Jazz/Bluegrass Multimedia Fusion At Arts Center
SARATOGA SPRINGS – Saratoga Arts is presenting two linked evenings of music and film, both featuring the guitarists Chris Eldridge (of the band Punch Brothers) and Julian Lage.
The Julian Lage / Chris Eldridge Duo are performing at The Saratoga Arts Center on Tuesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m.
In conjunction with the April 22 concert, Saratoga Arts and the Saratoga Film Forum will screen Jules At Eight and How to Grow a Band at The Arts Center on Saturday, April 19 at 7:30 p.m.
Julian Lage was the subject of Jules At Eight, a short documentary that introduces the guitar prodigy as he negotiates his way between his second-grade playground and work with San Francisco's illustrious jazz and blues musicians. Throughout the film, the strikingly poised young musician challenges the view to reconcile his childhood innocence with his aptitude for the blues.
At age 13, Lage performed at the 2000 Grammy Awards, and he has been a faculty member at the Stanford Jazz Workshop since he was 15. Both Lage's debut album Sounding Point (2010) and its follow-up Gladwell (2011) have been very well received; in fact, Sounding Point was nominated for the 2010 Grammy Award Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Lage has played with such renowned artists at Jim Hall, Gary Burton, Bela Fleck and Nels Cline.
Chris Eldridge has also been immersed in music since childhood, thanks in part to his father, and a founding member of the seminal bluegrass group The Seldom Scene. After graduating from Oberlin, Eldridge joined his father in the group with whom he received a Grammy nomination. In 2005 he founded the critically acclaimed bluegrass band The Infamous Stringdusters, which, at the 2007 International Bluegrass Music Association awards won Emerging artist of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year for their debut album.
Meanwhile, in 2005 Eldridge was enlisted by mandolinist Chris Thile into Punch Brothers, the genre-defying band he formed during a hiatus of his platinum-selling, Grammy Award-winning group Nickel Creek. Punch Brothers' formation is documented in the well-received feature-length film How to Grow a Band. The film follows Thile as he begins again with bold plans to bring to life a 45-minute musical elegy to a failed marriage written for traditional bluegrass instruments.
With Lage’s background in modern jazz and new music, and Eldridge’s deep relationship with progressive bluegrass, this duo lives at the nexus of improvisation, spontaneous composition and virtuosic refinement, all performed on their respective 1939 Martin guitars.
For more information about both events, call Saratoga Arts at (518) 584-4132, or visit saratoga-arts.org. Advance tickets for the concert are advised, and are available from Saratoga Arts website.
