Park City Institute Reveals First Confirmed Performance Of The Season

American Acoustic, a tour featuring Punch Brothers and I'm With Her, with jazz guitarist and composer Julian Lage is the first confirmed act of the 2017 St. Regis Big Stars, Bright Nights Concert Series, playing Tuesday August 15, 2017, Teri Orr, executive director of Park City Insitute, announced March 17.

"This is a special tour-musicians that you know from Nickel Creek, now in different bands, Punch Brothers and I'm With Her," Orr told the crowd. "They've played here, before, so when they heard we made an offer, they wanted to come back. They added a date and they're flying in just for us. So you get Chris Thile, in Punch Brothers, with Paul Kowert (bass), Noam Pikelny (banjo), Chris Eldridge (guitar), and Gabe Witcher (violin). You get Sarah Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O'Donovan in I'm With Her."

Met with cheers, Orr continued, "This is kind of the brainchild of Chris Thile-he's a four-time Grammy Award Winner, with three more Grammy nominations. He's brilliant, he won the MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant in 2012, he hosts A Prairie Home Companion, and he's a prolific musician and producer."

Noting that both groups have a reputation for innovating, blending genres and virtuoso musicianship, Orr said the tour is emblematic of the way the Institute looks at programming the Big Stars, Bright Nights season. "There is no one genre, no one style that defines us," Orr said. "The unifying theme of this series is always that it's eclectic, smart and gives our patrons a sense of discovery while they enjoy an evening with friends, a picnic and, of course, the stars."

American Acoustic had its beginnings, last June, as a weekend-long festival curated by Thile, at the Kennedy Center. The weekend culminated in a show including Punch Brothers and I'm With Her, with half the show devoted to extensive collaboration between all the musicians.

"We started discussing how to make this tour happen as we were walking offstage," Thile said. "On one hand, there was that delightful sense of discovery and almost childish wonder that you hope for when working with musicians you admire in a new context, but on the other, the kind of artistic compatibility and ease of communication you usually only experience in longstanding collaborations. These shows will be designed to give us (and you!) the opportunity to explore more thoroughly the myriad possibilities we caught a glimpse of that night."

The members of I'm With Her added, "[There is] the chance for discovery every night as the nine of us find new ways to collaborate and celebrate each other."

I'm With Her was formed as a result of an impromptu performance at the 2014 Telluride Bluegrass Festival. The trio have garnered acclaim on their world tour, for their unique blend of instrumental interplay combined with their indelible harmonies "... that could be sweetly ethereal, or as tightly in tandem as country sibling teams like the Everly Brothers, or as hearty as mountain gospel." The New York Times.

Punch Brothers originally formed to tour in support of Chris Thile's 2006 solo album, How to Grow a Woman From the Ground. The New York Times has said of Thile that "his technique is merely the starting point for serious experiments in genre bending that incorporate music ranging from Bach to Radiohead," noting that the band "expands the frontier of an emerging style of what might be called American country-classical chamber music."

The St. Regis Big Stars Bright Nights Concert Series marks the 14th season of summer concerts presented by Park City Institute at Deer Valley Resort's Snow Park Amphitheater. The full season will be announced on April 4th. Tickets for all shows will go on sale to members and sponsors of the Park City Institute, April 6, and to the general public on April 15. Membership and sponsorship information can be found at parkctiyinsitute.org, or by calling the box office at 435-655-3114.

Park City Institute is a non-profit organization, dedicated to bringing world-class performances and new ideas to the community. Since 1998, PCI has presented internationally renowned and cutting edge musicians, actors, authors, comedians, dancers, speakers and film at The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts (a joint-use facility with the Park City School District). The organization will embark on its 14th season of headliner concerts at Deer Valley Resort next summer. PCI is dedicated to introducing young people to the arts through free student outreach workshops, shows and demonstrations. Since 2010, PCI has offered a free after-school literacy program to students in grades one through 12 at the thinky and engaging retail-fronted tutoring hub, the Mega-Genius Supply Store and IQ HQ (located at 435 Swede Alley in Old Town). The organization continues to illuminate with Curiosities evenings and the Saints and Sinners Ball.

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