Big Sky Studio

Please consider purchasing an all-season pass for the 2024 summer series! We are so lucky to bring these world class musicians to our farm, and hope you can help us in supporting their art. By purchasing this pass, you are giving the musicians a guaranteed payment for their show. This is also a great deal! Don't miss it...

Rose & The Bros are a powerhouse ensemble rooted in southern dance tradition with the addition of crooning vocal harmonies and country music influence. The band has a distinctive rhythmic presence which is based in the Louisiana sound, with additional Reggae and melodic drum tones. The band's goal has been to stay true to their own musical voices, while having a strong obligation to the dancer in their tempos and musical feel.

With a shared dream to simply have a blast while making people dance without stopping, Rosie Newton, Paul Martin, and Steve Selin set out to collect tunes and the rare ingredients of a no holds barred dance party. Once the trio had found their undeniable rhythm section in drummer Greg Evans, bassist Angelo Peters, and rub board/triangle player Sally Freund, Rose & The Bros became a six piece instant party and the band was complete. Now, Rose & The Bros continue forward, gathering strength and a warm following with infectious joy, a love for community, and a rollicking good time.

Le Winston Band is a one-of-a-kind Montreal based ensemble that blends its French-Canadian roots with Zydeco and Cajun music. Since 2012, due to a sound that is derived from both the rich musical traditions of Louisiana and their own identity as Montrealers, the group has been sharing their joie de vivre with audiences across North America and Europe.

After many pilgrimages to Louisiana, the group’s album Zig zag Zydeco Zoo was nominated for best world music album at both the ADISQ and GAMIQ galas in 2019. In 2022, their EP Enwèye à Lafayette won best world music album at the GAMIQ gala. That same year, the five musicians teamed up with producer Erik West-Millette and recorded Winston Express, a new record filled with original material that was released during the 2023 Mardi Gras festivities.

United by their shared passion for Zydeco music, the five musicians intermingle sassy compositions and their own take on well known traditional songs from Quebec and Louisiana. The powerful sound of the diatonic accordion supported by a typical “modern zydeco” lineup, electrifies audiences and ensures a warm and festive atmosphere that is guaranteed to get you off your feet and dancing.

Le Winston Band is also known for their Mardi Gras celebration in Montreal. Since 2014, hundreds of people flock to this carnaval-like event that takes place as winter draws to a close. Every year, costumed fans and musicians alike join together for a wild night filled with food, animation, music and dancing.

Not only has Le Winston Band shared their music from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Victoria, British Columbia but they have also traveled to perform in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Czechia and the United States. As of today, the group has performed over 600 concerts.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Michael Daves grew up playing bluegrass in the grand old tradition of staying up late & singing loud. Although he’s since moved north, the Southern roots permeate his music, however traditional or experimental. Heralded as “a leading light of the New York bluegrass scene” by the New York Times, Daves has garnered attention for his work with Chris Thile, Steve Martin, Tony Trischka, and others in addition to his solo performances.

Daves’ most recent project is a two-album set, Orchids and Violence on Nonesuch Records. Both discs are produced by Daves and have identical track listing of mostly traditional bluegrass songs. The first features straightforward interpretations of them and was recorded live to tape in a 19th-century church by Daves and a band of roots-music innovators: bassist Mike Bub, fiddler Brittany Haas, mandolinist Sarah Jarosz, and banjo player Noam Pikelny. The second disc was recorded in Daves' home studio and includes drums and electric instruments, mostly played by Daves, taking a raw, experimental rock approach to the same old-time material. "The identical track listing makes for a good comparison study," says the New York Times music critic Nate Chinen in his review, "and to his credit, it can be hard to pick which version of a tune is best."

Daves previously recorded bluegrass standards on Sleep with One Eye Open, his Nonesuch debut, a duo session with mandolinist Chris Thile (Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek) that earned the pair a 2011 Grammy nomination.

Although he is best known as a roots musician, Daves gravitated toward experimental music and jazz while studying at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Relocating to Brooklyn in 2003, he began to crave the social interaction and musical challenges of bluegrass: "In Western Massachusetts, I was mostly doing jazz. By the time I moved to New York, I was ready to leave that behind, get back to my personal roots in bluegrass music. There were good jam sessions in New York and I was excited to reenter a regular jamming culture in the city. And I was getting back into rock music, too. The Brooklyn scene in 2003 and 2004 was pretty fertile. There was a lot of great, kind of raw, experimental rock music happening at that time, drawing me in, scratching an itch."

Daves is also devoted teacher with over twenty five years of experience whose instructional style is aimed at helping students develop and refine their own natural musical sensibilities while exploring a wealth of American roots traditions, particularly bluegrass. In 2016 he launched an online school in bluegrass vocals on ArtistWorks.com where he helps students around the world learn the intricacies bluegrass singing style as well as harmony singing and ear training.

Seamus Egan It’s hard to think of an artist in traditional Irish music more influential than Seamus Egan. From his beginnings as a teen prodigy, to his groundbreaking solo work with Shanachie Records, to his founding of Irish-American powerhouse band Solas, to his current work as one of the leading composers and interpreters of the tradition, Egan has inspired multiple generations of musicians and helped define the sound of Irish music today. As a multi-instrumentalist, he’s put his mark on the sound of the Irish flute, tenor banjo, guitar, mandolin, tin whistle, and low whistle, among others. As a composer, he was behind the soundtrack for the award-winning film The Brothers McMullen, co-wrote Sarah McLachlan’s breakout hit, “Weep Not for the Memories,” and has scored numerous documentaries and indie films since. As a bandleader, Solas has been the pre-eminent Irish-American band of their generation for the past 20 years, continuously renewing Irish music with fresh ideas, including a collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens on their 2015 album. As a performer, few others can make so many instruments or such wickedly complex ornaments seem so effortless. Music comes as naturally to Seamus Egan as breath, but his mastery of the tradition is only one facet of his plans to move the music forward. In 2018, Seamus Egan began touring as a solo performer, bringing along friends and musical guests, and making music as Seamus Egan Projectthat points towards the origins of Solas in the 1990s. Originally a band of friends who gathered to enjoy the late night craic of the Irish sessions in Philadelphia and New York, Solas was able to meld the breakneck speed and fun of these late night jams with a more sensitive feel for complex arrangements and composition that came from Egan’s love of other music genres like jazz, classical, bluegrass or rock. Revisiting this period in his music, focusing on the three solo albums he cut before Solas, Egan’s looking back to that initial burst of creativity that followed the breathtaking four All-Ireland Championships he won on four different instruments by the young age of 14 and his turns as a star soloist in his later teens with Mick Moloney’s The Green Fields of America. Growing up under the wing of powerful elder musicians, Egan’s always paid homage to his roots, but he’s thought of these roots less as a heritage and more as a universal language to be shared. Just as classical or jazz cuts across all ethnicities and unites communities around the world, Egan saw Irish music the same way, and the ensuing decades only served to support this idea. Today, musicians play Irish music all over the world, and part of this comes from the constant evolution the tradition has seen in the past century. Certainly this idea of musical evolution has kept Egan centered through the twenty years he’s spent as founding member of Solas, but the first real inkling of this came from his groundbreaking 1996 album, When Juniper Sleeps. Here, Egan began to explore the further reaches of the Irish tradition, blazing his way at spectacular speed

through Irish reels, but also bringing in rich compositions and arrangements, and crafting soundscapes to enrich the melodies. This album dropped nearly the same year as Solas’ debut, self-titled album, so it’s no surprise that Egan would reach back to this time period to create new music for new generations.

Yann Falquet From Montreal, QC, Yann Falquet is among the most creative folk singer and acoustic guitarists in today's Québécois music scene. Over the last 20 years, he has recorded seven albums, four EPs and toured the world with French Canadian power trio Genticorum. He has developed a unique personal guitar style for Québécois folk music, rhythmically powerful yet subtly complex. His involvement in traditional music scene brought Yann to perform on and produce numerous recordings, and to regularly tour throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. He also collaborates musically with Seamus Egan, Brittany Haas, Keith Murphy, Maeve Gilchrist, Nic Gareiss and many more.