PUTNEY-Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present “swamp-yankee music one-man-band” The Suitcase Junket, and Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rachael Kilgour at Next Stage, 15 Kimball Hill, Saturday, July 11, at 7:30 p.m.
The Suitcase Junket — the internationally touring project of artist Matt Lorenz — developed in the tension between the grand and the solitary.
NPR calls Lorenz a “master of musical imagination.” What instruments he requires, Lorenz builds from scratch and salvage. What parts five players would perform, he performs alone. “The spectacle of the one-man show bears comparison to legends of showmanship, brilliance, madness, and invention,” said organziers.
Lorenz homesteads in western Massachusetts and is most serious about the songs. The world he writes into existence is crowded with characters, narratives, voices, imagery, “sounds as wide and varied as mountain throat singers and roadhouse juke boxes, plus newsreels of the planet’s destruction and salvage.”
His most recent album, The End is New was released at Renew Records/BMG. He has been in the studio in recent months, recording toward a new release.
Kilgour writes “in hopes of finding a truth she can live with.” Her “performances include sincerity and humor, and balance “poignant, literate songs with her quick wit.”
She was awarded a McKnight Music Fellowship in 2025, was an official showcasing artist at the Folk Alliance International Conference (2025), and was a winner of both the Kerrville New Folk Contest (2017) and the Newsong Songwriting and Performance Competition (2015).
Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door, and $10 for livestream access. Advance tickets are available at nextstagearts.org. Next Stage will provide a beer, wine, and cocktail cash bar. For information, call 802-387-0102.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.