The Blue Ridge Music Center presents Martha Redbone Roots Project + Zoe & Cloyd live in concert at its outdoor amphitheater on the Blue Ridge Parkway (Milepost 213) just south of Galax, Va., just north of Mount Airy, N.C. and just east of Sparta, N.C.
Martha Redbone is a vocalist, songwriter, composer, and educator of African American, Cherokee and Choctaw descent. A multi-award-winning musician, the charismatic songstress is celebrated for her tasty gumbo of roots music embodying the folk and mountain blues sounds of her childhood in the Appalachian hills of Kentucky, mixed with the eclectic grit of her teenage years in pre-gentrified Brooklyn. Redbone broadens the boundaries of American Roots music with songs and storytelling that share her life experience as a Black and Native American woman and mother navigating the 21st century.
The innovative “klezgrass” music of Zoe & Cloyd springs from the rich traditions and complementary styles of fiddler/vocalist Natalya Zoe Weinstein and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist John Cloyd Miller. Descending from a lineage of klezmer and jazz musicians, Natalya trained classically in her home state of Massachusetts before moving south in 2004. John, a twelfth generation North Carolinian and grandson of pioneering bluegrass fiddler Jim Shumate (Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys), is a first place winner of the prestigious Chris Austin Songwriting Contest and the Hazel Dickens Songwriting Contest. The pair delight audiences with soaring harmonies and heartfelt songs.