Award-winning recording artists Al Petteway, Amy White, and Robin Bullock
lead the annual holiday concert A
Swannanoa Solstice, Sunday, December 21 at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. at Diana
Wortham Theatre in downtown Asheville, with festivities beginning in the lobby
prior to the performances with complimentary wassail and cookies, and music by
The Piper Jones Band during intermission. In this annual winter holiday
celebration, now in its 12th year, world-renowned musicians Petteway
and White along with Bullock and a host of special guests share holiday songs old and
new, religious and secular, joyful and poignant, in a warm and intimate winter
concert.
Presented
in partnership with The Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College, A
Swannanoa Solstice again offers two performances in order to meet the audience
demand for this popular winter gathering and concert.
This year’s special guests include:
- Sheila Kay Adams, National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship winner, world-renowned Appalachian storyteller, traditional ballad singer, banjo player and author;
- The Twisty Cuffs, local Cape Breton-style stepdancers;
- The Piper Jones Band, featuring E.J. Jones on Highland bagpipes, Rosalind Buda on bombarde, and Frances Cunningham on bouzouki
- Matthew Bell on the Irish bodhrán and the Scottish marching snare drum
- Host and emcee Doug Orr, president emeritus of Warren Wilson College and founder of A Swannanoa Solstice
A Swannanoa Solstice
showcases all manner of seasonal sounds and festivities, with well-mastered
Celtic and Appalachian songs and music on guitar, mandolin, fiddle, piano,
Celtic harp, Irish bouzouki, vocals and world percussion. Through music and
storytelling and poetry, the featured artists explore shared winter traditions
from the area, the country, and from around the world. The melodies played by
Petteway, a virtuosic acoustic guitarist, draw from a broad variety of cultural
influences from Middle East tonalities to Scottish jigs. White, on piano,
mandolin, guitar, Celtic harp and percussion, draws on her classical background
to create beautiful and compelling original compositions and arrangements of
traditional favorites. Bullock, a multi-instrumentalist who plays the guitar,
mandolin and bouzouki is hailed as a master musician whose style skillfully
embraces Celtic and Classical music.
More about the artists:
Grammy winner Al Petteway and his wife and musical partner Amy White perform an exciting blend of original, traditional,
contemporary Celtic- and Appalachian-influenced music. Their repertoire offers extensive
instrumental work featuring acoustic guitars, mandolins, Celtic harp, piano and
world percussion as well as a fine touch of vocals. They have been Artists in
Residence at Warren Wilson College and The Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Their
award-winning signature sound is heard often on public radio programs and has
been used in the soundtracks for a number of Ken Burns’ films, most notably the
Emmy-winning PBS documentary, The National Parks-America’s Best Idea. While living in the Washington, D.C. area, Al & Amy
won a grand total of 50 Wammies from the Washington Area Music Association in
the Folk, Celtic and New Age categories. They received a coveted Indie Award
for their CD Gratitude (2001) and Al won a
Grammy for his solo fingerstyle guitar rendition of Henry Mancini’s The
Thornbirds Theme featured on the pop instrumental
compilation, Pink Guitar (2004). The readers
of Acoustic
Guitar magazine voted him one of the top fifty guitarists
of all time. Al is the coordinator of Guitar Week for the world famous
Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College, and was given the “Master Music
Maker” award for his contributions to the program in 2013. Amy’s 2012 release, Home Sweet Home, was in the top ten
on the national folk/roots charts and held the number one spot in North
Carolina for more than a month in 2012. Al’s 2014 release, Mountain Guitar, features solo acoustic
guitar and paints a musical portrait of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Al
and Amy are both stock photographers with National Geographic Creative, and
their photographs are represented in The National Geographic Society’s Image
Collection, where Al worked as an image editor for 18 years. These photos are
translated onstage during A Swannanoa Solstice in photographic backdrops of the
Southern Appalachians in winter repose. Al and Amy make their
home on top of the Elk Mountains range in nearby Weaverville, NC.
Hailed as a "Celtic guitar god"
by the Baltimore
City Paper, guitarist/mandolinist/citternist Robin Bullock is a winner of Editor's
Pick and Player's Choice Awards from Acoustic Guitar Magazine, the Association for Independent Music's prestigious INDIE
Award (with the world-folk trio Helicon), multiple Washington Area Music
Association WAMMIE Awards, a Governor's Award from the Maryland State Arts
Council, and a bronze medal at the National Mandolin Championship in Winfield,
Kansas. His twelve solo and collaborative recordings include two holiday CDs, A
Guitar for Christmas and Christmas Eve is Here, and Majesty and Magic: Music of Bach,
Dowland and Carolan for Solo Guitar. His most recent
release, Alone and Together, is a collaborative
effort with fingerstyle guitarist, Steve Baughman. Robin also tours
internationally as sideman with Grammy-winning folk legend Tom Paxton,
including Tom's "Together at Last" tours with Janis Ian. A native of
Washington, D.C. and a longtime resident of France, Robin now makes his home in
Black Mountain, NC.
A Swannanoa Solstice is
presented annually in partnership with The Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson
College, and is made possible by Performance Sponsors Dan & Anna Garrett,
Bill & Marilyn Hubbard, and Marrion & Rockwell Ward; and by Mainstage
Special Attractions Series Sponsors Joel & Deborah Bohan Berkowitz and Wells
Fargo; with additional support from Media Sponsors The
Laurel of Asheville, WCQS 88.1 FM, and WTZQ AM 1600.
The entrance for the Diana Wortham Theatre is marked by the
location of the theatre’s marquee between 12 and 14 Biltmore Avenue. Patrons
enter the theatre through the breezeway between Marble Slab Creamery and White
Duck Taco restaurants, and into a large interior courtyard with multiple glass
doors to the theatre’s lower lobby and box office. The intimate theatre seats
just over 500 and boasts exceptional acoustics and sightlines, making it the
premier performance space in Western North Carolina. The Mainstage Series is
supported by a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, a state agency. The
Mainstage Series 2014/2015 Season Sponsors are the Asheville Scene,
Blue Moon Water, Creative Energy, Laurey’s Catering and Gourmet-to-go, the
North Carolina Arts Council, and the Renaissance Asheville Hotel. To obtain
more information on the Mainstage Series or to purchase tickets, call the
theatre’s box office at (828) 257-4530 or visit www.dwtheatre.com.
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