While most of us will be outside this weekend watching the leaves change and fall, many area musicians and music-lovers will be indoors staring at wood that has long since shed its foliage. The venerable Woodstock Invitational Luthiers Showcase returns this weekend with a phalanx of gifted musicians and instrument makers, armed with stunning-sounding, exquisitely constructed stringed instruments.
The event is part instrument showcase, part musicians’ clinic, and part performance festival. The live music lineup is formidable and includes a Friday kick-off concert at Colony with giants of acoustic guitar: Peter Janson, Tony McManus, Sean McGowan, Preston Reed and Adam Miller. Throughout the weekend, Happy Traum will teach fingerpicking, Tim Farrell will celebrate Woodstock’s musical legacy with a fingerstyle arrangement of The Band’s “The Weight”, and Vicki Genfan, the “Queen of Open Tunings”, will demonstrate the power of straying from standard tuning.
The aforementioned sessions only scratch the surface of an epic 3-day run of dozens of separate events and performances taking place all over Woodstock. All the info is at woodstockinvitational.com. Fri. 10/13 through Sun. 10/15 • 11am-6pm • Bearsville Center, Woodstock.