Calendar of Events

The great ones endure, and Gladys Knight – the “Empress of Soul” – has long been one of the greatest. Very few singers over the last fifty years have matched her unassailable artistry. This seven-time Grammy-winner has enjoyed #1 hits in Pop, Gospel, R&B and Adult Contemporary, and has triumphed in film, television and live performance.

Gladys Knight and The Pips debuted their first album in 1960, when Knight was just 16.  With Knight singing lead and The Pips providing lush harmonies and graceful choreography, the group went on to achieve icon status. Top 20 hits like “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” “and “If I Were Your Woman” set the stage for an amazing run. With Top 10 gold-certified singles like “Neither One of Us (Wants to be the First to Say Goodbye),” “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,” and the #1 smash hit “Midnight Train to Georgia” established the group as the premiere pop/R&B vocal ensemble in the world.

In 1995, Knight earned her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the next year, Gladys Knight & The Pips were inducted into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame. She and the Pips have been presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, and in 2004, Knight received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual BET Awards ceremony.

In 2014, Knight released Where My Heart Belongs, an inspiration gospel that won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Gospel Album. All told, Knight has recorded more than 38 albums over the years, including four solo albums in the past decade. No stranger to performing, Knight joined the cast of ABC’s hit reality competition “Dancing with the Stars” for season 14 and has made numerous cameos and guest judge appearances.

Here Comes The Sun Band & Friends is a crew of extraordinary vocalists and multi-instrumentalists that love to recreate the fun and excitement of the greatest Rock n’ Roll experience ever–The Fab Four.  Celebrate The Beatles with a fresh, vibrant, and musically authentic act that keeps audiences on their feet with a thrilling recreation of a decade of Beatles Music! “We don’t impersonate, we celebrate!” Join some of your favorite Flat Rock Playhouse musicians and vocalists in this modern rock-and-roll experience. Returning to perform the music of this legendary band are Flat Rock Playhouse favorites Eric Anthony, Paul Babelay, Dustin Brayley, Ryan Dunn, Ryan Guerra, and Nat Zegree

HITS! The Musical is a high energy production featuring America’s best young superstars. The cast of approximately 22 members will consist of the country’s most talented singers and dancers, ages 8-21. The show will take audiences on a musical journey through the decades, highlighting the biggest hits of all time in Pop, Country, Rock and Broadway. It will incorporate fast- paced production medleys, dazzling costumes, and is sure to thrill audiences young and old!

The Magnetic Theatre is thrilled to kick off its 2023 Mainstage Season with HappyLand, a fun and fantastical new musical by Brayden Dickerson and Zach Knox of Asheville’s blues-fusion band Smooth Goose, featuring live tunes and an exciting ensemble of quirky characters.

This non-stop rock opera tells the tale of a delivery person who doesn’t quite fit into the titular town of HappyLand. Tasked with delivering one last package before the vacation they have been dreaming of, our bicycling box-bearer embarks on an epic journey through the barren Neither, where a host of unsavory characters contrives to stay this courier from their appointed rounds.  Nevertheless, our maudlin messenger is determined to make it to SadLand. But what will they find when they arrive? Could the addressee be the love of their life? What message does the all-important package contain? And can our hero deliver the earth from annihilation?

Directed by Jason Phillips and featuring an ensemble cast with rotating lead actors, HappyLand is a delightful extravaganza of song, silliness, dance, romance, and splendiferous space battles.

Support:
Ashland Craft

Ages 18+

Ticket price includes applicable sales tax.

Support:
Ashland Craft

Ages 18+

Hailed by The New York Times as the nation’s most important quartet, the JACK Quartet is one of the most respected groups performing today.  JACK is composed of violinists Christopher Otto, Austin Wulliman, and John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell.

As part of BMCM+AC’s Morton Feldman Weekend, JACK performs Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet. Composed in 1985 at the age of 59, it was among Feldman’s final major completed works. He wrote the composition with the Kronos Quartet and Takahashi in mind and the score was written out by hand, as he had done for most other compositions of that period. Less than two years after the premiere of Piano and String Quartet, Feldman died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 61. In a 1994 interview, David Harrington said the following about the Kronos Quartet’s work with the composer: “Morton Feldman was unlike any other composer we’ve ever worked with. He wrote pieces that have a sense of time and a kind of realm that is very particular to his music. And I think Piano and String Quartet is one of his great, great pieces. It’s almost like feeling these incredible, warm, slow, beautiful drops of water over a long period of time. Not like a water torture, but—for me—a kind of sensual experience. You begin hearing the passage of time differently after listening to Morton’s music.”

Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was part of the experimental New York School of composers that included John Cage, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown and David Tudor. One of his early teachers was Stefan Wolpe.

Early experiments in graphic notation and electronic music eventually led to fully notated pieces and his characteristic sound: rhythms that seem to be free and floating, pitch shadings that seem softly unfocused, a generally quiet and slowly evolving music, and recurring asymmetric patterns.

John Cage was instrumental in encouraging Feldman to have confidence in his instincts, which resulted in totally intuitive compositions. He never worked with any systems that anyone has been able to identify, working from moment to moment, from one sound to the next.

The works of Morton Feldman occupy a central place in the American experimental tradition, not just within the music world. Feldman was very often inspired by non-musical sources, including Persian rugs, abstract expressionist paintings by Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, and texts of Samuel Beckett, John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara.

His later works, after 1977, explore extremes of duration. The sixty-minute Triadic Memories (1981) and the eighty-minute Piano and String Quartet (1985) are both incredible examples of Feldman’s later work that challenge our perception of time.

Pianist/composer and Guggenheim Fellow Amy Williams performs Triadic Memories, a solo piano piece composed by Morton Feldman in 1981. Triadic Memories was jointly dedicated to the classical pianists Roger Woodward and Aki Takahashi; Woodward performed the world premiere at the ICA London, UK in 1 October of 1981.

This piece heralds the composers late period, as Feldman himself described this work as the biggest butterfly in captivity. This statement refers to its vastness, the duration lasting over an hour and a half. Why these enormous lengths? Feldman says: Personally, l think the reason the pieces are so long is that form, as I understand it, no longer exists. My pieces aren’t too long, most pieces are actually too short…lf one listens to my pieces, they seem to fit into the temporal landscape I provide. Would you say that the Odyssey is too long?

Here Comes The Sun Band & Friends is a crew of extraordinary vocalists and multi-instrumentalists that love to recreate the fun and excitement of the greatest Rock n’ Roll experience ever–The Fab Four.  Celebrate The Beatles with a fresh, vibrant, and musically authentic act that keeps audiences on their feet with a thrilling recreation of a decade of Beatles Music! “We don’t impersonate, we celebrate!” Join some of your favorite Flat Rock Playhouse musicians and vocalists in this modern rock-and-roll experience. Returning to perform the music of this legendary band are Flat Rock Playhouse favorites Eric Anthony, Paul Babelay, Dustin Brayley, Ryan Dunn, Ryan Guerra, and Nat Zegree

The Magnetic Theatre is thrilled to kick off its 2023 Mainstage Season with HappyLand, a fun and fantastical new musical by Brayden Dickerson and Zach Knox of Asheville’s blues-fusion band Smooth Goose, featuring live tunes and an exciting ensemble of quirky characters.

This non-stop rock opera tells the tale of a delivery person who doesn’t quite fit into the titular town of HappyLand. Tasked with delivering one last package before the vacation they have been dreaming of, our bicycling box-bearer embarks on an epic journey through the barren Neither, where a host of unsavory characters contrives to stay this courier from their appointed rounds.  Nevertheless, our maudlin messenger is determined to make it to SadLand. But what will they find when they arrive? Could the addressee be the love of their life? What message does the all-important package contain? And can our hero deliver the earth from annihilation?

Directed by Jason Phillips and featuring an ensemble cast with rotating lead actors, HappyLand is a delightful extravaganza of song, silliness, dance, romance, and splendiferous space battles.

After a lifetime of crafting finely-wrought, heart-touching songs, singer-songwriter Pierce Pettis feels that he’s finally found his comfort zone. “The biggest change,” he says of this point in his career “has been getting over myself and realizing this is a job and a craft. And the purpose is not fame and fortune (whatever that is) but simply doing good work.”

“From the time I was very little, I always had the music going in my head,” Pettis explains. “Like my own personal soundtrack or something. I also come from a fairly musical family: my mother went to music school and was an excellent organist and pianist. And my sisters all played piano and other instruments. In school, I met other kids who wanted to be rock stars, just like me. From the time we were around 10 or so up through high school, we put together various bands — all of them horrible.”

His “horrible” bands didn’t deter him though and even though he had a nagging feeling (“I thought I was supposed to be a doctor or something.”) he persevered, not only playing music but writing songs in a mix of rock, folk, country and R&B genres that landed him an unpaid position as a staff writer for Muscle Shoals Sounds Studios. While there, his track “Song at the End of the Movie” found its way to Joan Baez’s 1979 album Honest Lullaby.

Pettis hit the road and became a member of the “Fast Folk” movement in New York in the mid-1980’s. He released one independent solo album, Moments (1984) before signing with High Street Records, a division of Windham Hill. There, he released three albums: While the Serpent Lies Sleeping (1989), Tinseltown (1991), and Chase the Buffalo (1993). His relationship with Tinseltown producer Mark Heard transcended the album. After Heard’s untimely death in 1992, Pettis committed to including a song of Heard’s on every one of his own albums, a practice that continues to this day.

Pettis was a staff songwriter for PolyGram from 1993-2000 and when his High Street contract ended, Pettis signed to Compass Records where he has released Making Light of It (1996), Everything Matters (1998), State of Grace (2001), and Great Big World (2004). Pierce Pettis’ songs have been recorded by artists including Susan Ashton, Dar Williams, Garth Brooks and Art Garfunkel.

His album, “That Kind of Love” on Compass Records was released January 27 2009. In 2013, “New Agrarians –Songs & Stories of the Southland” was released, a co-effort by Pierce Pettis, Kate Campbell & Tom Kimmel. “Father’s Son”, Pettis’ newest solo project for Compass Records Group, was released January of 2019 to widespread critical praise in the US, UK and Europe.

Live Music at Hickory Tavern, 9:00 p.m. until 12:00 a.m.

As a tradition practiced since 1801, shape-note singing is one of the oldest forms of music in the United States. Rooted in the rural South, it thrived during the 19th century as a form of education and socializing. Today, it persists in Appalachia and across the world. Stefani will teach participants the basics of learning how to read and sing shape-notes in order to preserve this historical practice. She will also relay the history of the practice of shape-note singing. Participants will be provided with The Christian Harmony shape-note music book.

About Stefani Priskos: Stefani Priskos is a North Carolina-based folklorist and educator from Alabama. Stefani holds an M.A. in folklore from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received UNC’s Archie Green Fellowship for Occupational Folklife for her master’s thesis research for her work on hospice bedside singing. She also holds a B.A. in linguistics from Barnard College of Columbia University, with concentrations in French and Modern Greek. When not collaborating with communities to document, explore, and celebrate established and emerging traditions, Stefani enjoys hiking, traveling, and shapenote singing. She currently serves as the Programs Development Manager at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC.

Here Comes The Sun Band & Friends is a crew of extraordinary vocalists and multi-instrumentalists that love to recreate the fun and excitement of the greatest Rock n’ Roll experience ever–The Fab Four.  Celebrate The Beatles with a fresh, vibrant, and musically authentic act that keeps audiences on their feet with a thrilling recreation of a decade of Beatles Music! “We don’t impersonate, we celebrate!” Join some of your favorite Flat Rock Playhouse musicians and vocalists in this modern rock-and-roll experience. Returning to perform the music of this legendary band are Flat Rock Playhouse favorites Eric Anthony, Paul Babelay, Dustin Brayley, Ryan Dunn, Ryan Guerra, and Nat Zegree

Nobody’s Darling String Band is here every Saturday from 4-6! Stop in for an afternoon libation and enjoy the ladies picking’ away on the stage!

March 25, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. – VIP Dinner
March 25, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. – Concert

Arthel “Doc” Watson was one of the most influential and beloved music artists of the 20th century. Born in 1923 in Deep Gap, North Carolina, Doc overcame his loss of sight as an infant to become a legendary performer of numerous music forms on a wide variety of instruments including guitar, banjo, mandolin, and harmonica.

Doc combined his warm baritone voice with virtuoso talents on the guitar and other instruments to put his unique stamp on ancient ballads, modern American show tunes, gospel, blues, and a remarkable range of popular and traditional music. His virtuosity on guitar was revealed through his pioneering work demonstrating that the acoustic guitar’s capabilities extended well beyond simply being a background rhythm instrument, to include blazing instrumental lead work, especially with traditional fiddle tunes.

DOC AT 100 is a fundraiser concert for FRIENDS of the Blue Ridge that celebrates the life and legacy of Doc Watson by those who performed with Doc, were profoundly influenced by his music, and called him a friend. This includes T. Michael Coleman and Jack Lawrence, who performed, recorded, and toured with Doc longer than any other musicians he worked with. Joining T. Michael and Jack, are fellow guitarists Wayne Henderson and Jack Hinshelwood, who were both heavily impacted by Doc’s music through his many recordings and performances, and Wayne counted Doc as a close friend, especially in Doc’s later years when he enjoyed visiting Wayne in his guitar making shop in Rugby, Virginia.

Ted Olson, Professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University, is the author of “Doc’s World: Traditional Plus,” the book that accompanies the 4 CD compilation of recordings from Doc’s career released in 2022 by Craft Records called “Doc Watson, Life’s Work: A Retrospective.”

DOC AT 100 begins with a pre-concert talk led by host Ted Olson on the legacy of Doc Watson followed by stories shared by the artists who knew Doc as a friend and fellow performer. The audience will also be encouraged to share their stories of Doc and the impact he had on them.

The VIP ticket includes premium seating to the concert and the VIP Dinner.

Hailed by The New York Times as the nation’s most important quartet, the JACK Quartet is one of the most respected groups performing today.  JACK is composed of violinists Christopher Otto, Austin Wulliman, and John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell.

As part of BMCM+AC’s Morton Feldman Weekend, JACK performs Morton Feldman’s Piano and String Quartet. Composed in 1985 at the age of 59, it was among Feldman’s final major completed works. He wrote the composition with the Kronos Quartet and Takahashi in mind and the score was written out by hand, as he had done for most other compositions of that period. Less than two years after the premiere of Piano and String Quartet, Feldman died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 61. In a 1994 interview, David Harrington said the following about the Kronos Quartet’s work with the composer: “Morton Feldman was unlike any other composer we’ve ever worked with. He wrote pieces that have a sense of time and a kind of realm that is very particular to his music. And I think Piano and String Quartet is one of his great, great pieces. It’s almost like feeling these incredible, warm, slow, beautiful drops of water over a long period of time. Not like a water torture, but—for me—a kind of sensual experience. You begin hearing the passage of time differently after listening to Morton’s music.”

Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was part of the experimental New York School of composers that included John Cage, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown and David Tudor. One of his early teachers was Stefan Wolpe.

Early experiments in graphic notation and electronic music eventually led to fully notated pieces and his characteristic sound: rhythms that seem to be free and floating, pitch shadings that seem softly unfocused, a generally quiet and slowly evolving music, and recurring asymmetric patterns.

John Cage was instrumental in encouraging Feldman to have confidence in his instincts, which resulted in totally intuitive compositions. He never worked with any systems that anyone has been able to identify, working from moment to moment, from one sound to the next.

The works of Morton Feldman occupy a central place in the American experimental tradition, not just within the music world. Feldman was very often inspired by non-musical sources, including Persian rugs, abstract expressionist paintings by Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, and texts of Samuel Beckett, John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara.

His later works, after 1977, explore extremes of duration. The sixty-minute Triadic Memories (1981) and the eighty-minute Piano and String Quartet (1985) are both incredible examples of Feldman’s later work that challenge our perception of time.

Pianist/composer and Guggenheim Fellow Amy Williams performs Triadic Memories, a solo piano piece composed by Morton Feldman in 1981. Triadic Memories was jointly dedicated to the classical pianists Roger Woodward and Aki Takahashi; Woodward performed the world premiere at the ICA London, UK in 1 October of 1981.

This piece heralds the composers late period, as Feldman himself described this work as the biggest butterfly in captivity. This statement refers to its vastness, the duration lasting over an hour and a half. Why these enormous lengths? Feldman says: Personally, l think the reason the pieces are so long is that form, as I understand it, no longer exists. My pieces aren’t too long, most pieces are actually too short…lf one listens to my pieces, they seem to fit into the temporal landscape I provide. Would you say that the Odyssey is too long?

HITS! The Musical is a high energy production featuring America’s best young superstars. The cast of approximately 22 members will consist of the country’s most talented singers and dancers, ages 8-21. The show will take audiences on a musical journey through the decades, highlighting the biggest hits of all time in Pop, Country, Rock and Broadway. It will incorporate fast- paced production medleys, dazzling costumes, and is sure to thrill audiences young and old!

In her first 25 years alone, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Sierra Hull hit more milestones than many musicians accomplish in a lifetime. After making her Grand Ole Opry debut at the age of 10, the Tennessee-bred virtuoso mandolinist played Carnegie Hall at age 12, then landed a deal with Rounder Records just a year later. n 2016, after a near- decade of consecutive nominations, Hull became the first-ever woman to win the award—then claimed that prize again at the 2017 and 2018 IBMAs. Over the years, Hull has also maintained a rigorous touring schedule, and has made occasional guest appearances with such icons as the Indigo Girls, Garth Brooks, and Gillian Welch.

Justin Moses is an award winning multi-instrumentalist celebrated as one of the most versatile musicians in all of acoustic music. A prominent Nashville session musician, he has appeared on stage or in the studio with an endless list of diverse artists such as Alison Krauss, Del McCoury, Garth Brooks, Emmylou Harris, Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, Bruce Hornsby, Béla Fleck, Peter Frampton, Rosanne Cash, Marty Stuart and Barry Gibb among many others. In 2018 and 2020 he was named Dobro Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association.

Dave Brubeck, Art Blakey and George Benson are legends in the jazz world, but they’re not exactly household names to the typical high school student.

It’s safe to say Wilson Vest, Gabe Glasser and Espen Raustol are not typical high school students. The trio of 17-year-old juniors recently formed the Altamont Jazz Project, which has secured a weekly gig at Finch Gourmet Market & Wine Bar in Biltmore Village.

Along with Brubeck, Blakey and Benson, the musicians cite Buddy Rich, Ryo Fukui, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass and Bill Evans as influences.

“By the time we decided to start the jazz trio, we had all seen, heard and experienced jazz in varied degrees and in different spaces and styles,” says guitarist Raustol, who attends the School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville. “We try to branch out to play many varieties and many colors of jazz — fast, slow, happy, sad.”

The three started playing together in the sixth grade as part of a rock/funk band called the Seven Lemonz, before shifting their focus to jazz. Vest and Glasser attend Carolina Day School.

Vest plays drums and Glasser plays keyboard for the Altamont Jazz Project, which takes its moniker from Thomas Wolfe’s fictional name for Asheville in his classic novel Look Homeward, Angel. “We wanted something that referenced where we are from,” Raustol explains.

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The Magnetic Theatre is thrilled to kick off its 2023 Mainstage Season with HappyLand, a fun and fantastical new musical by Brayden Dickerson and Zach Knox of Asheville’s blues-fusion band Smooth Goose, featuring live tunes and an exciting ensemble of quirky characters.

This non-stop rock opera tells the tale of a delivery person who doesn’t quite fit into the titular town of HappyLand. Tasked with delivering one last package before the vacation they have been dreaming of, our bicycling box-bearer embarks on an epic journey through the barren Neither, where a host of unsavory characters contrives to stay this courier from their appointed rounds.  Nevertheless, our maudlin messenger is determined to make it to SadLand. But what will they find when they arrive? Could the addressee be the love of their life? What message does the all-important package contain? And can our hero deliver the earth from annihilation?

Directed by Jason Phillips and featuring an ensemble cast with rotating lead actors, HappyLand is a delightful extravaganza of song, silliness, dance, romance, and splendiferous space battles.

Hendersonville Theatre is proud to bring The Tribe Jazz Orchestra to Western North Carolina. The Tribe Jazz Orchestra is an ensemble of musicians led by vocalist Lenora Zenzalai Helm with a unique approach to the music of the big band tradition. With a diverse amalgam of the top men and women performers in Jazz today, the instrumentation features a combination of jazz orchestra and modern chamber ensemble to bring a swinging and soulful concert full of groove and excitement covering many styles.

The members of the Tribe have performed together in various configurations and have appeared in noted concert halls and international music festivals in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. The musicians have each garnered an international audience of followers and critical and professional acclaim for the last few decades.

Lenora has six previous commercial recordings and has performed with some of the biggest names in Jazz leading her groups in renowned jazz festivals and venues worldwide, including Jazz Standard, NYC, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy Club Coca Cola Women’s Jazz Festival, Schomburg Center’s Women in Jazz Festival, JVC Jazz Festivals, Clifford Brown Jazz Festival, Cape Town Jazzathon, South Africa, Fiji Jazz & Blues Festival, NCCU Jazz Festival, and the Art of Cool Jazz Festival, Durham, NC. Her creative practice includes being a performing musician while educating emerging artists in jazz as the Director of the NCCU Vocal Jazz Ensemble and Assistant Professor of Vocal Jazz at North Carolina Central University, and being sought after internationally for workshops, clinics and master classes. She plays a leadership role in creating communities of practice for teaching artists and producing forums where music performances and edutainment events serve families in local and regional communities. A former U.S. Jazz Ambassador, and a two-time Fulbright Senior Music Specialist, she earned dozens of music and leadership-in-music awards and international accolades, including being a MacDowell Composer Fellow and the first Black woman vocal musician selected as a Chamber Music America/New Works Doris Duke Composer. Their CD release, For the Love of Big Band, launched March 9, 2020, received critical acclaim, and reached the JazzWeek Top 50 list of recordings for 2020. The next recording release will launch Spring 2023, Journeywoman, a recording of all original compositions. Learn more at www.LenoraHelm.com.