A Starry Night Productions produced an excellent Photo Essay of the NCBS Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass Festival. Click here to take a look at the August 8-11, 2019 gathering:
2019 Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass Festival Photo Essay
The creative photo and text spread by photographers Donna Pacini-Christensen and Tim Christensen covers the people, music, and fun of the annual event that was held at the San Benito County Historical Park in Tres Pinos.
The closing weekend of the Steve Martin-Edie Brickell-penned Americana/Bluegrass musical Bright Star at the Lucie Stern Center Theater in Palo Alto is this weekend.
The Palo Alto Players are presenting this show and tickets are still available.
The Northern California Bluegrass Society welcomes this event to our area. Our own Dan Mazer will perform on banjo with the show’s orchestra. Area bluegrass performers will ensure a pleasant start for each performance with the sounds of jamming outside on the plaza courtyard before the formal show begins inside.
Remaining Performance Dates: Thursday-Sunday: September 26-29.
The Northern California Bluegrass Society is now collecting donations to help students attending the November 1-4, 2019 Walker Creek Music Camp.
The NCBS Walker Creek Scholarship Fund will make awards to deserving students next month. Send donations to: Northern California Bluegrass Society/Santa Cruz Bluegrass Society, PO Box 390846, Mountain View, CA 94039-0846. Donations may be tax-advantaged. NCBS is a Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3) Organization.
Ingrid Noyes runs the widely-respected camp each spring and fall at the Walker Creek Ranch, Petaluma. Camp Information: Walker Creek Music Camp.
The big national/international convention for bluegrass music — the World Of Bluegrass run by the International Bluegrass Music Association — will be held in Raleigh, NC on September 24-28, 2019.
The Northern California Bluegrass Society will be there, as always, looking for new ideas, new talent, and new bluegrass fun.
The Society’s highlight for 2019 will be the first Official Showcase for Santa Cruz’s AJ Lee & Blue Summit. The introduction of this popular NCBS unit to the rest of the known bluegrass world represents a big step for for the band and also for Northern California bluegrass music in general. Two members of the band, AJ Lee and Jesse Fichman are members of the NCBS Board Of Directors and NCBS President Michael Hall has been tapped to emcee the band’s performance. The band is the reigning Best Bluegrass Band in the 2019 NCBS Northern California Bluegrass Awards.
Lee has also been nominated for a Momentum Award as one of the nation’s Best Young Vocalists. Hall will help organize a reception honoring the alumni of the IBMA’s Leadership Bluegrass Class, which will be his final project for the Leadership Bluegrass Alumni Committee after 15 years. He co-founded the group, which will also present a Master Class at the convention. He will also attend his first in-person meeting as a member of the IBMA Foundation’s Board Of Directors.
There will be plenty of Californians in attendance. The California Bluegrass Association has some evening performances planned, although on a smaller scale than in the past. Many young California performers, including Crying Uncle from Alameda, will be performing on the weekend’s Wide Open Bluegrass Festival that will follow the convention proper.
The NCBS is a longtime organizational member of the IBMA.
Three Week Reminder: Nominations from NCBS Members for the 2020 Northern California Bluegrass Awards are due by October 15, 2019.
The Northern California Bluegrass Society Volunteer Thank-You Party will be held on Sunday, October 13 at an exciting new, close-in location.
NCBS volunteers and bands on any project over the past year will soon receive their coveted invitations. This is always the best bluegrass party of the year!
The Northern California Bluegrass Society welcomes TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s performance of the Bluegrass/Americana musical Mark Twain’s River Of Song which is set for October 2-27, 2019 at the Mountain View Center For The Performing Arts.
The show, written by Randal Myler & Dan Wheetman (the latter of Marley’s Ghost fame), brings the stories of Mark Twain and plenty of our kind of music to the stage.
Bluegrass fans can receive a $10 Discount when purchasing tickets by using the code “BLUEGRASS.”
The month-long run of the Steve Martin-Edie Brickell-penned Americana/Bluegrass musical Bright Star at the Lucie Stern Center Theater in Palo Alto continues this weekend.
The Palo Alto Players are presenting this show and tickets are still available.
The Northern California BLuegrass Society welcomes this important bluegrass cultural event to our area. Our own Dan Mazer will perform on banjo with the show’s orchestra. Area bluegrass performers will ensure a pleasant start for each performance with the sounds of jamming outside on the plaza courtyard before the formal show begins inside.
Remaining Performance Dates:
All This Weekend and then next weekend, Thursday-Sunday: September 26-29.
Peter Thompson, the longtime host of the Saturday evening Bluegrass Signal radio show on public station KALW in San Francisco (91.7FM and Online), has just published a beautiful and comprehensive 2020 Calendar of current and historical bluegrass dates. The calendar includes all the Northern California Bluegrass Society information as well as many other key area bluegrass dates. This will be your guide to the music for the coming year!
The calendar is available only to donors who support bluegrass music on KALW Radio. You can check out the station website (and the fall bluegrass pledge drive) beginning in late October.
The annual Northern California Bluegrass Society Volunteer Thank-You Party will be held on Sunday, October 13 at an exciting new, close-in location. NCBS volunteers and bands on any project over the past year will soon receive their coveted invitations. This will be the bluegrass party of the year!
