FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 2024 · 7:30 PM

CHRIS THILE

THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

“…the leading mandolin virtuoso of his generation”

— The New York Times

MacArthur Fellow and GRAMMY Award-winning mandolinist, singer, songwriter Chris Thile, whom the Guardian calls “that rare being: an all-round musician who can settle into any style, from bluegrass to classical,” and NPR calls a “genre-defying musical genius,” is a founding member of the critically acclaimed bands Punch Brothers and Nickel Creek. For four years, Thile hosted public radio favorite Live from Here with Chris Thile (formerly known as A Prairie Home Companion). With his broad outlook, Thile creates a distinctly American canon and a new musical aesthetic for performers and audiences alike, giving the listener ”“one joyous arc, with the linear melody and vertical harmony blurring into a single web of gossamer beauty” (New York Times).

Most recently, Chris recorded Laysongs on Nonesuch. The album is his first truly solo album: just Thile, his voice, and his mandolin, on new recordings of six original songs and three covers, all of which contextualize and banter with his ideas about spirituality. Recorded in a converted upstate New York church during the pandemic, Laysongs’ centerpiece is the three-part “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth,” which was inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. The album also features a song Thile wrote about Dionysus; a performance of the fourth movement of Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin; “God is Alive, Magic is Afoot,” based on Buffy Sainte-Marie’s adaptation of a Leonard Cohen poem; a cover of bluegrass legend Hazel Dickens’ “Won’t You Come and Sing for Me,” and “Ecclesiastes 2:24,” an original instrumental loosely modeled after the Prelude from J.S. Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin in E Major.