The Buskirk-Chumley Theater proudly presents Aoife O’Donovan & Noam Pikelny on Sunday, November 9 at 8 PM. Tickets are $22.00 for this reserved seating event. Presale tickets are available to BCT donors starting at 11am on Thursday, August 14 and tickets will go on sale to the general public at 11am on Thursday, August 21. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 812-323-3020, online at www.bctboxoffice.com, or in person at the BCT Box Office at 114 E Kirkwood Avenue.
Arguably two of the most celebrated musicians of their generation within the roots music field, Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still) and Noam Pikelny (Punch Brothers) have been crossing paths at venues and festivals for the last decade. In 2012, Noam Pikelny released Beat the Devil & Carry A Rail, which featured O’Donovan as a guest vocalist and garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album. Pikelny then enlisted O’Donovan to be the lead vocalist on the album release tour. “I found myself in a pretty unique situation—I was out on the road, promoting a mostly instrumental album, but somehow was lucky enough to have my favorite singer in the world, Aoife O’Donovan, in the band. We started arranging some of Aoife’s original songs and some of our favorite old bluegrass tunes to help round out the set. It was such a joy that we both came to the realization that one day we’d have to revisit playing together with that being the central focus.”
Performing as a quartet, the show features a mixture of vocal and instrumental music, ripe with intricate three-part harmony and grounded firmly in tradition. Rounding out the ensemble are bassist Barry Bales (Alison Krauss & Union Station) and fiddler Shad Cobb (John Cowan Band). “Aoife and I wanted bandmates who would be equally adept at playing our new original music as they’d be at classic repertoire. I can’t think of any two musicians as versatile Barry and Shad who have such a profound understanding of the roots of this music,” Pikelny says.
Noam Pikelny
Hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the “pros’ top banjo picker,” Noam is a founding member of Punch Brothers, a string ensemble which The Boston Globe calls “a virtuosic revelation” and The New Yorker describes as “wide- ranging and restlessly imaginative.” In September of 2010, Pikelny was awarded the first annual Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. In 2012, Noam’s second album, Beat The Devil and Carry A Rail, received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Bluegrass Album. His latest release, Noam Pikelny Plays Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe, is the first complete banjo adaptation of Kenny Baker’s 1976 seminal recording of Bill Monroe instrumentals.
Aoife O’Donovan
O’Donovan’s most recent album, Fossils, was released in 2013 to critical acclaim and was hailed as “a vocalist of unerring instinct” by the New York Times. The album features 10 original songs by O’Donovan, and contributions from friends and frequent collaborators, including Sam Amidon and Dave Douglas. She is known as the lead singer of Crooked Still and Sometymes Why, and for singing on the 2013 Grammy-winning The Goat Rodeo Sessions with Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile and Stuart Duncan. O’Donovan is working on her sophomore solo album, due out next year.
Cost: $22
For more information contact:
BCT Box Office
(812)323-3020
[email protected]