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
Yank Rachell
James "Yank" Rachell was the primary exponent of blues mandolin, although he also played guitar, violin, harp and sang expertly well.
By Madeline Burke
Yank Rachell 1910-1997
Born on a farm outside Brownsville, Tennessee, March 16, 1910, Yank Rachell picked up the mandolin at the age of eight, mainly teaching himself; an early encounter with "Hambone" Willie Newbern early on helped him as well. Rachell began to work dances with singer and guitarist Sleepy John Estes in the early '20s. In early 1929, he co-formed the Three J's Jug Band with Estes and pianist Jab Jones.
The Three J's Jug Band were an instant hit and managed to work the dances during the lucrative jug-band craze in Memphis and traveled often to Paducah, Kentucky. The group recorded 14 sides credited jointly to Estes and Rachell for Victor for 1929 and 1930.
After the record business was flattened by the depression, the Three J's broke up. Estes and harmonica player Hammie Nixon went on to Chicago to seek their fortune in the nightclubs, but Yank Rachell decided to try his hand at farming and also worked for the L&N Railroad. Ironically, it was Rachell who was next to record -during a stopover in New York Rachell teamed up with guitarist Dan Smith and laid down 25 titles for ARC in just three days, though only six of them were issued.
Shortly before the ARC date, Yank Rachell had discovered a kid harmonica player that he believed had real talent, John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson. They worked together at the Blue Flame Club in Jackson, Tennessee starting in 1933.
In 1934 Williamson went north to Chicago. With the success of Williamson's first Bluebird dates of 1937, Rachell decided to join Sonny Boy in Chicago for sessions in March and June of 1938. Yank Rachell also contributed four sides of his own to each session, and then 16 more in 1941 with Sonny Boy backing him up. Some of the 1941 tracks are among his best: "It Seem Like a Dream," "Biscuit Baking Woman," and "Peach Tree Blues" were all successes for both Rachell and Bluebird.
But in 1938, while working in St. Louis with Peetie Wheatstraw, Yank Rachell had married and started to raise a family. During the peak of his musical career, Rachell kept his day job and did not lead "the life," at least not the same one that claimed his friend Sonny Boy Williamson on June 1, 1948.
After Williamson's murder, Rachell drifted away from music and relied solely on straight jobs to make his living, settling permanently in Indianapolis in 1958. His wife passed away in 1961, and afterward he began to resume performing. In 1962, Rachell was re-united with Nixon and Estes, and the three of them began tearing up the college and coffeehouse circuit, recording for Delmark as Yank Rachell's Tennessee Jug Busters.
Estes died in 1977, and from that time Rachell worked mainly as a solo act. Yank Rachell was a long-time regular at the Slippery Noodle in Indianapolis, and recorded only sporadically in his last years. Nonetheless, he was working on a new album when he died at age 87, April 9, 1997 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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.