Award-winning recording artists Al Petteway, Amy White, and Robin Bullock
lead the annual holiday concert A
Swannanoa Solstice, Sunday, December 18 at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. at Diana
Wortham Theatre in downtown Asheville. In this annual winter holiday
celebration, now in its 14th year, world-renowned musicians Petteway,
White, and Bullock, Grammy Award winner David Holt, and other special guests share
holiday songs old and
new, religious and secular, joyful and poignant, in an 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 audience
demand for this popular winter gathering and concert. The audience is invited
to bring family and friends, share a cup of wassail and cookies, enjoy live
music in the lobby, and join in the warm merrymaking and quiet contemplation of
this Asheville favorite.
This year’s special guests include:
- David Holt, four-time Grammy Award-winning musician, storyteller, historian, and television host
- Phil Jamison and Ellie Grace, nationally acclaimed flatfoot dancers
- E.J. Jones, Highland bagpiper
- Host and emcee Doug Orr, president emeritus of Warren Wilson College and founder of The Swannanoa Gathering
A Swannanoa Solstice
showcases a spectacular array of seasonal 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 melodies played by Petteway,
a virtuosic acoustic guitarist, draw from a broad variety of cultural
influences from Middle Eastern tonalities to Scottish jigs. White, on piano,
mandolin, guitar, Celtic harp, and percussion, draws on her classical
background to create 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. Merchandise sales for many of the
performing artists will be available in the lobby.
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 Anna & Dan
Garrett and Bill & Marilyn Hubbard; and by Mainstage Special Attractions Series
Sponsors Henry LaBrun, PBI Commercial Interiors, and Ward and Smith, P.A.; with
additional support from Media Sponsors WCQS 88.1 FM, WNCW 88.7 FM, and WNC
magazine.
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,
and into a large interior courtyard with multiple glass doors to the theatre’s main
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 2016/2017 Season Sponsors are the Asheville
Citizen-Times, Blue Moon Water, Creative Energy, 67
Biltmore Downtown Eatery and Catering, 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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