Rhiannon Giddens and Sarah Jarosz headline the seventh annual American Roots Music Festival at Caramoor – a daylong, family-friendly celebration of acoustic music — on Saturday, June 24. Set on 90 acres of gardens and Italianate architecture in Katonah, Westchester County, NY – 40 miles northeast of New York City — the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is well known for its summer music festivals. AcousticMusicScene.com is delighted to again be a Cultural Partner of the festival and will have a presence there.

“Caramoor is a nature paradise and the music takes place in several locations on the grounds so that folks can experience some of the environmental beauty as well,” says Maggi Landau, the festival’s artistic director. She notes that during the daytime artists will be performing acoustic, unplugged sets in the Sunken Garden – “a quiet grove with the audience sitting on the ground literally at the feet of the artist” – as well as on the larger Friends Field.

Rhiannon Giddens and Sarah Jarosz headline the American Roots Music Festival at Caramoor.

Rhiannon Giddens and Sarah Jarosz headline the American Roots Music Festival at Caramoor.

An evening concert featuring Giddens and Jarosz will take place inside the Venetian Theater, for which there is reserved seating. Giddens, a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops and the recipient of the 2016 Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, is a fretless banjo and fiddle player, as well as a powerhouse vocalist. An article about her receiving the Steve Martin Prize was posted last fall on AcousticMusicScene.com: http://acousticmusicscene.com/2016/09/13/rhiannon-giddens-wins-2016-steve-martin-prize/
Jarosz, who will perform with her new trio, is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who received two Grammy Awards earlier this year for Best Folk Album (Undercurrent) and Best American Roots Performance (“House of Mercy,” one of its 11 original songs), as well as the International Folk Music Award for Album of the Year from Folk Alliance International.

Artists slated to perform during the afternoon (12-6 p.m.) include The Mammals (featuring Mike & Ruthy), River Whyless, The Lonely Heartstring Band, Michaela Anne, Kaia Kater, Spuyten Duyvil, Anthony da Costa, Cole Quest & The City Pickers, The Brother Brothers, and the Eddie Barbash Band.

For the second consecutive year, Caramoor partners with the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance for NERFA presents Young Folk, an in-the-round song swap. Featuring Brian Dunne, Alice Howe and Ursula Hansberry, it “spotlights young folk artists who are new to the scene, and provides performance experience and feedback for them as they develop their music careers,” says Landau. Also scheduled is The Social Music Hour — an all-ages sing-along and play-along session patterned after one that Spuyten Duyvil’s Mark Miller has led here and at other music festivals. This year, it will feature a mix of old-time music and songs of The Grateful Dead.

$25 daytime only tickets (excluding the evening performances) and full-festival tickets, priced at $30-$90 (including reserved seating for the evening concert) may be ordered by visiting www.caramoor.org.

Attendees are advised to bring their own chairs for the daytime performances. Food and beverages will be available for purchase, while folks also can bring their own and enjoy picnicking on Caramoor’s spacious lawns.

Editor’s Note: As noted in the article, AcousticMusicScene.com is pleased to be associated with the American Roots Music Festival. As president of the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance’s board of directors, I look forward to emceeing NERFA Presents Young Folk.