The Bluegrass Blues
Plucking banjos, sullen cellos, vibrating violins, harmonizing guitars and energetic mandolins. Bluegrass is the only music genre that can coerce me to clap my hands and stomp my feet like a moron. Last night, my roommate and I saw the Punch Brothers, featuring Chris Thile, perform as part of New York’s free River to River Festival, hosted by American Express. Due to the threat of inclement weather, the concert was moved from Rockefeller Park on the Hudson to the high school auditorium of Stuyvesant High School on Chambers Street. As a fan of Chris Thile since my early teenage years, I found myself in a passive-aggressive, competitive “speed walk race” to the front door with fellow bluegrass girl fans an hour before the doors opened. He is the reason why I, and probably many others, have a mandolin sitting in my closet, collecting dust. The show being held in the high school actually made for a far more intimate performance with a better sound quality.
The Punch Brothers bluegrass band, named after a Mark Twain story and founded by Chris Thile, consists of the banjo, cello, guitar, violin and mandolin. Thile, literally a mandolin prodigy, was originally part of the pop acoustic band Nickel Creek. After pursuing a few solo albums, Thile began touring and collaborating with the Punch Brothers. I started listening to Thile when I was 14 and will never forget the excitement I felt going to a Nickel Creek concert at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts during my senior year in high school. Since then, Chris Thile has, without question, moved from the innocent and harmonious folk music to a real innovative approach to a transformed bluegrass genre. The result is a thought-provoking combination of classical and folk.
The Punch Brothers and Chris Thile are currently best known for their 40-minute, 4-part suite, composed by Thile and performed by the band. The suite is titled “The Blind Leaving the Blind” and it is a bluegrass mini symphony. The song shifts from complicated, at some times seemingly broken, to complex and then breathtakingly melodious and harmonious. In February, NPR hosted a great analysis of the suite and the performers on All Things Considered: Bluegrass Suite Packs a Progressive ‘Punch’. The suite and interview are audible on the NPR website and the Punch Brother’s website.
In the end, the free show was spectacular, leaving my roommate and I feeling a little ‘blue’ because it was over and neither of us was married to Chris Thile. Maybe one day I’ll take that dusty mandolin out of my closet.
-Courtney Centeno, account executive
