The Red Hedgehog, Highgate
Thursday 12th May
Doors 7:30pm, Live Music 8:15pm
Advance tickets £10, £12 on the night
Virtuoso banjo player and fiddler Aaron Jonah Lewis has been elbow-deep in traditional American music since their first lessons at the age of five with Kentucky native Robert Oppelt. Their concerts take audiences on a journey through the back roads of American old time and folk music, with detours through ragtime and early jazz.
“I’ve heard quite a lot of old-time fiddle and banjo playing, trust me, but I’ve never heard it like this… played at break-neck speeds, Aaron’s fiddle whipping around tight corners like a high-end sports car… It’s like watching Bach hopped up on speed, composing kickass barn dance tunes in Appalachia… [Aaron is] a player you need to watch.” -No Depression
Greg Adams, Archivist at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, says, “Lewis is one of the few performing musicians with the facility to build compelling musical bridges between the printed banjo music and techniques of the 19th century and the instrument’s journey into recorded sound by the turn of the 20th century.”