were “Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, und Siehe, das ist Gottes Lamm”. Reuter himself spoke of the work of his choirs: “The men’s choir as well as the mixed choir works diligently in the area of tone and voice formation and intonation, and in the area of melodic, rhythmic and harmonic assuredness” (The Messenger, vol. II, no. 3, 57). Over the years many Reuter compositions were sung and played on the DMLC campus. Organ students worked out of Reuter chorale prelude books, and his choral piece, “Weihnachtsgeschichte”, or “The Christmas Story,” written for mixed choir, organ, and narrator was performed almost every year at the DMLC Christmas Concert from the late 1920’s to the late 1950’s, several times between the 50’s and 90’s, and again at the final Christmas concert of Dr. Martin Luther College in December of 1994.

Reuter wrote much secular music in addition to his great body of sacred works. Locally, the Reuters lived at 126 N. Washington Street in New Ulm. He was an active member at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church and served in music there, too. There were eight children: Two, Ida Hanna (age 7) and baby Katherine (6 months) died from typhoid fever in Canada, three daughters, Magdalena, Marie, and Elizabeth, and one son, Friedrich, also called “Fritz.” His granddaughter, Margo Reuter Martens, has been actively involved in preserving Reuter’s personal history and music.

Confined to bed with illness, Reuter had been given a leave of absence from Christmas to the end of the 1922-1923 school year. Emil Backer, a New Ulm native, mentee of Reuter, graduate of DMLC, and also a highly skilled musician and teacher, was asked to take over Reuter’s work on a temporary basis with the hope that Reuter would recover. But he did not, and died on June 9, 1924 of a brain tumor. The baton was passed to Backer, who remained in the position of Music Professor and Choir Director at DMLC until his passing in 1957. Fritz Reuter and his wife are buried in the St. Paul Lutheran cemetery in New Ulm. There is a stained glass window in St John’s Lutheran Church in Frankenmuth, one of the panes contains Fritz Reuter, picture and name. One of his students was stationed there and was responsible for that being displayed in the church window.

Inducted 2019

The outstanding guitarist John Holmquist gained international recognition as one of the leading young performers when he was awarded first prize in the Guitar 78 International Competition, receiving a standing ovation. This competition, held every three years at the International Guitar Festival in Toronto, Canada, is the most prestigious guitar event in North America. A New Ulm resident, John Holmquist began his studies in 1972 at the age of 17 with renowned classical guitar performerJeffrey Van in Minneapolis, Minnesota. John continued studies with Mr. Van at the University of Minnesota, receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Guitar Performance in 1978. Further studies were with Maestro Alirio Diaz in France and Canada and with guitarist-composer Gilbert Biberian in London, England. He made his London debut in 1979 at Wigmore Hall, and in 1981 he performed at The Abraham Goodman House in New York City. His superb artistry and dazzling technique earned him critical acclaim from solo and ensemble concerts throughout North America and abroad. For many years John Holmquist was the head of The Cleveland Institute of Music, where he taught classical guitar as well as courses in guitar literature and pedagogy. He published a number of articles and reviews and edited the re-discovered Ten Etudes for Guitar by Gilulio Regondi, found in a private collection in Moscow, Russia by Matanya Ophee and published by Editions Orphee. Holmquist was a featured performer on broadcasts over The CBC in Canada, The BBC in England, and National Public Radio in the United States. With an extensive repertoire spanning five centuries, John was also a champion of new music, and as such gave numerous world premieres of compositions dedicated to him. He was in great demand as a teacher and presented master classes at major universities and music institutions around the world, and adjudicated at numerous international competitions. His students have won several top prizes in regional, national, and international competitions. Several of his former students have gone on to establish impressive concert and recording careers of their own. John Holmquist was described by the St. Louis Globe as possessing “…that rare combination of taste and skill”.