St. Kieran Art Center Presents: Ethan Setiawan Band

Ethan Setiawan is a Boston-based mandolin player who’s won such accolades as the National Mandolin Championship, the RockyGrass Mandolin Championship, and a full-ride scholarship to Berklee College of Music. His path has wended its way through traditional bluegrass to Bach partitas to free jazz, and his debut full-length album is made up of original tunes drawing from all these wells.

Along with Ethan Setiawan, band members include Noah Harrington, Sam Leslie, and Julian Pinelli. United by their roots in bluegrass, they draw on myriad influences to produce Appalachian melodies tempered with chromaticism and groove. The quartet combines the sweeping lines of Julian Pinelli’s violin with the snap and groove of mandolinist Ethan Setiawan. Sam Leslie adds imitable guitar, all supported by Noah Harrington on bass. These four talented musicians met in Boston’s thriving roots music scene. The quartet’s hope is to create music with an electric edge to its acousticality.

Tillotson Center Presents Alan Epstein’s “Sunset on Meriden Hill”

This concert will debut Alan Epstein’s CD, “Sunset on Meriden Hill,” released in March of this year, which features Alan on mandolin accompanied by Jim Prendergast on guitar. The CD is a wonderful, easy listening, instrumental recording of some Alan’s favorite melodies to play on the mandolin. The title track of the CD was written by Alan and was inspired by one of his frequent visits to the North Country with his wife Bonnie, a Colebrook native. Joining Alan for the concert will be Jim Prendergast who, after 30 years working in the recording studios and orchestra pits of Nashville TN, now resides in southern NH.