Bluegrass
Staunton, Virginia
Bill Evans is an internationally recognized five-string banjo life force. He is a recipient of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize and a 2024 American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame inductee. As a performer, teacher, writer and composer, he brings a deep knowledge, intense virtuosity and contagious passion to all things banjo, with thousands of music fans and banjo students from all over the world in a music career that now spans more than 35 years. Bill’s banjo artistry is best experienced in live performance and on his recordings Fine Times at Fletcher’s House with Fletcher Bright (2013), In Good Company (2012), Let’s Do Something with Megan Lynch (2009), Bill Evans Plays Banjo (2001), and Native and Fine (1995).
Bill successfully bridges traditional and contemporary sounds and playing techniques, creating a new music that is firmly within the bluegrass tradition but draws upon a broad knowledge of classical, jazz and world music, drawing upon his experiences as a graduate student in music at the University of California, Berkeley and as the associate director of the International Bluegrass Music Museum.
Bill has recently returned to Virginia where he made great music for many years. He will make his debut on the Richmond Folk Festival Stage with two long-time collaborators: native Virginian mandolin player Steve Smith, who played with Bill in the Charlottesville-based band Cloud Valley in the early 1980s; and the amazing Nashville-based guitarist Tim May, who has toured with such artists as Patty Loveless and John Cowan. Expect stunning instrumental virtuosity and sophisticated original compositions that reflect both the trio’s deep bluegrass roots and jazz influences.