Check out this cool festival/jam workshop this weekend presented by local favorite Otis Taylor! For tickets and information visit trancebluesfestival.com.
Here’s some info on the event:
The second annual Otis Taylor Trance Blues Jam Festival is a weekend of public workshops and jams for musicians and fans of all levels and ages who wish to join renowned guitarist and vocalist Mato Nanji (Indigenous), multi-instrumentalist Don Vappie, bassist George Porter, Jr. (Meters), sacred steel guitarist Chuck Campbell (Campbell Brother), trumpeter Ron Miles, violinist Anne Harris, the Otis Taylor Band and renaissance bluesman Otis Taylor.
The event, held Friday-Sunday, November 23 & 24, begins with a pre-Trance Jam hosted by Taylor and the entire ensemble at the Boulder Outlook Hotel on Friday at 8 p.m.
“You don’t have to be a musician to get involved with the Trance Blues Jam Festival,” says Taylor, a Boulder resident and festival founder. “We would like to see the festival evolve to include artists hosting sessions slanted towards many different styles of music. The more types of participants we have, the better,” Taylor says. “The goal is to fill the hills with the sound of music of all genres: classical, blues, jazz, pop, world, rap, spoken word; [and] instruments of every type: horns, strings, percussion and even street instruments like cans and buckets.”
Taylor’s compelling style of path-forging and “trance-blues” sonic landscapes has won praise from The New York Times and NPR. While drawing upon elements of early American blues and even earlier African music, Taylor has been called “arguably the most relevant blues artist of our time” by Guitar Player magazine.
Taylor and the visiting artists will lead weekend workshops on Saturday, ranging in size from 40 to 60 students. Saturday culminates with the Saturday Night Trance-Blues Jam, an open-to-the-public audience-participation jam session with hundreds of musicians, steered by Otis Taylor beginning at 8 pm at The Dairy Center for the Arts.
