The 18th annual March Mandolin Festival Concerts will be held March 6 and 7 at two venues for live acoustic music.
The festival opens Friday with a 7 p.m. show at The Dance Hall in Kittery, Maine.
Saturday’s concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Concord Community Music School, the host venue for the entire festival, which runs Saturday and Sunday, March 7 and 8.
The March Mandolin Festival has been bringing the cream of the crop of the mandolin world to New England for years now; the 2020 festival features Radim Zenkl, Maddie Witler, Steve Roy, and David Surette, with special guest vocalist Susie Burke.
Zenkl is known worldwide as a mandolin innovator and virtuoso player, both as a soloist and with groups such as the Modern Mandolin Quartet and the Ger Mandolin Orchestra. Between 1984 and 1989, he performed as a guest soloist with the Janacek Philharmonic Symphony and the State Opera Orchestra of Ostrava. Zenkl moved to the U.S. in 1989 and won the Winfield Mandolin Championship in 1992. He has invented a masterful technique, the Zenkl style, in which a single mandolin sounds like two.
Witler is part of the cream of the crop of a younger generation of great bluegrass pickers, and has toured internationally since 2012 as a founding member of the Lonely Heartstring Band, which just released its third album, Smoke & Ashes. She’s studied with mandolinist Evan Marshall, with whom she worked her way through a lot of Bach, jazz, bluegrass, and other styles.
The Seacoast’s thriving local music scene will also be well-represented with Roy, one of New England’s best and most in-demand players and band members. He plays and teaches mandolin, as well as upright bass, fiddle, guitar, and ukulele. He is fluent in a vast array of musical styles, including bluegrass, jazz, folk, rock, jam, country, old time, heavy metal, etc.
Festival organizer Surette and his wife and duo partner Susie Burke. Surette is highly regarded throughout New England and beyond for his work on the mandolin, guitar (both flatpick and fingerstyle), and bouzouki. Surette was a founding member of the Airdance band with fiddler Rodney Miller, with whom he recorded four albums and toured nationally. He has also released five critically-acclaimed solo CDs; his most recent release, Waiting For The Sun, is a duo recording with Burke.
Together this stellar group will present a rich and varied evening spotlighting the range, beauty, and excitement of the mandolin. Bluegrass and old-time, folk and blues, Celtic and other European traditions, and contemporary compositions will make for a spectacular listening experience, including plenty of collaborations.
For the Kittery concert, tickets should be purchased from thedancehallkittery.org or 207-703-2083. Cost is $20 in advance or $25 at the door.
Tickets for the Concord concert can be purchased from the music school online at ccmusicschool.org or by calling 228-1196. This concert only is included for those signed up for the workshops.
There were limited seats remaining for the workshops at Concord Community Music School; interested mandolin players should visit ccmusicschool.org or call 228-1196 to register. More than 50 participants are expected from across New England and as far as Quebec.
