Please note the changed start time and location: this performance will begin at 1pm in Edward M. Pickman Hall.
Longy’s performance are free and open to the public, but please register in advance.
United States roots music is a powerful connection to the past, to cultural traditions and to music techniques unique to North America. Country blues, folk hymns, old time, rags, spirituals and Dixieland all were documented about 100 years ago as the recording industry matured. Thanks to collections like Smithsonian Folkways and The anthology of American Folk Music these styles have been preserved and revered as the genesis of most of the North American popular styles of the 20th and 21st centuries. What if that repertoire was both treated with serious study and analysis but then reimagined by using post modern techniques in arrangement and improvisation? Neo Roots ensemble deconstructs the repertoire by Jelly Roll Morton, James Reese Europe, the Carter Family, Doc Boggs, Son House and others with one ear to the 1920s and the other attuned to post-style approaches of the 2020s.
