Porterhouse Productions - At last year's Earthwork Harvest Gathering, Bob Bernard and Kailin Yong met for the first time and spent hours every evening playing waltzes together and cultivating a deep kinship. Bob Bernard grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the son of two fiddlers, and has spent the last 35 years of his life tending bees, cattle, running a sawmill, educating, farming, fathering and fiddling on Earthwork Farm, where the Harvest Gathering takes place. Kailin grew up in Singapore and studied classical music at the Vienna Conservatory in Austria before expanding into jazz, folk and world-influenced styles while living in New York, San Francisco and, currently, Boulder. While Kailin is a virtuoso violinist, he considers himself a “fiddler for peace” and is a connoisseur of authentic beauty. Kailin found a profound earthy soul in Bob's music. Bob, having played these waltzes for most of his adulthood, felt them coming to life with energy and discovery while playing with Kailin. And so, together with Bob's son Seth Bernard, they recorded an exquisite album of waltzes at Heart Center Studios in Big Rapids, Michigan on December 9th and 10th, 2011, thanks to the generosity of the Erlewine family. The sessions were magical, culminating on the second day of the session, which was a full moon eclipse and also Bob’s 67th birthday. The album’s 16 waltzes include 12 instrumentals and 4 songs featuring the lovely harmony vocals of the Bernard girls (Jen, Wendy and May Erlewine Bernard). The album’s title track was written by Seth Bernard to honor the waltz matriarch, Grandma Jeannette Bernard, who was Marquette’s Harvest Queen in 1931. We hope you will join us, waltzing in the cradle of three-quarter time, and help us celebrate the release of "Harvest Queen”.
Saturday Dec 1st @ Good Work Collective, Traverse City. Doors @ 6:30 Show @ 7 Tix $10
