Folk Concert Series

Dan Tyminski was six years old when his parents began taking him to fiddle contests, square dances, and bluegrass festivals across New England. For a young musician who would later become one of the biggest names in modern-day bluegrass, those early experiences were life changing. "Watching live music always spoke to me much louder than sitting in front of my record player," he remembers. "I loved it. Wherever music was being played, I wanted to go watch. Years later, I still feel that way."

“They nearly always come back,” said Béla Fleck. “All the people that leave bluegrass. I had a strong feeling that I’d be coming back as well.” Fleck’s album My Bluegrass Heart, was released on Renew Records in 2021 and is the return the 15-time Grammy winner is talking about – the third chapter in a decades-spanning trilogy which, by his counting, started with 1988’s Drive and continued with The Bluegrass Sessions, released eleven years later. Over the long and lauded course of his unique creative run, Fleck – the world’s premier banjo virtuoso and a celebrated musical adventurer – has both dug deep into his instrument’s complex global history and unlocked the breadth of its possibilities. My Bluegrass Heart is a homecoming in sound, to be sure.

Originally from Wimberley, Texas, Sarah Jarosz is a six-time GRAMMY Award winning singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Since her recorded debut in 2009, she has released seven solo albums and two albums with I’m With Her, her band with Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan. In addition to her multiple GRAMMY, Americana Music Association, and Folk Alliance awards, her work has received widespread critical praise from publications including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and USA Today. Jarosz has appeared three times on PBS’s legendary Austin City Limits television show and numerous times on A Prairie Home Companion, Live From Here, and the Grand Ole Opry. She is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee.

In 1976, Jeff Daniels bought a Guild D-40 from Herb David’s Guitar Studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan, threw it in the back of his old Buick, and moved to New York City. That guitar led to a creative outlet, became a solace, a road into the artist that he didn’t know existed. Now, over 40 years later, he’s still writing songs, singing them, and playing.

Aoife O'Donovan and Chris Thile present Wassail! An Evening of Carols and Merriment

Jason Carter has won three Grammy awards, including 2018’s “Best Bluegrass Album” with the Travelin’ McCourys, of which he is a founding member. And he’s taken home five IBMAs for “Fiddle Player of the Year,” a staggering number that isn’t quite so crazy once you realize just how many bluegrass greats have turned to Carter for collaboration. Michael Cleveland is the most awarded International Bluegrass Music Association Fiddle Player of the Year, with twelve wins to his name. He is a six-time winner of the IBMA Instrumental Performance of the Year and his band, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper, has won Instrumental Group of the Year seven times.

Hailed as “one of the best acoustic guitarists in the world” by NPR’s World Cafe, Tommy Emmanuel got his start at the age of six, when he first began touring his native Australia with his family’s band. As a teenager, he earned a reputation as a highly sought after sideman and session player, and by his early twenties, Emmanuel was playing on chart-topping hits and performing with acts like Air Supply and Men at Work. Inspired in part by his hero, Chet Atkins (who would later become a friend, mentor, and collaborator), Emmanuel stepped out on his own as a solo artist in 1979, releasing the first in a string of acclaimed instrumental albums that would make him an unlikely celebrity in his home country and beyond.

One night in the middle of the night there were a series of noises coming from above which lead to a series of thoughts. It sounded like something was working. Building something… A nest for its family? A trap for its prey? This led to more thoughts about unseen things at work. A God? A voice in your head? It all feels kind of made up until someone responds to it.

The seventh album from Foy Vance, The Wake marks the completion of a decades-long journey defined by tireless soul-searching and life-altering revelation. While playing a gig on the Spanish island of Lanzarote in January 1999, the Northern Ireland-born singer/songwriter experienced a moment of unprecedented transcendence onstage, then learned the next morning that his father had suffered a fatal heart attack that very night.

Judy Collins has long inspired audiences with sublime vocals, boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism. In the 1960s, she evoked both the idealism and steely determination of a generation united against social and environmental injustices. Six decades later, her luminescent presence shines brightly as new generations bask in the glow of her iconic 55-album body of work, and heed inspiration from her spiritual discipline to thrive in the music industry for half a century.