**Take advantage of advance ticket prices, as they go up the day of the show!** ADV: $16/$14 MEM; DOS: $18/$16 MEM
Grant Gordy took up the guitar at the age of 13 in his hometown of Portland, Ore. He now calls Denver home and has been a part of the national acoustic music scene for the last several years. He cut his teeth as a working musician playing all kinds of music at all kinds of gigs around Colorado.
In 2006, Gordy applied and was selected for Edgar Meyer's Porous Borders of Music workshop in New York City, the culmination of which was a performance at Carnegie Hall, where Gordy debuted a number of his compositions. He toured North America in 2008 with Jayme Stone and Mansa Sissoko and the Africa to Appalachia project, including dates at the Montreal Jazz Festival and Calgary Folk Festival, and a featured performance on NPR's All Things Considered. Their album won a Juno Award (Canadian Grammy) for Best World Music Record of the Year.
Recently Gordy has become the newest member of the legendary David Grisman Quintet, which played at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in June 2009. He has shared the stage with such luminaries of the acoustic music world as Mike Marshall, Edgar Meyer, Béla Fleck, Darol Anger and of course David Grisman. He is quickly becoming recognized for pushing and blurring the boundaries of acoustic music in his compositions, his assimilation of jazz influences, and his exceptional facility with his instrument.
"Grant Gordy belongs to the new elite family of American acoustic practitioners who are pushing the ever-expanding envelope of a musical frontier. Grant's guitar stylings offer a rare blend of flat-picking virtuosity, jazz exploration and classical sensibility... some of the most engaging sounds in contemporary acoustic string music." –David Grisman.
He and his all-star quartet, with mando player Dominick Leslie, fiddler Mike Barnett and bassist Ian Hutchison, will be previewing Gordy's new album, Grant Gordy, at this show. The album draws heavily on "new acoustic" and jazz elements, presented within a stringband format, but never abandoning a fok music sensibility.
The CD features Leslie (Missy Raines and the New Hip, The Deadly Gentlemen) on mandolin as well as guest musicians Alex Hargreaves (Mike Marshall's Big Trio, Darol Anger's Republic of Strings, David Grisman Quintet/Bluegrass Experience) on fiddle, Paul Kowert (Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers, Mike Marshall's Big Trio) on bass, Jayme Stone on banjo and David Grisman on mandolin.
Opening the show are the Bee Eaters, featuring members of Crooked Still, Darol Anger's Republic of Strings, Tony Trischka, The Biscuit Burners and the David Grisman Quintet. "Their brilliant bowing and banjoing, the mellifluously magnificent mallet work, and impeccably impressive ensemble work leave me breathless," says Tony Trischka.
