Commissions
Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, Corner House: Bluegrass Concerto Commission
Jerry Douglas
Dobro master and 16-time GRAMMY winner Jerry Douglas is to the resonator guitar what Jimi Hendrix was to the electric guitar, elevating, transforming, and reinventing the instrument in countless ways. Additionally, Douglas is a freewheeling, forward-thinking recording and touring artist whose output incorporates elements of country, bluegrass, rock, jazz, blues, and Celtic into his distinctive musical vision.
Called “Dobro’s matchless contemporary master” by The New York Times, three-time CMA Musician of the Year award recipient Jerry Douglas is one of the most innovative recording artists in music as a solo artist, band leader for The Jerry Douglas Band and his GRAMMY winning bluegrass band The Earls of Leicester, as well as a member of groundbreaking ensembles including Alison Krauss & Union Station, J.D. Crowe & the New South, The Country Gentlemen, Boone Creek, and Strength In Numbers.
Sierra Hull
Sierra Hull is widely regarded to be a as a master of her instrument; A multi Grammy Nominated artist and songwriter, she is the 6x recipient (and counting) of IBMA’s Mandolin Player of the Year, the first woman to ever receive this distinction. A pioneer for acoustic music throughout her already impressive multi-decade career, she has graced the country's most iconic stages, including Carnegie Hall, the Grand Ole Opry, and the White House. Her virtuosic abilities have garnered respect from genre-defining trailblazers, friends, and collaborators such as Alison Krauss, Sturgill Simpson, Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, Béla Fleck, Bobby McFerrin, Brandi Carlile, Cory Wong, Billy Strings and more. Originally hailing from Byrdstown, Tennessee, her unique sound is rooted in bluegrass, and she is widely considered one of acoustic music’s most inventive artists.
Corner House
Originally hailing from Boston, MA, Corner House takes their name from the place where the four young band members found musical family in one another - their shared home in Brighton, as students at Berklee College of Music. Emerging from varied genre backgrounds, the quartet’s unique strength is their desire to learn from one another, not only in musical skill and style, but in life experience; such that every challenge overcome by one band member becomes part of the group’s shared musical and personal DNA. On their debut full length album How Beautiful It’s Been the band reveals the sublime result of that growth mindset, with a singular sound that incorporates old time, Scottish, progressive bluegrass and folk.
Originally made up of songwriter and guitarist Ethan Hawkins, Scottish fiddle player Louise Bichan, and bluegrass mandolinist Ethan Setiawan, Corner House are students of a wide variety of musical traditions. In the autumn of 2017, the group debuted at FreshGrass Festival in North Adams, MA, before recording a self-titled EP and touring Scotland the following year. Returning from overseas, the three found the illustrious cellist, Casey Murray, living just down the street and invited her to join the fold, unveiling the new line-up on a second EP, Smart Folks, released in 2019. For their debut full length record, which focuses more on lyric based arrangements, they enlisted harp virtuoso Maeve Gilchrist, a past mentor to all four band members, to produce. “We all really admired her musicality, arranging and writing, and Ethan and Maeve bonded over poetry, and songwriting”, explains Bichan.
