IMN : Updates for Chris Thile

Bobby McFerrin, Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau break barriers at Symphony Center

IMN

April 19th, 2013

from chicagotribune.com

Bobby McFerrin, Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau break barriers at Symphony Center
By: Howard Reich

Two other genre-benders collaborated Friday night at Symphony Center, even if, in retrospect, they seemed like specialists compared to the voraciously eclectic McFerrin.

At first glance, mandolinist Chris Thile and pianist Brad Mehldau would not appear to have a great deal in common. But Thile’s folk-pop-bluegrass impulses and mandolin pyrotechnics reflect an open-eared approach to music-making, while Mehldau’s jazz vocabulary always has pushed out into rock, classical and other unexpected repertory.

To read the full article click here

Brad Mehldau, Chris Thile are two of a kind

IMN

April 15th, 2013

from bostonglobe.com

Brad Mehldau, Chris Thile are two of a kind

Strictly speaking, mandolinist Chris Thile is a bluegrass musician and pianist Brad Mehldau is a jazz musician. But genre categories disappeared when the two met at Berklee Performance Center Sunday night for a sold-out World Music/CRASHarts concert, the fifth show in a nine-city tour.

In fact, genre distinction is something that both musicians have worked hard to erase from their work. Mehldau’s day job is with his acclaimed jazz trio, but he likes to cover Radiohead and Nick Drake and work in a variety of contexts and collaborations. Similarly, Thile’s current outfit is the progressive-bluegrass band Punch Brothers (previously he was with Nickel Creek), but he’s also recorded and toured with Yo-Yo Ma’s Goat Rodeo Sessions band, and his next album is scheduled to be a collection of Bach violin pieces transcribed for mandolin.

To read the full article click here kind/OHy2oVFsI5bXNoEsJAiCrK/story.html

For Thile and Mehldau, a meeting of musical minds

IMN

April 12th, 2013

from bostonglobe.com

For Thile and Mehldau, a meeting of musical minds
By: Jeremy D. Goodwin

If you squint hard and look from the proper angle, there are only a few degrees of musical separation between Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau.

They both excel in full-band scenarios as well as solo. They’re both virtuosic instrumentalists who venture into unfamiliar contexts. They both cover Bach and Radiohead.

And both have shown a penchant for unexpected collaborations. Mandolin wunderkind Thile is teaming up with Mehldau, a musician as comfortable playing jazz standards on solo piano as he is leading his trio through a long deconstruction of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” for a nine-show tour of duo performances that visits the Berklee Performance Center tonight.

To read the full article click here

Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau bond through mutual musical appreciation

IMN

April 12th, 2013

from knoxville.com

Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau bond through mutual musical appreciation
By: Wayne Bledsoe

Chris Thile once titled an album “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” after a poem by J.R.R. Tolkien. It could easily describe his life as a musician. Thile was known as a mandolin prodigy before he was a teen and became a star as part of the group Nickel Creek. He followed that act by forming The Punch Brothers and embarks on regular musical pairings with all manner of ace players, including Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer and Stuart Duncan in the “Goat Rodeo” project.

In conversation, Thile is always enthusiastic about music and where it’s taking him. The limited number of concerts he’s performing with jazz lion Brad Mehldau is a good example.

He says it was fellow Punch Brother Gabe Witcher who introduced him to Mehldau’s music.

To read the full article click here

Thile + Melhdau = Bluegrass + Jazz + Excitement

IMN

April 12th, 2013

from wbur.org

Thile + Melhdau = Bluegrass + Jazz + Excitement

There may be no better Boston venue than the Berklee Performance Center for this Sunday’s Chris Thile/Brad Mehldau matchup, presented by World Music.

Both musicians established themselves very young, like the school’s students, and both have drawn young listeners to genres not necessarily favored by the iPod generation –bluegrass and improv jazz – with inventive pop covers. Listeners come for the Radiohead, and stay for the virtuosity.

To read the full article click here

Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau, "Tireless musical explorers "

IMN

April 12th, 2013

from elmoremagazine.com

Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau – Bowery Ballroom (New York, NY)

There are few pleasures in life that compare to encountering music that liberates us from our expectations. Tireless musical explorers Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau have set out on a collaborative journey that promises to take us into uncharted territory. Each a genius in their own right and each tethering an audience that has swelled beyond their requisite market, the duo have embarked on a U.S. tour that opened at New York’s Bowery Ballroom on a surprisingly warm spring night.

The set list ran the gamut, seemingly with contributions from each side and a few choices that nicely bridged their respective backgrounds. Among the most resonant with the hip New York crowd was a terrific arrangement of Radiohead’s “Knives Out,” which Thile owned convincingly on vocals. Jumping seamlessly between jazz, Irish folk reels and pop songs, Thile and Mehldau seemed to take every risk they could think of, all while avoiding the presumed pitfall of stepping on each others toes amidst constant improvisation.

To read the full article click here

Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile team up for elegant, beautiful music

IMN

April 11th, 2013

from washingtonpost.com

Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile team up for elegant, beautiful music
By: Michael J West

Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile both play music in which technical virtuosity is front and center. The former is a jazz pianist, easily the most influential of his generation; the latter, an innovator of the bluegrass mandolin who won a MacArthur “genius” award last year. So their duo performance Friday night at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center was an achievement in itself. Their complex work translated to plain-faced beauty: simple, direct and exquisite.

To read the full article click here

Bluegrass and Jazz, Meeting in More Than the Middle

IMN

April 10th, 2013

from nytimes.com

Bluegrass and Jazz, Meeting in More Than the Middle
By: Nate Chinen

Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau come from different worlds but the same species, and whatever feels unlikely about their pairing is eclipsed by what feels perfectly natural. Mr. Thile, the mandolinist and singer with Punch Brothers, is a progressive-bluegrass pacesetter; Mr. Mehldau is the most influential jazz pianist of the last 20 years. Both are team players who can still give the impression of aesthetic self-containment. Both love Bach and the Beatles, and both have developed fan bases bigger and broader (and younger) than their genre silos can accommodate.

On Tuesday night they played a sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom, kicking off a nine-city tour that ends in Austin, Tex., on April 20. They worked together as an acoustic duo with no reinforcements, Mr. Thile cradling his mandolin in the crook of an arm and Mr. Mehldau seated at a Steinway that stretched nearly the length of the stage. There was some courteous give and take in their 90-minute show, but more often a balance of enthusiastic risk and intuitive accord. It felt unhurried but went by quickly.

To read the full article click here&

Confirmed Tourdates As Of April 1st, 2013

IMN

November 5th, 2013: The Peppercannister Dublin, Ireland [Chris Thile]
November 6th, 2013: Queens Hall Edinburgh, Scotland [Chris Thile]
November 8th, 2013: LSO St.Lukes London, England [Chris Thile]

Folk Touch: Chris Thile

IMN

October 11th, 2012

from Winston-Salem Journal

Folk Touch: Show Highlights Mandolin
By Ken Keuffel

Robert Moody, the music director of the Winston-Salem Symphony, said he favors programming that shows connections between tried-and-true pieces and something that’s new. He likened this approach to “taking the audience on a journey,” and it will continue next weekend when the orchestra presents “The Miraculous Mandolin: An Evening with Chris Thile” at the Stevens Center.

Thile will solo in the North Carolina premiere of his Concerto for Mandolin: Ad astra per alas porci (to the sky on the wings of a pig), highlighting a program that will also include Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.

The soloists in the Brandenburg concerto, all symphony members, will include violinist Fabrice Dharamraj, flutist Kathryn Levy, oboist Amanda LaBrecque and trumpeter Anita Cirba. There will be two “Classics” presentations of “Miraculous Mandolin,” next Sunday and March 16, with an abridged “Kicked-Back Classics” version on Saturday.

Baroque to folk
Thile, a stellar bluegrass musician, is noted for his contributions to the groups Nickel Creek and the Punch Brothers. But he has also made a name for himself in classical music, having collaborated with such virtuosos as Edgar Meyer and Yo-Yo Ma. This diverse background is reflected in the concerto, one of just a handful for mandolin.

“It brings a lot of worlds together,” Moody said. “You get a lot of … Baroque feeling in the concerto, at least as I’m studying it and getting ready for the performances. But also, you have a lot of the things that people now more often associate with the mandolin, a sort of a folk feeling.… And finally — and maybe the most important thing — there’s an unbelievable virtuosity in the piece. Chris Thile is to the mandolin what Yo-Yo Ma is to the cello.”

Moody also described an “incredibly well-crafted” work, with lots of mixed meter and counterpoint.

David Levy, a musicologist at Wake Forest University, writes the symphony’s program notes. He described Thile’s concerto as “an authentic synthesis that draws on everything (Thile) considers good in music.”

“That’s certainly the goal,” Thile said in a telephone interview en route to another engagement. “I would never profess to have accomplished that. I look at everything of a certain level in music as being akin. I see very little difference between a piece of, say, Bartok’s or, say, a great fiddle tune. They succeed for the same reasons.”

Thile said that it’s a musician’s duty to “put yourself in the way of as much great music as possible and to probe the depths of it to figure out … what it’s accomplishing and how you can absorb that in a productive way.”

Read the full article here

REVIEW: Meyer and Thile Put Ideas into Play

IMN

October 11th, 2012

from The Seattle Times

Concert review: Meyer and Thile put ideas into play
By Tom Keogh

Double-bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolinist Chris Thile gave a bold, improvisatory performance Monday night at Benaroya Hall that won’t soon be forgotten.

“We’re running out of repertoire. Does anyone have any suggestions?”

After burning through live versions of 10 of the 12 tracks on their recently-released debut CD (“Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile”), plus a few Bach numbers for good measure, double-bassist Meyer and mandolinist Thile turned to their audience at Benaroya Hall for, well, help.

Could anyone in the house think of a theme or topic that might generate a new composition?

Meyer, the first bassist to win the Avery Fisher Prize for outstanding achievement in classical music (alongside a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award and three Grammy Awards), and Thile, also a Grammy winner with a following in the bluegrass, country and classical worlds, playfully entertained ideas.

Inspiration taken, they set off on a performance that, like everything else they played Monday night, showcased the rigorous yet accessible, and engrossing, experimentation that defines their intermittent partnership.

There is an inevitability to Meyer and Thile’s collaboration. Meyer, 47, is equally at home playing double bass for classical music as well as jazz and folk. He has sought ways to fuse improvisation with formal structure.

Thile, 27, a founding member of the popular bluegrass groups Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers, has been attempting the same thing from another direction. The two men have performed, together and separately, with some of the same artists (Béla Fleck, Mark O’Connor), and Thile wrote a piece for double bass and piano that Meyer and Emanuel Ax premiered last year.

With the new album and tour, Meyer and Thile are realizing the potential of the music they began exploring years ago. Their almost unclassifiable sound at Benaroya refused to lock onto fleeting influences, and they focused primarily on the dynamics of performing together.

As with some types of jazz and even rock, Thile and Meyer sometimes blended their sounds, then at other times drove one another way from synthesis.

The show’s most exciting moments revealed sudden eruptions of possibility and poetry. The concert began with grey, almost-sunrise tones from the bass, while Thile’s mandolin danced steadily around the sound. Abruptly, Meyer opened up, and Thile soon followed. Patterns emerged and then blurred like a stone tossed into a watery reflection.

The music similarly morphed all night — scattered, grinding, bluesy, minimalist — and the two stars invoked structures and quickly dispensed with them. Their forays into Bach temporarily cooled the fever of improvisational adventures, but the boldness of this duo’s performance will not be easily forgotten.

Read the full article here

INTERVIEW: Chris Thile on MacArthur Genius Award

IMN

October 10th, 2012

from Huffington Post

Chris Thile, Youngest MacArthur Genius Of 2012, On His ‘Dauntingly Lofty’ New Status (INTERVIEW)
By Mallika Rao

At 31, Chris Thile is special in an already special circle: the mandolinist who first won awards as part of the Grammy-winning trio Nickel Creek is this year’s youngest MacArthur genius. The annual fellowship grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gifts $500,000 to each genius to spend as his or her genius dictates — pretty good pocket change for someone who hasn’t even been out of college a decade.

In the face of such a high-stakes tradition, it might be tempting to try to adopt sang froid. But Thile isn’t shy about grinning through the confetti. Sitting next to Junot Diaz and across from Charlie Rose this week, Thile beamed and ran overtime with every one of his exuberantly gestured thoughts, while Diaz, the 43-year-old writer of the moment who also made this year’s cut, spoke in flawless metaphors and kept still. More than equals, they resembled the Karate Kid and Mr. Miyagi.

Thile might extend the student-sensei analogy to his relationship with all 22 of his new cohorts. When the composer spoke with The Huffington Post this Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the normally top secret list leaked, he talked of a “dauntingly lofty” new personal bar, swearing to us multiple times up and down that he’s going to “try so hard to live up” to the standards of a group that includes a neurosurgeon and a telescope designer in its varied ranks. Did you hear that, doubters? Read on for the rest of what Thile said, including what it physically felt like to get the life-changing news, why he kept dodging the call, and his plans for all that cash.

HP: How does it feel to be a genius?

CT: I’m feeling pretty spectacular.

HP: How did you find out the news?

CT: The call started while my mother was driving me from my folks’ place in Vernon, Kentucky to Nashville, where Punch Brothers [Thile’s new band] had a gig. It was a strange number. I felt like it was a ‘make sure to vote’ robot. In my mind, I was like, ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to vote. Everything’s cool!’ Eventually Daniel Socolow — the director of the Fellowship — he left a message just saying his name, which I didn’t recognize from anything, and saying he had something of interest to discuss with me.

I’m a musician, so a lot of times when people leave messages like that, they’ve gotten my number through a friend and want me to play on their record or something. So I wasn’t even going to call back, but then he called me again — at this point, my mom had already dropped me off in Nashville — and he left a message saying, ‘Don’t tell anyone about this call.’ Anyone who’s seen any television knows you get that call right before getting shot. So the first thing I did was show it to someone. I played it for my tour manager. He googled the number and said, ‘It appears to be from the MacArthur Foundation.’

Right then, I felt like an eighth of a person. I was in a state. A total state. I imagine it could be called hyperventilating. I thought, ‘Wait, this can’t be about me. They want me to confirm or recommend a buddy, or maybe the Foundation does other stuff that I’m not thinking about, NPR or PBS stuff — This program has been made possible by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, you know.

I called back, and the secretary said, ‘He’ll call you within five to 15 minutes.’ And I’m freaking out. The boys actually took [and Tweeted] a picture of me laying down in the dressing room.

He called me back and slowly unveiled that I’d been given a fellowship. At that point there’s just this feeling of levitating. I literally felt like I was floating. Then it would just be this alternating between levitating and an intense heaviness that was kind of all wrapped up in, ‘I don’t deserve this but I want to deserve this. I want to do good enough work to not stand out on this list. I just want to blend in and not be the dud on that list of people’ — a list I only just saw yesterday, you know, when the AP leaked the thing. I was just looking down that list and, god, I’m still just flabbergasted. The company is dauntingly lofty. I swear to god, I’m going to try so hard to live up to them.

Read the full article here

Chris Thile Named 2012 MacArthur Fellow

IMN

October 2nd, 2012

from Nonesuch
Chris Thile Named 2012 MacArthur Fellow

Congratulations to mandolin virtuoso, singer, and composer Chris Thile, who has been named a MacArthur Fellow. Thile was among the 23 new MacArthur Fellows for 2012, selected by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The annual fellowship, often referred to as the “Genius” grant, offers an unrestricted award of $500,000—$100,000 for each of the following five years—to individuals who, in the Foundation’s words, “have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.” Watch Thile discuss his work and the fellowship in a MacArthur Foundation video below.

Among this year’s recipients, in addition to Thile, are a pediatric neurosurgeon, a marine ecologist, a journalist, a photographer, an optical physicist and astronomer, a stringed-instrument bow maker, a geochemist, a fiction writer, and Claire Chase, executive director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), which composer John Adams led in a performance of his Son of Chamber Symphony for a 2011 Nonesuch album. All Fellows were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.

“These extraordinary individuals demonstrate the power of creativity,” said MacArthur President Robert Gallucci. “The MacArthur Fellowship is not only a recognition of their impressive past accomplishments but also, more importantly, an investment in their potential for the future. We believe in their creative instincts and hope the freedom the Fellowship provides will enable them to pursue unfettered their insights and ideas for the benefit of the world.”

Chris Thile has changed the mandolin forever, elevating it from its origins as a relatively simple folk and bluegrass instrument to the sophistication and brilliance of the finest jazz improvisation and classical performance. For more than 15 years, Thile played in the band Nickel Creek, with whom he released three albums and sold two million records. Punch Brothers, which was formed in 2006 and also features four other virtuosic musicians—fiddler Gabe Witcher, banjo player Noam Pikelny, bassist Paul Kowert, and guitarist Chris Eldridge—released its first Nonesuch record, Punch, in 2008, followed by Antifogmatic in 2010 and Who’s Feeling Young Now? in 2012. Nonesuch released Thile’s self-titled duo album with bassist Edgar Meyer in 2008 as well and Sleep with One Eye Open, his duo album with guitarist Michael Daves, in 2011. Chris Thile’s mandolin concerto, Ad Astra er Alas Porci, was first performed in 2009 and received its Carnegie Hall premiere earlier this year.

Read the full article here

String Theory: Chris Thile Plays Solo in Dublin

IMN

July 12th, 2012

from Irish Times

Former Nickel Creek-er and ace mandolinist Chris Thile has found a new home with Punch Brothers, he tells Coramc Larkin.

The last time Chris Thile played Dublin, it was a solo show. It wasn’t meant to be that way but just hours before their duo gig at Whelan’s last September, guitarist Michael Davies had to fly back to the US for a family emergency. At that point, most musicians would have cancelled, and no one would have blamed most musicians. But Chris Thile is not most musicians.

In fact, when the news rippled through the audience that Thile would be taking the stage alone, the reaction says a lot about the mandolinist’s reputation. This, whispered one well-known Irish folk musician, is going to be even better.

And so it was. For two hours, with just eight very short strings and one microphone, Thile held a packed Whelan’s enthralled, moving easily between traditional bluegrass, his own gnarly originals and dazzling instrumentals that sent the jaws of all present dropping to the floor. As the evening went on, he even threw in a flawlessly executed Bach partita – not something you hear every day in Whelans – before calling for suggestions from the room. “Anyone want to hear some old fiddle tunes?” he asked. Shouts came up from the knowledgeable crowd and soon Thile was reeling off classic fiddle tunes on his mandolin as if he’d been rehearsing them for months.

“That was probably one of my favourite solo shows,” he tells me. Thile is in Telluride, Colorado, where his new band, Punch Brothers, have just headlined the town’s legendary bluegrass festival. “For me, music is a very urgent thing. I need music, and it feels to me like Irish people need music too. So I feel a big kinship with Irish folks. Right away, when you kick into something, you feel an intensity. You feel listened to.”

Shucks Chris. Onstage and off, Thile is all charm and self-deprecation, but it feels genuine enough. Certainly the kinship with Irish music is real – as a kid, he says he wore out a copy of Planxty’s 1973 classic, The Well Below the Valley, and he clearly appreciates the link between the Irish tradition and his own.

But the nice guy thing is for real too. Despite the immoderate critical praise and the shelf-full of Grammys, Thile is a man who seems particularly grounded, at ease with himself and the world, a feat that is all the more impressive given that fame and adulation came to him at an age when most of us are still getting to grips with solid food.

Read the full article here

Chris Thile and Mandolin Join Orpheus Ensemble at Carnegie

IMN

March 26th, 2012

from The New York Times

A Composer and Virtuoso Dresses Up the Mandolin

Chris Thile and Mandolin Join Orpheus Ensemble at Carnegie
By Allan Kozinn

Is the mandolin about to have its moment as a classical solo instrument? Its repertory back catalog is slim — a couple of Vivaldi concertos and some early Beethoven, most notably, as well as parts in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony and “Das Lied von der Erde” — but its contemporary repertory is colorful and growing.

The venerable Deutsche Grammophon label just signed its first mandolinist, Avi Avital. And now bluegrass, jazz and pop mandolinists are making incursions into classical precincts. Among them, Mike Marshall is touring with his own concerto, and Chris Thile — the instrument’s brightest star at the moment, best known for his work with the bands Nickel Creek and the Punch Brothers — was the main draw at the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s concert at Carnegie Hall on Saturday evening.

Mr. Thile was on hand to play the New York premiere of his three-movement Mandolin Concerto (“Ad Astra per Alas Porci, ” or “To the Stars on the Wings of a Pig”) as part of a program devoted entirely to American music. He is no mere dabbler. Though his harmonic language is accessible, it also has a mildly acerbic edge that gives his orchestral writing an inviting sense of mystery. And he knows how to surprise: chord progressions that a less imaginative composer would have pushed along predictable paths invariably took unexpected turns, as did the exchanges between the mandolin and the orchestra.

As fresh as the music sounded, it also had an appealing naturalness. Not surprisingly, that was especially so of the mandolin writing. Given the instrument’s soft-spoken nature, even when amplified, the solo line is not the fiery sort you would expect in a violin or piano concerto. Instead, it is built on Mr. Thile’s more subtle brand of virtuosity — a blend of fluid melody, dazzling speed and a command of timbre that made the most of the mandolin’s native wiry sound but also used mellower, bell-like tones closer to those of a harp.

Read the full article here

Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile at Wigmore Hall, London

IMN

September 1st, 2011

from The Guardian

Brad Mehldau/Chris Thile Wigmore Hall, London
By John Fordham

An obscure musical gag enquires: if a guitarist and a mandolinist fall off a cliff, who hits the deck first? The guitarist, of course; the mandolin player has to stop to tune up halfway down. Chris Thile, the mandolin genius from the million-selling Nickel Creek band certainly did a lot of tuning at the Wigmore Hall with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. But since he had opened the show with a torrent of solo improvisations on spirituals and country songs, and an imperious adaptation of Bach’s D Minor Partita for Violin, the audience was anticipating the next impossible thing he would do.

This duet was the penultimate concert in American piano star Mehldau’s two-year occasional residency at the Wigmore. After Thile’s intro had received the kind of ovation normally reserved for a finale, Mehldau struck up his signature rocking chord vamp over which lightly struck motifs swell to sensuous extended melodies. Thile kept cajoling him with percussive snaps, flying runs, and chords strummed fast enough to sound as seamless as a purring strings section, inducing Mehldau (who can sometimes retreat into a slow-swaying trance) to bat back the playful provocation with stinging rejoinders. Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right brought the house down through Thile’s sympathetic singing and increasingly animated improv-swapping between the pair.

The two ought to have got under each other’s feet, given the thinness of the mandolin’s sound, and their mutual appetite for blizzards of notes. But their musicality and sympathy for each other’s emerging ideas, made it an unexpected tour de force.

Read the full article here