Chris Thile (USA)

Chris Thile, one of the most renowned figures of the American bluegrass and progressive folk scene, will give his first Hungarian concert at the House of Music Hungary as he tours his album Laysongs, released in 2021. The four-time Grammy Award-winning mandolin singer-songwriter-producer exploded onto the scene with Nickel Creek in the early 2000s, later achieving success with Punch Brothers, as well as being known for his many collaborations, but his eighth album on tour has been a real turning point in his solo career because it is the first album he has recorded entirely alone, just Thile and his mandolin. Thus, he arrives for his first concert in Budapest.

Chris Thile is one of the 21st century’s best-known mandolinists, a big star of American folk genres and progressive bluegrass. He started playing music as a teenager, exploding onto the scene with Nickel Creek, a band formed with the Watson brothers at the time when bluegrass was popularised by the Coen brothers' 2000 film, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Nickel Creek's untitled album of that year remains a staple of the genre to this day, and the cover of Pavement on the following album also endeared the group to indie rockers. After the break-up of Nickel Creek (leaving the trio, Sara Watkins later worked with another Americana-style House of Music Hungary performer, Aoife O'Donovan, in I'm With Her. He will arrive on 7 June. Chris Thile founded the like-minded Punch Brothers, but by this time his solo career was already well underway with a number of collaborative productions under his belt. To mention but a few of these: Glen Phillips, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Béla Fleck, Dolly Parton, Brad Mehldau, Jacob Collier, Wulfpeck.

His musical openness and broad immersion in the genre are evident from the above, but Thile, who has won many accolades, also combines mandolin and bluegrass with classical music, and his recording of the Bach sonatas and scores has also been an enormous success. Thile's first solo album was released in 1994 at the age of thirteen, but almost thirty years later, he has only now reached the stage of releasing a truly solo album, Laysongs. Released in 2021, it is spiritual, soul-searching, intimate material that was recorded in a church and includes arrangements of his own songs, including a Bartók piece (Sonata for Solo Violin, Op. 117: IV Presto). It would be truly fitting to hear it in Budapest on the second leg of Thile's European tour this autumn.

To whom do we recommend this? We recommend this to lovers of American folk music, bluegrass, folk, country, Americana; for those who love the sound of the mandolin, and for anyone who is receptive to surprising genre fusions. Cover picture: Josh Goleman