Each day, I spend some time watching some great mandolinists in order to enjoy their music, analyze their technique and this keeps me feeling like an active member of the world-wide community of mandolin musicians.
It is true that the more you learn, the more you realize that knowledge is a staircase with no end. But this is the beauty of it. As Socrates (c. 470BC-399BC), the Greek Philosopher once said, ‘there is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance’.
Watching these great musicians, gives me motivation to keep playing and progressing, so I am sharing this with you, hoping it will have the same effect. Enjoy!
Chris Thile, improvising
The video shows Chris Thile in action, and I mean serious action. Chris Thile is a great virtuoso and true musician, experimenting with his art. If you think this video is not interesting, jump directly to 4:20 to see Chris improvization in action.
About Chris Thile
Christopher Scott Thile is an American musician, best known as the mandolinist and a singer for the progressive acoustic trio Nickel Creek and acoustic folk/bluegrass quintet the Punch Brothers. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow.
Chris Thile, widely regarded as one of the most interesting and inventive musicians of his generation, has elevated the bluegrass mandolin from its American origins as a relatively simple folk and bluegrass instrument to the sophistication and brilliance of the finest jazz improvisation and classical performance.
For more than 15 years, Thile played in the wildly popular band Nickel Creek, with whom he released three albums for a combined two million records sold, was awarded a Grammy in 2002, and traveled the world on sold-out concert tours. As a soloist he has released four albums, on which he experimented with a dizzying range of instruments, songwriting challenges and musical styles. Thile has also performed and recorded extensively as a duo with double bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer (with whom he released a dually eponymous album on Nonesuch and toured the world in the fall of 2008) and with fellow eminent mandolinist Mike Marshall.
In April 2007, Meyer and pianist Emanuel Ax commissioned Thile to write a piece for double bass and piano, which they performed on a tour including the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville. In September 2009, Thile gave the world premiere of his first Mandolin Concerto, Ad astra per alia porci, with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jeffrey Kahane at Denver’s Boettcher Concert Hall.
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