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
Spanish folk music with a bluegrass twist
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.
By Reidar Falch
Enrique Ruiz Cubero plays guitar and Roberto Ruiz Cubero plays mandolin in the duo. They were awarded with the production of a CD, last year, in the Creation of New Folklore Award named after Agapito Marazuela. The CD is called Cordaineros De La Alcarria.
Roberto and Enrique Ruiz Cubero
They had 9 weeks to prepare for five days recording in a studio. Roberto recalls, "Those 9 weeks were so short! We even had to make the cover art!"
"The self-penned tracks were all written for this album, except Jota para Bill Monroe (Jota is a Spanish traditional dance music in 3/4 or 6/8) and Cruzando el Sistema Ibérico which were written a while ago. The other tracks are all Spanish traditional songs and tunes, chosen keeping in mind our mixture of Spanish and bluegrass music," Roberto says.
In the studio, everything was easy, "Every track were made in three or four takes, recording mandolin and guitar at once and over dubbing the vocals. The engineer is a very clever guy and he helped us a lot."
"To us, this is a combination of music we grew up with and love, Spanish and bluegrass music. We wanted to do arrangements as if those kinds of music were the same, as if they had always been the same music," Roberto says.
Agapito Marazuela playing dulzaina
Roberto explains more of the connection, "The instrumental tunes are all, at least the traditional tunes, from dulzaina (a kind of pipe played through a reed, the instrument Agapito Marazuela is playing on the photo). This is similar to what Bill Monroe did with the fiddle tunes. In the vocal tracks we wanted to foreground the peculiarity of the Spanish melodies with the classic bluegrass brother duet harmony."
"For us, this album has been the opportunity to pay tribute to our two main musical heroes, Agapito Marazuela and Bill Monroe. We hope we can continue growing in this line, as we feel we have much work to do with the music we have inside our heads and hearts," Roberto states.
Roberto and Enrique Ruiz Cubero - Photo by David Gimenez
Roberto started playing the Spanish oud when he was 15, doing traditional music from Spain, "The Spanish oud has 6 double strings, so that makes it an instrument with a lot of harmonics, sometimes hard to control for me, but is an instrument so loud and strong. Then I met Bill Monroe's music. I fell in love with his little instrument, similar to my oud, but so sweet, and yet strong."
"As I haven't got any musical education, my self-taught learning has led me to search for as many influences as I could find. So when it comes to mandolin playing, I found that in Frank Wakefield's playing there were a lot of Monroe stuff that I could learn easier than directly from Monroe. The same goes with Mike Compton and many others," Roberto says.
"Mandolin is not a popular or traditional instrument in Spain. Spain has a big stringed instrument tradition, guitar, oud, bandurria, zanfona (hurdy-gurdy), violin and such, but not mandolin. But I think there's a kind of little boom on the Spanish folk circuit where the mandolin is gaining prominence, and there are some great players like Carlos Beceiro that are doing interesting things," Roberto says.
He continues, "For Castillian music there has been a lot local oud and bandurria players that I saw jamming. That has influenced my learning. Dulzaina tunes are a big influence in my music, too."
Roberto and Enrique Ruiz Cubero - Photo by Lilian Guzman
"My brother Enrique loves music of Jimmy Martin, Lester Flatt, La Ronda de Boltaña, Nuevo Mester de Juglaría, so when we play music, we play it the way we have learned it from all of our influences," Roberto says.
Roberto sees many similarities between the two types of music, "It's similar harmonically and structurally, and in the way of understanding the songs. Rhythmically, they are different. But for us it's a natural blend. My brother and I are self-taught so we just play our music with the influences we have."
"We have our first album out, so we'd like to support it with live shows at every place where they want to listen to our music," Roberto concludes.
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.