Mandolinist, singer, and songwriter Chris Thile, who is currently touring the United States with Punch Brothers, has announced a tour of Europe and the UK this autumn. The month-long tour begins in Estonia on October 20, making stops in Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, and the UK, culminating at the National Concert Hall in Dublin on November 15. Tickets for most of the newly announced shows go on sale this Friday. See below for details and tickets or visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.

Laysongs, Chris Thile's first truly solo album, was released on Nonesuch last year. The album is 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 features the three-part Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth, which was inspired by C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters; a song Thile wrote about Dionysus; a selection from 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; and a Hazel Dickens cover. You can get it and hear it here.

CHRIS THILE ON TOUR