COVID PROTOCOL & FAQs
Join us for a special co-bill with Rakish - the powerhouse duo rooted in Celtic and American traditions - and JUNO-nominated bassist, vocalist, songwriter and arranger, Nate Sabat!
ABOUT RAKISH
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | SPOTIFY
Rooted in tradition with an ear toward the future, contemporary folk duo Rakish embody earnest musical exploration and an infectious playfulness on their new album Now, O Now.
Fiddler Maura Shawn Scanlin, acclaimed for her expressive playing, was raised in North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains. Her songwriting and clawhammer banjo technique hint at regional old-time ballads. Further north, guitarist Conor Hearn grew up steeped in the venerated Washington, D.C. Irish music scene and developed a keen interest in literature and poetry. His setting of James Joyce’s poetry on the title track as well as “Lightly Come or Lightly Go” epitomizes the duo’s approach: the dextrous alchemy of the old and the new into something wholly Rakish.
The pair’s deep musical connection and unbridled love for pushing traditional sounds forward is striking. Just listen to the fiddling on “765” featuring trancey electronic dance production by Jamie Oshima or the epic tune “The Morning Glory” which is set atop an evocative, melancholic drone. It’s clear Rakish refuses to be pigeonholed into one genre and are most comfortable occupying the inbetween. On Now, O Now they journey through Celtic and Americana styles, deftly showcasing how to bring forth something new from the deep well of tradition.
ABOUT NATE SABAT
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK
Nate Sabat is a JUNO-nominated bassist, vocalist, songwriter, and arranger currently based in Brooklyn, NY. He is a founding member of award-winning bluegrass band Mile Twelve. A native-New Yorker, he attended LaGuardia High School as a vocal principal and went on to study upright bass at the Berklee College of Music. He has performed on stages throughout Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States. It’s the wide variety of musical roles that he has played — bandleader, band member, sideman, chorus and orchestra member, music director, arranger — that gives him his unique musical perspective and voice. And it’s the teachers and mentors he’s learned from — GRAMMY winners Latin jazz pianist Arturo O’Farill, cellist/conductor Eugene Friesen, guitar virtuoso Julian Lage and MacArthur fellow Francisco J Núñez, to name a few — that have helped him craft and hone that voice.
Nate has written vocal music for NPR’s Radio Lab, written string arrangements for the Heifetz International Music Institute, and written songs that are in rotation on Sirius XM’s Bluegrass Junction channel. The debut project under his own name, Walking Away, was released in the fall of 2018. Roots music journal No Depression says, “…it becomes clear that within only six tunes, Sabat has effectively constructed a short but dense epic through the mind of a man looking to forgive his past and travel fearlessly into his future”. At the core of a rock project, it draws from influences as wide as the Stanley Brothers, Dvořák, Joni Mitchell and XTC.