Feb. 10, 2014. Master fiddler, Bruce Greene, and virtuoso mountain dulcimer player, Don Pedi, will perform a house-concert style performance at the Jones House Cultural and Community Center on February 18, kicking off a winter mini-series of three ticketed indoor concerts.
Bruce Greene is known worldwide for his preserving and playing of old time Kentucky fiddle music. He is also a skilled old time banjo player, singer, and collector of traditional Appalachian music and culture. Bruce has lived and worked among the people of Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina for more than 35 years, bringing to his playing the intimacy and dignity he absorbed through his apprenticeships with musicians born as far back as the 1880s.
Greene is one of only two living players listed on the oldtimemusic.com website’s “Old-Time Fiddlers Hall of Fame,” where it says, “His incredible technique is camoflaged by his relaxed style of playing. Bruce’s repertoire includes a vast number of obscure and crooked tunes, as if opening a previously locked door to a room rich with old-time music most people didn’t know existed.”
Don Pedi grew up in a musical family in Massachusetts and discovered the mountain dulciner in Boston in 1964. Five years later, he moved to the Asheville area and has lived in western North Carolina ever since, spending lots of time with old-time musicians and adapting his dulcimer playing to mimic traditional southern Appalachian dance music more commonly played on fiddle. He won the first contest he ever entered, at Fiddler’s Grove in 1974, and by 1980 he had won so many contests at the festival that he was certified a “Master Dulcimer Player.”
Greene and Pedi have been performing and recording together for many years. With three recordings and hundreds of concerts together, the two have developed a close musical relationship between the fiddle and mountain dulcimer that is as timeless as the tunes they share.
In addition to the evening concert, Greene and Pedi will be giving workshops on mountain dulcimer and fiddle at 4:00 p.m. at the Jones House.
“We are really excited to have these two kick off the winter concert series at the Jones House,” says concert organizer, Mark Freed. “They play music that is perfect for this time of close, intimate concert setting.”
Additional concerts in the series will include Asheville-based singer-songwriter, bluegrass-infused trio, Red June, on Friday, February 28, featuring fiddler Natalya Weinstein, award-winning songwriter, John Cloyd Miller, and the talented Will Straughan on Dobro. Handsome Molly, an Irish, Scottish, and old-world folk band out of Charlottesville, will perform on March 18, featuring flutist Rachel Blake, fiddler Andy Cleveland, accordion player Kelly Kennedy, and guitarist and long time Boone friend, Craig Dubose.
Tickets for all concerts will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the downstairs, Mazie Jones Gallery of the Jones House cost $20, and early reservations are recommended, as seating is limited. For more information, including reserving seats, email or call Mark Freed at mark.freed@townofboone.net or (828) 268-6282.
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