Punch Brothers

Exceptional musicians!

A phenomenal performance! The Punch Brothers, especially Chris, were energetic and obviously having just as much fun playing the music as the audience was listening to it, and I have never heard so much applause at the close of a Modlin event before! It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and I hope that the University will bring these extremely talented musicians back again soon.

I was a fan of Chris Thile while he played with Nickel Creek and now I love his music even more. The performance was drastically different than most bluegrass I've heard before and it was phenomenal. All of the band members are extremely talented musicians. Their sound was haunting and dysfunctional in the best way possible. They were so good and the audience loved them so much that they had to come out again and do an encore. I purchased one of their CDs after the show and will definitely be following them and hopefully see them again at the University of Richmond. Thank you Modlin Center for bringing the Punch Brothers!

Great musicians! My husband and I had a fantastic time tonight at the Punch Brothers. Their diverse musical style is certainly a breath of fresh air. On top of that they are all enormously talented. Please bring them back again!

My wife & I thoroughly loved the show tonight (though I like the bluegrass songs more than she does.) An EXTREMELY talented group of musicians, infected by Chris Thiele's energy and enthusiasm. A great night for the entire audience, thanks to the Punch Brothers. Bring 'em back~!

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed tonight's (Wednesday) performance. Both she and I are performers as well and musicianship of such a virtuosic and refined character brings joy to our musical souls. Pulling together the more arduous aspects of such complex 20th century composition and the pristine purity of bluegrass in a form that seems austere and, well, just feels right is a feat to fetch admiration to say the least. Well, our admiration has been fetched! The venue also deserves kudos for a quality presentation. With that said, a personal note of gratitude to the fine folks working these past two evenings at the Modlin Center for the Arts: We purchased our tickets through tickets.com and, on the purchase confirmation the show time for our 11 November 2008 tickets read 9:00pm which, is when we arrived and soon came to the disappointing realization that we had missed the greater portion of the show. The two young men working the door immediately went into action, contacted the box office and secured tickets for us see the 12 November 2008 show. Tonight our tickets awaited us at the will-call window and all was right with the world. Though we were disappointed with the ticket seller's misinformation, the great staff at the Modlin Center easily negated that disappointment. Thanks a bunch to those folks, I hope someone figures out who to tell "job well done"!

Stephen & Emily Robertson
www.deskcoffee.com

Quite a treat to see these guys in such an intimate setting. Keep em coming!

Pretentious and boring.

Compared to other people, I may well be considered an uneducated and unschooled person in music appreciation. But I do love listening to music. Maybe part of the problem was going in and expecting the traditional bluegrass music and instead got a mix of new agish blue grass and jazz. I appreciated the fact that they were very talented musicians but the kind of music that they performed last night with the exception of one truly bluegrass number(at least to me) sang by Gabe Witcher requires me to have an acquired taste for them. I am after all just an ignorant music lover. I came away from the concert deeply disappointed.

Punch Brothers was fantastic. All top rank artists and the young doublebassist was just something else. He has obviously modeled or studied with the great Edgar Meyer. A crowd pleaser and high octance performance. A sure winner for the Modlin Center Series. Here's hoping they are back soon. Thanks to Kathy and all of you guys. Another great season! Can't wait for the next show.

Paul (submitted via e-mail)

The show was magical; it held my interest from start to finish... my only complaint is I couldn't sing and dance to the more traditional numbers (and I would like more harmonies on Faust Arp... but they said they only just arranged it; I hope harmonies are coming). These guys make performing these pieces look so easy... I believe that is a sign of true mastery.

Please bring more bluegrass... both traditional and progressive.

Thanks.

WOW.............what a fantastic performance.......knew Chris Thile was mixing it up and what a mix the Punch Brothers make............really PUNCH BROTHERS PUNCH............their brew was mesmerizing.

Keep up the wonderful work marvelous Modlin.

I attended the Wednesday evening performance of the Punch Brothers. The performance featured excellent musicianship from a technical standpoint, but I must admit to being less than fully engaged by some of the material itself. It was the first time I heard the Punch Brothers, either in concert or on a recording, so my unfamiliarity with their material may have contributed to this feeling. The suite "The Blind Leaving the Blind" is a complex piece of music and it may be necessary to listen to it several times to appreciate its full impact, but I did not find it to be attractive from a melodic standpoint, and all the virtuosity this talented ensemble could muster, which was considerable, could not rescue the piece from that shortcoming, to my ear. I liken it a bit to Pat Metheny's extended piece "The Way Up", another technically impeccable recording that falls a little short of the melodic invention and development necessary to fully engage the discerning listener, IMHO. As Chris Thile himself stated after the two relatively somber opening numbers, it was time to pick up the tempo. I must admit that I am a relatively new listener to "bluegrass" and although much of the Punch Brothers material amplifies and transcends that overly simplistic label, I was instantly engaged last year by Jerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer & Sam Bush in their performance @ the Modlin Center. The material the band performed after the suite was more to my liking and the easy amiability the band displayed with the audience and among themselves throughout the performance was quite endearing. Noam Pikelny and Gabe Witcher are both monster talents, on banjo and fiddle, respectively, and they seem to be willing to sublimate their egos to Chris Thile, who clearly is the front man for the band. The cover of the Radiohead piece was excellent and if Thile ever decides to strap on a Stratocaster and plug into a Marshall and electrify the band he might give Thom Yorke a run for his considerably larger pile of money. In the space of two recordings together the Punch Brothers have already transcended the genre from which they arose and it will be interesting to follow their future evolution.