Finnders & Youngberg, Colorado’s premier Americana quintet, will add yet another honor to their impressive resume: they’ve been chosen as an official showcase act for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s World of Bluegrass conference in Nashville, Tenn., this fall. They are one of just 13 acts invited to perform during the bluegrass industry’s biggest and most important week.
Festival Mozaic has announced its 2012 summer season, which will take place July 12-22 in the most charismatic spaces across California's Central Coast including Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, Chapel Hill in wine country, Hearst Castle overlooking the sparkling Pacific Ocean, and Mission San Miguel . The theme, "In The Footsteps of Giants," will showcase a lineage of masterworks which inspired – and were inspired by – phenomenal composers over the ages.
The San Francisco Mandolin Orchestra with singers Susan Gundunas and Twila Ehmcke will be performing one of the gems of the Baroque music era, Stabat Mater, written in 1736 by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi.
The Newport Festivals Foundation has announced the lineup for the 2012 Newport Folk Festival set to take place July 28-29 at Fort Adams State Park.
This album is sophisticated urban pop played with a combination of acoustic instruments usually found in bluegrass bands. Any further references to blugrass is hard to find on the album.
A neurological disorder called dystonia is estimated to have ended the careers of at least one member of every major American metropolitan orchestra. Dystonia has claimed the livelihoods of musicians across genres including the acclaimed pianist Leon Fleisher of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, former first oboist of the Chicago Symphony Alex Klein, acoustic guitarist Billy McLaughlin, classical guitarist Liona Boyd, keyboard player Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and others.
Luckily, Alexandra Coutinho and Rio Con Brio decided to make this a stand alone album. The plan was to feature Alexandra Coutinho on some tracks of Rio Con Brio's Caprice.
Caprice is an album by a guitar and mandolin duo playing mostly choro standards. It could be a challenge to make this fly. Rio Con Brio have pulled it off.
Watertown is an honest low cost production. All tracks but one are signed songwriter Cheryl J. Watson. Fellow musicians helped her by contributing takes from their home studios.
The expression Goat Rodeo is a description for an event where a hundred things must go right in order for the event to work. That is the concept for this cross genre production.
Magazine
The summer girl finds music a great aid
The education of the fashionable girl is not complete nowadays until she has secured a certain degree of proficiency in playing upon one or more of the popular string instruments.
Among the treasures found in a hidden page on PaperClips Design's website, there is a facsimile from New York Herald of an article published when a mandolin could be bought for $10. The date is unknown.
The facsimile - Courtesy of Jim Garber
The text continues:
The summer girl finds such accomplishments especially useful in her July and August attack upon masculine hearts.
The guitar used to be the favorite weapon with these maidens. There is something soulful about the tones of a guitar. It makes nice, quiet music for an accompaniment to a flirtation that has progressed considerably. It is especially alluring when played by a dark-eyed maid with a mellifluous voice. Indeed, it requires a great deal of patience and practice to learn to play well enough upon a guitar to use it alone without this sweet addition to cover some of the sins of execution.
It is much easier to play attractively upon the banjo than upon the guitar, and for this reason it has been very popular with both men and women. But many object to thethrum-thrum tone, and it quickly grows monotonous. Besides it is always getting out of tune, and the operation of tuning any string instrument is doleful, to say the least. Moreover, one can never quite separate it from its timehonored association with the dusky race, who still know best how to bring out its sweetest tones.
All things considered, the most interesting little instrument and the most convenient to carry about is the mandolin. It has other advantages over a banjo and guitar. For one thing, it is smaller and easier to hold, therefore more graceful.
If handled with care it rarely gets badly out of tune, and one can soon learn to play upon it well enough to be interesting. If a maid have a musical ear she can quickly pick out a few popular tunes by air, which her friends will be glad to join in singing. Indeed, contrary to the general impression, chords upon the mandolin make a very pretty accompaniment, and the beginners will find the G chord very easy and usually well adapted to popular songs.
The notes in the G chord are, first bass note, low G, chord; D open, B on the A string, G on the E string: second, bass note, C on the G string, chord; G on the D string, C on the A string, and open E; third, bass note, open D, chord; open A, and F sharp on the E string.
The beginner who learns these three G chords will be surprised to find how many times she can use them as accompaniments to songs and other instruments, especially other mandolins.
A passable mandolin sells for $10, but even this is not desirable, unless one has means of getting a discount upon the regular selling price, in which case one can get a very good one for that amount. When one pays $15 for her mandolin, and goes to a reliable dealer to get it, she may be sure that she has an instrument without defects in the frets, at least. Twenty-five dollars will buy a conparatively nice instrument, and for $40 one can get an imported Vellacia, without any pearl ornaments, to be sure, but with a sweetness of tone that rivals anything made in this country, and which corresponds in desirability to the Stradivarius in violins.
The imported mandolins are, as I have said, sweeter in tone than the American ones, but, like so many of the imported articles made of foreign woods, they are found very sensitive to the American climatic variations, and for this reason their beautifully polished surface is usually varnished to prevent the warping of the wood.
The duty on musical instruments is very high, and for this reason the Vellacia is very expensive, even when made without ornamentation. When decorated with pearl or jewels they reach fabulous prices. One that was exhibited at the world's fair sold for $1,000. It was almost covered with mother of pearl, but had no prettier tone than a plain Vellacia.
Radim Zenkl, the Czech-born, California-based magician of the mandolin has been on the road and onstage since he arrived in the USA more than twenty years ago. He recently swung through my hometown of Portland, Oregon and performed his eclectic solo show to a packed house of enthusiastic fans.
Rio Con Brio started out to make one CD. As they recorded tracks, they realized they had two albums on their hands. One is their third choro album, the other is the debut of fado singer Alexandra Coutinho.
If you were there, you’ll agree that the Baltimore host team put on an excellent convention for our quarter-century landmark. With so many people attending, the energy level was high. If you weren’t there, you want to know what you missed. Here are some highlights.
James "Yank" Rachell was the primary exponent of blues mandolin, although he also played guitar, violin, harp and sang expertly well.
To create a violin with the same characteristics as the 1704 instrument known as "Betts," Dr. Sirr worked with professional violin makers John Waddle and Steve Rossow of St. Paul, Minn. They used a CT scanner and a CNC router. Here are a few photos.
Recently, Cheryl Watson released a CD called Watertown. She unplugged her Fender Tele and turned to acoustic guitars. She traded a guitar for her first mandolin. Chloe, her cat, listen with the eyes closed when Cheryl plays the mandolin.
International mandolin super-group revives the name and repertoire of a 1930's Polish Jewish mandolin orchestra. And this September, they took the music back to its source. Full story and notes from the tour by one of the Ger mandolinists.
Alon Sariel is young, gifted and busy. He is one of those remarkable guys from the Beer Sheva Mandolin Orchestra in Israel. This Friday he appears in Cambridge, UK, to teach in the Cambridge Performance Masterclasses.
Conference. College. Genre bazaar. Horizon expander. Mandolinirvana. Musical family reunion. An ear-stretching, soul-filling, life-altering immersion experience. Surely, we must be talking about the Mandolin Symposium.
Nigel Forster is a luthier. He has a lot of thoughts about his trade. One book is not enough space for his thoughts. He willingly shares more thoughts.
Jim Richter is inviting all to his 1st annual Jim Richter rock-n-blues mandolin camp. He hopes it'll approach mandolin instruction from a perspective more immediately beneficial and useful than some workshops. He also has top ten advices for beginners.
"Enjoy." This quiet word, unheard by the expectant audience behind him, flew straight from the conductor's lips to the hearts of 35 mandolin, mandola, and mandocello players. Instantly, the chemistry in a Chelsea rehearsal room in the middle of New York City was altered - a subtle change, but the perfect one.
Raffaele Calace released his mandolin method in 1910. Mike Marshall and Caterina Lichtenberg have reissued his work in English, 100 years later.
He found way to combine Finnish traditional music and Brasilian choro. An unique flavour of choro was born.
Los Hermanos Cubero, The Cubero Brothers, live in Lliçà d'Amunt, a small town near Barcelona in Catalunya, Spain. Combining their folk music with bluegrass is a natural consequence of their influences.
French rock star Feloche has created his own cajun universe. It's rooted in his Urban Bajou.
"Oi, Druzil here," he presents himself, "The Dread Pirate Druzil is the resident mandolin, banjo, and tin whistle player in the world travelling band of raving drunken lunatics and purveyors of fine clusterfolk known as the Dreadnoughts."
Tim O'Brien is a traveller. He wants to get off the road and write and produce more.
Mandolin Cafe was launched November 18, 1995. The number one mandolin site is celebrating 15 years.
The education of the fashionable girl is not complete nowadays until she has secured a certain degree of proficiency in playing upon one or more of the popular string instruments.