Ace dobro player Mike Auldridge will perform at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellowships Concert on Thursday, October 4.
Earlier this year the NEA announced the recipients of their prestigious National Heritage Fellowship award; Auldridge is among the nine recipients honoured with what is the nation’s highest award in the folk and traditional arts.
A former member of the legendary local bluegrass troupe the Seldom Scene, Mike Auldridge is widely acknowledged as a premier dobro/resophonic guitar player, noted for an elegant, lyrical approach, making him, for a while, an essential sideman for recordings made by genre-crossing artists like Emmylou Harris – with whom he has also toured – and Linda Ronstadt.
In a 2011 Washington Post profile Bill Friskics-Warren wrote,
“With his playing, Auldridge set a sophisticated new standard for young Dobro® players, and he’s served as a harbinger of an omnivorous strain of bluegrass-based acoustic music later popularized by Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch and others”.
Auldridge started playing guitar at the age of 13. His main influence during his early years was Josh Graves, who also sold him his first dobro.
As well as being a long-time (1971-1995) member of the Seldom Scene, of which he was a co-founder, Auldridge has played with Emerson and Waldron, Cliff Waldron and the New Shades of Grass, Chesapeake, and Darren Beachley and The Legends of the Potomac.
The free concert at George Washington University Lisner Auditorium begins at 7:30 p.m. (EDT). A live webcast will be offered at arts.gov, with an archived copy available following the event.
It is preceded by the awards ceremony that takes place on Wednesday, October 3, 2012 at 5:00pm at Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson Building, Room 119 in Washington, DC.
Other National Heritage Fellowship honourees include Andy Statman, Klezmer Clarinetist, Mandolinist, Composer (Brooklyn,NY), Leonardo “Flaco” Jiménez, Tejano Accordion Player (San Antonio, TX) and The Paschall Brothers, Tidewater Gospel Quartet (Chesapeake, VA).
