Celebrity Series of Boston Announces 5th Annual Stave Sessions Lineup

The Celebrity Series of Boston presents the 5th annual Stave Sessions, the unique music series showcasing the innovative, the experimental, and the collaborative approaches of emerging artists. The 2019 Stave Sessions take place March 19-23, 2019 at 160 Mass. Ave. in Boston. Doors open at 7pm; concerts begin at 8pm. Each concert features 2 sets with one intermission. Tickets are $35 and may be purchased by calling 617.482.2595 or by visiting www.stavesessions.org.

Stave Sessions highlight contemporary musicians often early in their careers who take diverse approaches to their music, integrating musical training and non-conforming styles to deliver performances that defy standard labels. The concerts take place at 160 Massachusetts Avenue, a unique and intimate venue located on the Berklee College of Music campus where floor-to-ceiling windows offer concertgoers an urban backdrop with views of the city and an upscale, cabaret feel.

"We're thrilled to announce the amazingly diverse line-up for the fifth annual Stave Sessions," says Gary Dunning, President and Executive Director. "At Celebrity Series of Boston, showcasing and supporting emerging artists is part of who we are. Stave Sessions is a great vehicle for this, presenting artists who are doing new, unique work--artists who often redefine boundaries of genre and defy expectations. We're proud, too, to present Stave in our pop-up cabaret, offering a new venue to experience new music."

Previous Stave Sessions artists included Jazzmeia Horn, Roomful of Teeth, My Brightest Diamond, Brooklyn Rider, Gabriel Kahane, Kneebody + Daedelus, yMusic, Sam Amidon, House of Waters, and more. The performances for the 2019 series include:

Anna & Elizabeth Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Through their immersive creative process and modern-day approaches to ancient mountain ballads, Appalachian music duo Anna & Elizabeth bring vanished worlds and almost-forgotten songs to life. Multi-instrumentalist Anna Roberts-Gevalt and vocalist Elizabeth LaPrelle stand at the junction between folk tradition and the avant-garde. With their innovative modern arrangements, they transform traditional music into a vital, compelling, boundlessly creative contemporary form.

Click here to watch their NPR Tiny Desk Concert performance

Edmar Castraneda Trio Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Harp virtuoso Edmar Casta'eda - who grew up immersed in the harp-forward joropo music of the Colombian grasslands - combines traditional music with Latin jazz to create his own distinctive voice and forge his own path as a bandleader. His trio combines unlikely ingredients - harp, trombone, and percussion - to dazzling effect, and makes magic out of the harp's duality as the source of propulsive rhythms and intricate melodies.

Click here to watch Edmar's NPR Tiny Desk Concert performance

LADAMA Thursday, March 21, 2019

LADAMA is four women from four countries across the Americas -- Mafer Bandola (Venezuela), Lara Klaus (Brazil), Daniela Serna (Colombia), and Sara Lucas (U.S.) - who come together in an irresistible Latin Alternative group that connects artists and audiences across national boundaries, languages, and musical styles. Showcasing and reinventing folk styles from across Latin America, LADAMA creates "a vivid montage of music of the Americas with irresistible spirit and universal appeal" (NPR).

Click here to watch LADAMA's performance from a New York concert

Oracle Hysterical & Musicians from A Far Cry Friday, March 22, 2019

Part band, part book club, Oracle Hysterical creates song cycles that double as art-rock concept albums, and vice versa. Inspired by sources from Greek tragedy to Grimm's fairy tales and misattributed Shakespeare plays, their concerts are a heady and satisfying mix of lustrous atmospherics and literary inspiration. The program features Hecuba, the narrative song cycle that unites Euripides' tragedy of the grief-stricken and vengeful Queen of Troy with Baroque instrumentation and contemporary pop. The recording was an Opera News critic's pick: they proclaimed, "there's nothing pretentious about this project." Musicians from Boston's own self-conducted chamber new music collective A Far Cry lend their talents and their adventurous spirit to a work that they commissioned: "The Sea," inspired by an issue of the literary magazine Lapham's Quarterly, and texts by seafarers, explorers, and aquatic fabulists.

Click here to watch music videos by Oracle Hysterical

Tigue & Arooj Aftab March 23, 2019

Percussion trio Tigue, last seen on Stave Sessions in 2017 with neo-traditional Brooklyn-based Moroccan ensemble Innov Gnawa, again partner with an artist reinventing traditional musical forms in an entirely contemporary way. Pakistan-born, Berklee-educated, and Brooklyn-based neo-Sufi singer Arooj Aftab brings a new approach to an old form: merging mystical Islamic texts with the instrumentation and spirit of independent rock.

Click here to watch music videos by Tigue & Arooj Aftab

Stave Sessions is sponsored by Margaret Eagle & Eli Rapaport, Susan & Michael Thonis, and the Barr Foundation through its ArtsAmplified initiative. Additional support is provided by Michael & Debra Raizman, Yukiko Ueno & Eran Egozy, Randolph Hawthorne & Carliss Baldwin, and Marylen Sternweiler.

About Celebrity Series of Boston

Celebrity Series of Boston was founded in 1938 by pianist and impresario Aaron Richmond. Over the course of its 78-year history, Celebrity Series has presented an array of the world's greatest performing artists, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arturo Toscanini, Ignace Paderewski, Artur Rubenstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Andr's Segovia, Kirsten Flagstad, Marian Anderson, Luciano Pavarotti, B'la Bart'k, Igor Stravinsky, Martha Graham, Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mstislav Rostropovich, and the New York City Opera Company.

The Celebrity Series has been bringing the very best performers-from orchestras and chamber ensembles, vocal and piano music, to dance companies, jazz, and more-to Boston's major concert halls for 78 years. The Celebrity Series of Boston believes in the power of excellence and innovation in the performing arts to enrich life experiences, transform lives and build better communities. Through its education initiatives, the Celebrity Series seeks to build a community of Greater Boston where the performing arts are a valued, lifelong, shared experience-on stages, in schools, at home- everywhere.

The Celebrity Series of Boston, Inc. receives generous support from Amy & Joshua Boger, Leslie & Howard Appleby, the Boston Cultural Council, The Boston Foundation, the Stephanie L. Brown Foundation, Charlesbank Capital Partners LLC, the Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation, Deloitte LLP, Donna & Mike Egan, Foley & Lardner LLP, Gabor Garai & Susan Pravda, David & Harriet Griesinger, Zachary Haroutunian and the Garbis & Armin' Barsoumian Charitable Foundation, the Charles and Cerise Jacobs Charitable Foundation, Paul L. King, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Joseph McNay, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Eleanor & Frank Pao, The Peabody Foundation, PTC, the Cynthia and John S. Reed Foundation, the Royal Little Family Foundation, the Stifler Family Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Henri A. Termeer, Michael and Susan Thonis, Tufts Health Plan, Sanjay & Sangeeta Verma, Nancy Richmond Winsten, Anonymous, and many others.