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
Radim Zenkl Plays Solo Mandolin Concert to Packed House in Portland, USA
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.
By Tim Connell
Radim kicked off the show with an uptempo medley of two original compositions, the chord melody “Spring Break”, originally featured on David Grisman's Tone Poets album, and the fiddle-tune-inspired “Twin Peaks”, both performed on his signature Rosta Capek extra-wide-necked mandolin. Radim would return to this instrument throughout the show, but he would also pull out a seemingly endless parade of stringed and wind instruments during the course of the show, like the single-course mandola he played fingerstyle on the next piece, a gentle orignal titled “Uneaten Apples”.
Radim Zenkl
Following this came Radim's tribute to the music and country he seems to love almost as much as his native Czech Republic: Ireland. He played an insanely original take on the Irish tin whistle entitled “Kyvalka”, grounded in the traditional style, but exploiting aspects of the instrument that I never knew existed. He followed this with a gentle piece on the Irish bouzouki, “Last Call”.
As the evening progressed, Radim would pull out a dizzying array of humble folk instruments and dazzle the audience with sounds that do not seem possible: a “koncovka” a Czech shephard's whistle, over 6 feet high with an other-wordly sound; a nylon-stringed mandolin; a two-stringed ukelele that he turned into a full orchestra; a bull-horn ocarina that somehow produced a gorgeous melody; an end-blown flute with no holes, which produced over 15 separate notes through the magic of overblowing to access the harmonic series; and a compact, travel-sized Australian didgeridoo which he played in the traditional style, complete with circular breating. And of course, the audience was treated to the alternative mandolin technique for which Radim is most well-known: the thumbpick duo-style he employed on his original “Pegasus Descent” among other pieces.
It must get lonely doing a solo show, so at the start of the second set, Radim shared the stage with several of his Portland friends, including this reviewer. First up were mandolinist Olivia Duffy and classical guitarist Rene Berblinger, playing a Gervasio piece, a Brazilian choro and an original piece as well. I was honored to join Radim in a two-mandolin exploration of his original piece “Rodrigues”. I have not had the pleasure of playing with Radim since our tour in Poland with the Ger Mandolin boys, and we had a blast getting crazy on this Spanish-influenced jam-vehicle. Up next was an Irish trio in which Radim was joined by Doug Smith and Eleanor Plunkett on the guitar and low whistle for a piece by the great Irish harper, Turlough O'Carolan. And Ryan Francesconi brought out his amazing tambura for the traditional Bulgarian piece “In Between the Mountains”.
Radim closed the show with his delay-pedal extravaganza “Talk With the Rock”, met with a standing ovation. Before playing the encore, a gentle “Revival” on his single-course mandola, Radim thanked the audience for their support and the wish that they “be inspired to create with whatever their own 'mandolin' is in life.”
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.