PUTNEY — Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present an evening of bluegrass, jazz, gypsy, classical, and roots music by the Vermont Mandolin Trio - Matt Flinner, Will Patton, and Jamie Masefield - accompanied by acoustic bassist Pat Melvin on Saturday, Jan. 8 at 7:30 p.m.
The three Vermont mandolinists perform the music of Bill Monroe, Django Reinhardt, J.S. Bach, and others, with fiddler/singer Lissa Schneckenburger of Brattleboro opening the show at 15 Kimball Hill.
Flinner, nominated for a Grammy award for Americana in 2012, has “made a career of playing acoustic music in new ways,” according to a news release, which describes the musician as “one of the most accomplished and musically diverse mandolinists in the world.”
Multi-instrumentalist Will Patton has been leading bands since he was 13. He has performed worldwide, playing rock and roll, folk, bluegrass, Brazilian music, and jazz.
Jamie Masefield's background playing traditional New Orleans jazz on the tenor banjo has influenced his mandolin playing over the years on his way to becoming what the event organizers describe as “one of the most widely recognized jazz mandolinists in the country.”
His group, the Jazz Mandolin Project, toured the U.S. extensively from 1996 to 2006 and helped carve out new territory for the mandolin in the jazz and jam band scenes.
Inspired by her parent's interest in folk music, Lissa Schneckenburger began playing fiddle at the age of 6. In 2001, she graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music with a degree in contemporary improvisation and has been performing and teaching music around the world ever since. Schneckenburger is currently one-third of the Brattleboro-based trio Low Lily.