A lover looked for the kind of small metal trinket sold in the market as a charm: St. A man and woman met in the garden in the Plaza de la Flor. A balladeer traveled around the villages singing to hapless women. He sang in Spanish, in a warm tenor that filled the old mill complex, and between the songs he told stories about them. Wilco's Solid Sound festival takes over Mass MoCA and North Adams every two years in June. Mass MoCA / Photo by Kaelan Burkett / Mass MoCA This summer I have talked with musicians about some of these influences - composer and viol da gamba Jordi Savall before his concert at Tanglewood and Craig Harris at the Great Barrington library traced the sounds of American Indian drum and melody and Spanish guitar evolving from the Middle East. This festival stretches the definition of bluegrass to invite contemporary musicians with traditional instruments, traditional tunes and rhythms and finger-picking sound, and original tunes and worldwide influences - the kinds of sounds and influences bluegrass has gathered in since its beginnings.Īmerican folk music has grown across the last 500 years from people who lived here and listened and played together on the back steps. ![]() The Saturday would bring young musicians from the Berklee School of Music, blues master Ruthie Foster, Celtic vocalist Aoife O’Donovan and classic folk from Old Crow Medicine Show and the Infamous Stringdusters. Mass MoCA’s annual bluegrass festival has been growing year by year, and on this weekend more than 50 musicians performed on three stages and in the galleries. Mass MoCA's upside-down trees show bright on a sunny afternoon. We are in the courtyard at Mass MoCA, ringed between the tables and the low brick wall around the restaurant patio, a local group waiting at the start of FreshGrass. We seem to be playing for ourselves and the upside-down trees and the volunteers by the front door, but around the corner the line stretches to the gate. We move from tune to tune as one player or another fingers a few bars or calls out a name - Civil War marches, Southern reels, Irish jigs and ragtime. French Canadian music often feels like innuendo with a straight face and knowing eyes. The muscle memory comes back with the sly, teasing choruses. I know the tune, but it has been almost 10 years since I learned it at a fiddle jam in New Hampshire. Lightly and rapidly on piano accordion he leads into La Bastringue, and fiddles, mandolin, guitars, standing bass and bodhran come in around him. Each Freshscore will be performed live to its corresponding film during the festival.Sunny, breezy and Saturday morning - at the end of the picnic table, Tony Pisano plays the first run of a dance tune from Quebec. Later in the weekend, the festival will premiere Freshscores, a series of new works created in response to a silent film of each artist's choosing. This year's composition will introduce Bluegrass Concertos featuring Jerry Douglas and Sierra Hull. ![]() Kicking off the festival on Friday night is the FreshGrass Composition Commission, where an artist performs an all-new album's worth of boundary-pushing roots music live at the festival. In addition to all the fantastic music, FreshGrass also premieres new work in the world of bluegrass and American roots. You can expect to hear established performers like Tanya Tucker, Gary Clark Jr., Aoife O’Donovan, Skip Marley, Old Crow Medicine Show, Del McCoury Band, Sierra Hull, and Yola.Īlso joining the stage will be fresh voices such as Sierra Ferrell, Thee Sacred Souls, Luca Ciarla, Never Come Down, Misty Blues, Lisa Bastoni, and many more. This year's lineup includes up-and-coming and established bands and solo artists in the genres of bluegrass, Americana, and roots.įeaturing all-new major artists and old favorites alike, the festival has something for everyone. As always, the music is the star of the show at FreshGrass.
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