From the Colorado Blues Society: Scholarships Available for Otis Taylor’s Trance Blues Festival – Want to play with a legend? Join international blues artist Otis Taylor for the extraordinary Trance Blues Jam Festival. Unlike traditional music festivals where the audience is mostly passive, you are the rock star at the Trance Blues Jam Festival (TBJF). TBJF encourages and inspires people to be active participants. The point is to create music together. Led by Taylor’s infectious mastery, fed by his band’s passion, and wed with your musical expression, the trance jam is where you get to live your musical dreams.
Unlike traditional music festivals where the audience is mostly passive, you are the rock star at the Trance Blues Jam Festival (TBJF). TBJF encourages and inspires people to be active participants. The point is to create music together. Led by Taylor’s infectious mastery, fed by his band’s passion, and wed with your musical expression, the trance jam is where you get to live your musical dreams.
The TBJF is designed for players of all types, all ages, and all ability levels to join in. It’s all about creating music together, not someone showing how well they can shred the guitar. It doesn’t matter what you play. Last year’s festival included vocalists, guitars, harmonicas, oboes, banjos, flutes, cellos, drums, violins, recorders, tambourines, maracas, mandolins and more.
The festival kicks off with a professional jam on Saturday, November 11th, with workshops during the day leading up to the Grand Jam in the evening. Fans and spectators are welcome at all events (with the purchase of a ticket, of course!).
All Saturday events are held at eTown Hall in Downtown Boulder (1535 Spruce Street).
Workshop participants will join with Mr. Taylor and the Visiting Artists for both the morning and afternoon sessions. The evening performance will feature the Visiting Artists. Participants will find a wide variety of dining options available for lunch and dinner in Downtown Boulder.
Saturday Night:
Evening Performance with Otis Taylor the Visiting Artists and Select Participants 7-9 p.m.
The highlight of the weekend will begin at 7 p.m. as Mr. Taylor, the Visiting Artists and select participants take the stage at eTown Hall for the evening performance. Evening-only passes include audience admission to the performance. During the workshops, Mr. Taylor will invite some participants to bring their instruments and join him on stage during the evening performance. All workshop participants will be admitted to eTown Hall for the performance.
The TBJF is designed for players of all types, all ages, and all ability levels to join in. It’s all about creating music together, not someone showing how well they can shred the guitar. It doesn’t matter what you play. Last year’s festival included vocalists, guitars, harmonicas, oboes, banjos, flutes, cellos, drums, violins, recorders, tambourines, maracas, mandolins and more.
The workshops are during the day Saturday the 10th leading up to the Grand Jam in the evening.
“You don’t have to be a professional musician to get involved with the Trance Blues Jam Festival,” says Taylor, a Boulder resident and festival founder. “The more diversity of participants and instruments we have, the better.”
Taylor’s compelling style of path-forging and “trance-blues” sonic landscapes has won praise from The New York Times and National Public Radio (NPR). Otis was honored to be included in the inaugural exhibition at the recently opened Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. 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.
‘The most diverse musical experience in Boulder,’ will be held Saturday, November 11th at eTown Hall, and features workshops between the hours of 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. and a performance with the visiting artists and selected workshop participants at 7:00 p.m.
Tickets for the evening performance are available for $25. Tickets are $85 for both the all day
workshops and admission to the evening performance. To purchase tickets visit the eTown website at http://www.etown.org.
For more information, please visit: http://www.trancebluesfestival.com
Award-winning storyteller, shaman and musical visionary Otis Taylor’s live performances are like fireworks – kaleidoscopic, riveting, explosive and wildly entertaining. And touring behind his new album Hey Joe Opus/Red Meat, this legendary presence brings those qualities to new heights. The rich compelling song cycle, which Taylor is presenting in full on stage, is a mesmerizing modern masterpiece that employs the classic hit made famous by the Jimi Hendrix Experience as a foundation for spinning a hypnotic web about, as Taylor relates, “decisions and their consequences, and how those outcomes can change our lives, the lives of our families and the lives of people you don’t even know.”
With a structure and scope similar to Pink Floyd’s epic Wish You Were Here, Hey Joe Opus/ Red Meat enshrines Taylor’s heralded “trance blues” sound — delivered with virtuosic fire by his five-piece band – within a storyline that limns the complexities, truths, conflicts and hopes that color the human soul. The original numbers include the driving “The Heart is a Muscle” and the swirling aural powerhouse “Cold At Midnight,” as well as instrumental passages in which Taylor and his band work sonic magic. And, of course, Taylor remains at the music’s fore, his commanding baritone voice and unique approach to banjo and guitar illuminating Hey Joe Opus/Red Meat’s emotional landscape.
Taylor has received an impressive 16 Blues Music Award nominations and won twice. His previous 13 albums have earned three DownBeat readers’ poll awards plus two of the magazine’s Critics Choice honors, and Taylor was awarded France’s prestigious Académie Charles Cros after two earlier nominations, winning the Grand Prix du Disc for Blues. His music has appeared in the Hollywood blockbuster Public Enemy, starring Johnny Depp, and in the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Shooter. He was also a fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Film Music Program.
The prolific blues guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, and singer was born in Chicago and raised in Colorado, which he still calls home. He began playing music in the sixties, but quit the business in 1977, to raise a family, and became an antique dealer. He returned to recording and performing in the late nineties, and, on albums like “Blue-Eyed Monster,” “When Negros Walked the Earth,” and “White African,” he takes on subjects like crime, homelessness, history, and race with his smoky voice and intricate and versatile playing. His latest and fourteenth release, “Hey Joe Opus,” is a psychedelic tour de force built around “Hey Joe,” the Billy Roberts-penned single made famous by Jimi Hendrix. — The New Yorker