Though he was born in Southern California, Chris Thile has roots in Murray, Kentucky, about an hour south of Paducah, as well, so it'll be a bit of a homecoming for him when he and Punch Brothers play the Clemens Fine Arts Center in Paducah this Sunday. The Paducah Sun's Adam Shull spoke with Chris and fellow Punch Brother, fiddler Gabe Witcher, about their Nonesuch debut, Punch.
"What we've attempted to do is provide music for people who love getting into music," Gabe tells the Sun, "getting in deep with the music and exploring a record."
The centerpiece of the record is The Blind Leaving the Blind, the new four-movement suite by Chris that combines a classical-music form, bluegrass instrumentation, jazz-inspired improvisation, and virtuosic technical skill to form something else entirely. As Gabe reports:
It was the first time a lot of us have attempted to play music that required as much as it did as far as technical ability and concentration ... I think for a musician there are few things as exciting as breaking new ground, possibly not from an overall music sense but from a personal standpoint.
Chris concurs, telling Shull:
As a musician you're always reaching beyond yourself for (something) and when you actually grab a hold of it, it's electrifying. That is what being a musician is all about: groping in the dark and finally you make a little bit of progress ... we were able to go beyond what we already knew.
To read the complete interview, visit paducahsun.com. For more tour information, click here.
The Montreal Gazette gives the new album four stars. "Thile is writing about the deeply personal, in personal terms," writes reviewer Mark Lepage. He sees in Punch "Thile's prodigious virtuosity ... fused to the soaring, yet austere, progressive tone and arrangements of his virtuoso musicians." To read the review, visit canada.com.
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