In the eyes (and ears) of Chris Thile, Bach and bluegrass aren’t that far apart.
The MacArthur Genius Grant-winning mandolinist and singer/songwriter’s projects have shown this over the years. Whether he’s playing with Nickel Creek, The Punch Brothers or solo, Thile’s music blends sounds of classical, jazz, bluegrass, pop and rock. This strength is reflected in his latest project – a commission and tour with the Louisville Orchestra.
Thile – who attended Murray State University and spent some of his youth in far western Kentucky – is playing a new piece commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra during a four-stop leg of the arts group’s In Harmony tour. Thile will join the orchestra for stops in Murray, Madisonville, Beattyville and Henderson.
The concert in Murray is set for Thursday, Sept. 14, at Lovett Auditorium. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the show is slated to start at 7 p.m. Information regarding tickets is available online.
The program will begin with Thile’s latest composition, entitled “ATTENTION! A narrative song cycle for extroverted mandolinist and orchestra.” He describes it as a “manic ride” that’s “ part memoir, part mandolin concerto, all hi-larity.”
“I play, I sing, I talk and and tell the story of meeting Carrie Fisher … the luminary who played Princess Leia in Star Wars … before she passed away. I was such a massive fan of hers and I met her on a rooftop bar in San Diego in 2005 at this very strange music industry event, and I tell the whole story over the course of the evening. It's the best story I have,” he said. “[It] sort of appeared in my mind almost instantaneously in terms of what sort of a thing it would be and and at that point, it was just a matter of communicating that to the orchestra … and then chipping away at the big old block of marble to turn it into an actual consumable piece of music.”
The orchestra will also play “Home,” a piece composed by Louisville Orchestra Creator Corps member Lisa Bielawa and Hazard native Lindsay Branson; a selection from Aaron Copeland’s “Rodeo” entitled “Hoe-Down;” and Sergei Prokofiev’s “Symphony No. 1.”
Thile thinks performing the piece in Lovett Auditorium will be a special experience because of his family connections to the region. His father worked at MSU in the 1990s as a musical instrument technician, and several family members still live in the area.
“It is such a joy to be able to come back to Murray with everything it means to me just familially speaking,” he said. “Having gone to school at Murray State, having been able to cut my musical teeth in the music department … there was just so many wonderful moments for me. There's something in the air. You'll see why it's so important for me to play it in Murray. It means the world to me on a variety of fronts.”
Though this isn’t Thile’s first time writing for an orchestra, he said it’s the first time that the finished product feels like something that came out of him.
“I wasn't necessarily thrilled with the results and I think part of the reason for that is that, I think, I betrayed my own musical language. I tried to fool myself into sort of the grand European tradition of composing for orchestra and the music ultimately didn't sound that much like me,” he said. “For people who are familiar with my work, this [new piece] won’t sound like it was written by another person. It sounds like it's written by me. The last time I tried to do this, it was like a mandolin player dressed up as a composer for Halloween. It won't be like jumping in an icy icy cold pool if you're hoping for something sort of vaguely reminiscent of Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek or whatever. It's all baked into it.”
Thile said the experience of writing for an orchestra isn’t that different from writing for a solo mandolin piece or a bluegrass trio.
“Ultimately, we have to use words to describe the music that we're hoping to make, but calling something bluegrass or classical really only describes the surface of it as opposed to the heart of it,” he said. “It's all made out of the same stuff. Aesthetically, they can look quite different, but I think we're living in a nearly post-genre world.”
He’s even found ways to incorporate improvisation into the piece, which he feels are needed even within the trappings of the classical genre. The tour’s genre cross-pollination is something that appeals to Thile, who fell in love with classical music as a teenager when his grandmother played him Glenn Gould’s 1981 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
“Up to that point, I had not thought of classical music as being physically resonant. I had thought of it as being intellectually resonant. It just blew the doors off of my misconception about classical music,” Thile recalls. “Here was this fella playing music that was deeply emotionally resonant in a deeply rhythmically resonant way, a deeply physically resonant way. I marched through with gusto and never looked back.”
Thile’s latest solo record, Laysongs, came out in 2021 and Nickel Creek released their latest, Celebrants, earlier this year. He formerly hosted Live From Here – the show that evolved out of his hosting of Prairie Home Companion – and confirmed that he hopes to launch a podcast with his Punch Brother bandmates in the next year.
“If you're familiar with Live From Here at all … I think it will be a familiar feeling. It was a really fun project and when it got ‘COVID canceled,’ at first I was mostly relieved because it had become so hard to make … but now in the years following I've begun to really miss the process.”
The In Harmony tour will return in the spring with dates across Kentucky featuring bluegrass fiddle player Michael Cleveland.
