Four internationally known mandolinists share a stage for the first time as a group when "Mandolin Carnival" comes to First Congregational Church in downtown Kalamazoo on Wednesday, July 22, at 7 p.m. The concert, presented by the Connecting Chords Music Festival.
Cara Lieurance talks with three of the four performers — Italian classical star Carlo Aonzo, jazz and improvisation specialist Don Julin, and bluegrass mandolinist Brian Oberlin of the band Full Cord — along with Connecting Chords executive director Elizabeth Start. The fourth mandolinist, Chicago jazz player Don Stiernberg, is not on the call, prompting some good-natured ribbing. Julin calls him "the greatest jazz mandolin player on planet Earth," a title Stiernberg earned in part by studying under mandolin legend Jethro Burns.
Aonzo says the show grew out of conversations with a mutual friend in northern Michigan, and that Kalamazoo felt like the right place to launch it, since the city, home to the Gibson mandolin factory, helped invent the modern American mandolin shape. Each artist plays a solo set — Aonzo bringing his father-taught classical and Italian folk heritage, Julin his reimagined fiddle tunes, and Oberlin swing, bluegrass and a duet written for Aonzo — plus group pieces by Julin, Prokofiev, Telemann, Vivaldi and Horace Silver, backed by a hired bass and guitar rhythm section.
Julin explains what hooked him on the instrument in the first place: "It only takes five minutes. You play it and you go, this is what I want to do the rest of my life." Oberlin, describing his packed schedule playing bluegrass and beyond, jokes that he's "doing whatever I can to keep my mandolin boat afloat."
Kalamazoo kicks off a six-city Michigan tour, with stops including Ann Arbor's The Ark, the Tamarack Music Festival, and Traverse City's Alluvion. Tickets are available at connectingchordsfestival.org or ccmusicfest.com.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
