Without a Country
The StringNation demands to be recognized.
roots/new acoustic
Never underestimate the power of some righteous ranting. To hear violinist Darol Anger tell it, we wouldn't be on the eve of the brand-new StringNation festival and conference if he hadn't bent Joseph Milano's ear over dinner in February 2006, about the need for a new sort of musical summit. Anger and colleagues — in his bands Turtle Island String Quartet and Republic of Strings, and their ilk — are recognized worldwide for pioneering what is often termed New Acoustic Music or, Anger's preferred term, contemporary string band music. He and his peers were often lionized, celebrated and lipserved to death, he bemoaned, yet they were tokens, one or two at a folk festival, grudgingly added to the bluegrass events. "Why can't we have a festival of our own? One that showcases all the technically adept performers who use those chops for their own roots music?" Anger recalls wondering aloud.
Little did Anger know whom he was talking to. This is the same Joe Milano who once scheduled a long-postponed family visit to his hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska to coincide with a Darol Anger/Mike Marshall performance there. He's also the father of Bryce Milano, the 13-year-old mandolin prodigy seen guesting with David Grisman at the Folk Fest-ival last year. Like Anger, the Milano is a guy willing to go to great lengths for the music he loves.
"I came back home and within a week I had it all planned out," he recalls. Milano, who is a stained glass artist and designer by day, was gripped by the idea of creating a place for the most accomplished and innovative string players to not only show what they do now, but to cross-pollinate and come up with new ideas.
Anger tried to temper his enthusiasm, but Milano insisted: "I'm an artist! Once I come up with an idea, I'm used to creating it." Of course, today he allows what a piece of luck it was that he was a music biz outsider. "If I knew then what I know now, I doubt I'd've tried it."
He admits that till the event is over he'll be working round the clock — he sleeps a few hours then jumps up again, trying to remember to devote a little time to his stained glass business that is this year's main source of funding. "I check the ticket sales every couple of hours." Milano can rattle off where people are traveling from to attend this event: six from Cape May, one hammered dulcimer player flying in from Washington state, the fella from Dallas who bought ticket number two.
Milano is a man with a mission, a music lover who wants to give back to the community that so warmly embraced Bryce, when he was only a gifted squirt of a mandolin player. Plans for the 2008 StringNation are already in the works, before the first even launches.
Milano crows that at the inaugural StringNation there will be musical meldings never seen onstage like Seamus Egan of Ireland guesting with Americana legend Tim O'Brien, former lead singer of bluegrass stars HotRize. Hamilton de Holanda will travel from Brazil to share his choro style mandolin and fuse bluegrass and jazz with help of musical compadre Mike Marshall; and many more. The StringNation Orchestra will be unique, with young players coming from across the country to work with mentors, all in the name of creating new sounds in contemporary string bands.
Listeners should be glad that Milano wouldn't listen to any warnings in advance, particularly the ones that hissed, "Philly? Nah! They'll never support this kind of music." Is that a challenge, or what?
May 11, 7 p.m., and May 12, 11 a.m., $45 a day, $80 for a two-day pass, Gordon Theater, Rutgers University, Camden NJ, 856-225- 2700, online throughTix.com at www.stringnation.org.
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