The 2019 Newport Folk Festival featured musical acts such as Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile (with her new group the Highwomen), and a surprise appearance by country legend Dolly Parton. Held at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island, the festival was celebrating its 60th anniversary, in what would have been cofounder Pete Seeger's 100th year.
On Friday and Sunday, this year's lineup also included four Berklee students, who play in an ensemble aptly named the Berklee Instant Strings.
Founded by Berklee faculty member Darol Anger and now advised by Greg Liszt, the group consists of four students chosen by the String Department to provide a strong, flexible string section for touring musicians. It's like, just add water, and you have a string section, joked Louisa Byron, one of the group's two violinists, who was playing the festival for the second straight year.
Lucius at Newport Folk
Watch an interview with the alumni band after their set with Berklee Instant Strings at the 2018 festival. Byron and her fellow students-violinist Emily Gelineau, violist Cecilia Vacanti, and cellist Emanuel Keller-took to the Quad stage Friday afternoon with the folk trio I'm With Her, a new folk supergroup consisting of Sara Watkins, Aoife O'Donovan, and Sarah Jarosz. The Instant Strings joined them on Overland, and Watkins also invited the audience to sing along on the chorus.
They're some of my favorite musicians ever, said Vacanti, who was also playing her second Newport Folk Festival. It was so amazing to be onstage with them.
Gelineau said she enjoyed listening to I'm With Her before the Instant Strings came out to play on Overland. It was great to get inspired by their music before we joined them onstage, she said. And they were lovely to work with as well.
The students spoke about the challenges implied in their quartets name. Sometimes we'll have a rehearsal, Byron said, and sometimes the musicians will just hand us a chart. And sometimes we don't even get that: we just have to show up and figure it out. It's an exciting challenge.
They're some of my favorite musicians ever. It was so amazing to be onstage with them.
-Cecilia Vacanti on performing with Im With Her
I think it's an important experience for touring musicians, added Keller. You have to learn how to be in the moment, and handle challenges that arise.
The Instant Strings were also part of the festival's closing set, known as If I Had a Song, on Sunday night. Byron drafted a string arrangement for the set's opening number: The Rainbow Connection, featuring Kermit the Frog on vocals and banjo. The Instant Strings played on several other numbers in that set, including the Beach Boys tune God Only Knows with Trey Anastasio, Rachael Price of Lake Street Dive, and members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band; and John Lennon's Instant Karma! with Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold and the Preservation Hall members. The students-and several dozen of their fellow musicians-came back onstage to be led by Ramblin' Jack Elliott in the festival's final song, Goodnight Irene.
Watch the Berklee Instant Strings rehearsal with Im With Her:
Video of I'm With Her Rehearsal with Berklee Instant Strings
Related categories:
News
Most Popular
Nashville Said Her Gender Was a Liability. Now Shes Starting Her Own Label. Emma White B.M. '10 talks songwriting, launching a female-centric record label, and navigating the unsolicited advice given to performers.
Latest
Simone Torres Preaches Versatility at Berklee Clinic The Grammy-nominated engineer and vocal producer has worked with Cardi B, Dua Lipa, and Camilla Cabello.
School of Rock Women Crash Five-Week In four rehearsals we put together 35 minutes of music and some really complex pieces, like Deep Purple's Highway Star-not easy.
Tristan Simone Brings Genre-Bending Sound to the ICA The bilingual hip-hop and jazz artist is one of the few students to be accepted into Berklee by rapping in his audition.
Read All
Subscribe The latest sounds, stories, and ideas, sent to your inbox weekly.
Berklee Blogs
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Instagram
Snapchat
Soundcloud
Spotify
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
29/04/2024
(L-R) Mark Gatiss and Polly Walker on set
Monday 29 April 2024 Further casting is now confirmed for Bookish (6x70), a brand-new drama created by Emmy Award-wi...
29/04/2024
A groundbreaking initiative offering training and mentoring to 30 women journali...
29/04/2024
Even though we've been doing this for over 40 years, a spark of excitement r...
29/04/2024
L3Harris is delivering manpack radios to U.S. Army CH-47 Chinooks as part of the Air-to-Ground Networking Radio program, providing seamless, resilient communica...
29/04/2024
He writes in Defense One: Despite the near-universal acknowledgement throughout the U.S. government and defense industrial base of the criticality of resilient ...
29/04/2024
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
29/04/2024
Codemill aims to revolutionize media workflow efficiency at this years NAB Show by introducing Just-In-Time (JIT) playback technology in Accurate.Video Validate...
29/04/2024
April 29, 2024
-- TF1 Chooses Broadpeak to Power Targeted Advertising for New...
29/04/2024
LOS ANGELES Allen Media Group (AMG) has partnered with LG Electronics to bring 223 Local Now FAST channels to LG's free streaming service, LG Channels, avai...
29/04/2024
OTTAWA Ross Video has announced the introduction of Raiden, a data-driven weather graphics software that combines data gathering, processing, and visualization ...
29/04/2024
Panalux, a leading rental provider of lighting and power solutions for the motion-picture industry and part of Panavision's end-to-end service offerings for...
29/04/2024
Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, today announced that it has received a patent on its technology for dynamic autho...
29/04/2024
SDVI, the leading platform provider for cloud-native media supply chains, today announced that Rally Access Workstation, a fully managed solution for editing in...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, a premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality remote commenta...
29/04/2024
Glookast has chosen Jigsaw24 Media as the only UK channel partner to represent their portfolio of ingest and workflow optimisation products. The agreement, sign...
29/04/2024
Clear-Com played a pivotal role in the seamless coverage of the recent solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Leveraging its cutting-edge Eclipse HX Digital Matrix i...
29/04/2024
PlayBox Neo will promote its complete range of television channel management, graphic branding and playout solutions to EMEA region media content owners and bro...
29/04/2024
Lingo, RuPaul's word-twisting game show, returns for season two on CBS Friday, May 24. Two episodes air that night, and stream on Paramount Plus, too....
29/04/2024
ESPN and Amazon Prime Video are reportedly close to scoring television rights to the National Basketball Association, according to published reports....
29/04/2024
Judge Judy and Hot Bench, CBS Media Ventures' genre-leading court shows, have been renewed through the 2025-26 TV season in more than 95% of the country, Gr...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, an Irish-based premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality re...
29/04/2024
The awards celebrate the craft of behind-the-scenes TV talent and the best programmes of 2023
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: April 29, 2024
The awards cel...
29/04/2024
The team at Milk had to create and deliver the VFX and environment work for the royal residences featured in the drama from scratch
By Jenny Priestley
Publis...
29/04/2024
CEO Bob Bakish is expected to leave the company as early as today, with a new leadership committee likely to run the company on an interim basis
By Jenny Pries...
29/04/2024
Albena Ivanova, director, media and entertainment and strategic products at CHAOS talks to TVBEurope about her route into the industry
By TVBEurope Staff
Pub...
29/04/2024
The acquisition gives Grand Technix the opportunity to expand its footprint in the audio visual and broadcast technology sectors
By Jenny Priestley
Published...
29/04/2024
29 04 2024 - Media release Screen Australia announces James J. Robinson's debut feature First Light
First Light
Principal Photography is underway on Firs...
29/04/2024
Capitol Broadcasting recently became the inaugural company honored with inductio...
29/04/2024
April 29th, 2024 UNINTERRUPTED AND TRIBECA ENTERPRISES PARTNER FOR SECOND-ANNUA...
29/04/2024
Rebrand and refresh: SailGP talks bringing its graphics operations inhouse for a...
29/04/2024
Reflecting on a Storied Career: Sean McManus Looks Back While Keeping an Eye on ...
29/04/2024
Drones Take Flight Inside MSG: How Sky Candy Studios is Upping the Excitement fo...
29/04/2024
Back to All News
Netflix Announces a Diverse Lineup of Polish Titles to Debut i...
29/04/2024
Tonight on Smoke and Mirrors: Fanyana feels embarrassed about his sexual mishapDon't miss Monday, 29 April's riveting episode of South African soapie Sm...
29/04/2024
Talk about commitment. When startup SEA.AI, an NVIDIA Metropolis partner, set out to create a system that would use AI to scan the seas to enhance maritime safe...
28/04/2024
Mediahaus delivers the first SRT live-streaming sports production over 5G with U...
27/04/2024
On April 26, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher E. Kubasik joined CNBC's Mor...
27/04/2024
PORTLAND, Oregon Audinate Group Limited, the developer of the Dante AV-over-IP solution, announced significant new additions to Dante Connect, its cloud-based D...
27/04/2024
TORONTO Bell Media has launched 10 English and French-language FAST channels featuring entertainment, factual, news, and sports programming. The new free stream...
27/04/2024
An extensive new analysis of the news segments in the broadcast evening news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS has found that broadcasters devoted most of their...
27/04/2024
GERMANTOWN, Md. EchoStar's Hughes Network Systems has opened a new manufacturing facility and private 5G incubation center in Germantown, Maryland....
27/04/2024
Harry Pappas, one of three brothers who founded Pappas Telecasting Companies in 1971, died April 24. He was 78 years old....
27/04/2024
ATLANTA and LONDON Mexican telecommunications and broadcast company Televisa has selected Synamedia for an overhaul of its broadcast distribution....
27/04/2024
Participate in the Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this surve...
27/04/2024
SDVI Rally Access Workstation Earns Two Top Awards at 2024 NAB Show
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
SDVI, the leading platform provider for clo...
27/04/2024
Berklee's Music and Health Institute Launches Community Health Musician Cert...
27/04/2024
Charter Communications reported higher first-quarter profits despite continued cord-cutting and competition for broadband customers....
The 2019 Newport Folk Festival featured musical acts such as Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile (with her new group the Highwomen), and a surprise appearance by country legend Dolly Parton. Held at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island, the festival was celebrating its 60th anniversary, in what would have been cofounder Pete Seeger's 100th year.
