Read more below, or see the complete set of photos.
I couldn't hold out until 2am but I did make it up to Tony Trischka's set. He got there late, thanks to traffic, and then someone said his car was towed, but nonetheless he turned in a typically astounding performance, playing solo and in a trio with Noam Pikelny and Skip Ward.
Eamon O'Leary did a virtuouso demonstration of the Irish tenor banjo, Eli Smith played old-time on the banjo and harmonica (yeah!), John Pinamonti reprised his extraordinary "faux-sitar banjo" version of The Beatles' "Within You Without You," Jake Schepps played ragtime with Ross Martin on guitar and Noam Pikelny on banjo. Sana Ndiaye, a professional player of the ekonting, a traditional West African lute that's one of the ancestors of the banjo, arrived for his set, and like everyone else was barely able to make it in the door.
Shlomo Pestcoe turned his performance into a seminar on the history of the banjo, starting off with the ekonting and a gourd banjo, and managing to make it only up to the end of the 19th century before his time was up, but along the way treating us to old-time tunes, jazz and string-band songs, and a version of "Brooklyn Lasses," a tune from Ryan's Mammoth Collection.
We also had some songwriters who perform on the banjo, including Alexa Story who plays her Appalachian-flavored songs on a five-string, and Jesse Harris (who wrote several of Norah Jones's big hits) who said he switched to the six-string banjo when he ended up (for reasons he didn't explain) trying to play guitar in a marching band and finding it was completely inaudible. His set was excellent, thanks in no small part to percussionist Mauro Rofosco who made excellent use of a wide range of hand-percussion instruments.
The evening was a benefit for the Akonting Center, a Gambiab grassroots non-governmental cultural project to research and document the various endangered stringed instrument traditions of the people of Senegal and The Gambia. (For more information, or in order to donate, contact Eli Smith. Hopefully the evening raised some good money for the center, and it certainly broadened a lot of people's viewpoints about what the banjo is, where it comes from, and how much it can do.
