“Tony Trischka is known as the father of modern bluegrass” – New York Times
“The great banjo liberationist”
– NPR
“Father of banjo fusion.”
– The Wall Street Journal
Born in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1949, Tony was raised in a home filled with music. There were Broadway scores and a sweeping range of classical music, from Stravinsky to Beethoven. (The first thing Trischka learned to play on the banjo, in fact, was the Ninth Symphony.) The wide- open American vistas of Aaron Copland had an especially potent spiritual and visceral impact on him, as did the folk music his left-leaning father held dear. The Almanac Singers, the solo work of its founding members Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly’s children’s LP were in constant rotation.
Trischka fell in love with the banjo by way of the Kingston Trio’s 1959 recording of “M.T.A.,” and was able to experience the New York-centered folk revival by trekking to the Newport Folk Festival in the early to mid-’60s. He moved to the city in the early ’70s and hit the ground running, settling in among a peer group of extraordinary musicians who saw American roots music as a thriving, living language that could be expanded and combined with other influences and sensibilities. Alongside other young masters, Trischka found his purpose. Jaw-dropping musicianship was certainly encouraged, as was comic and literary irreverence, earnest songwriting and a record shop’s worth of touchstones beyond bluegrass, from the avant-garde to fusion and R&B.