Butch Baldassari

In today's crowded, noisy and sometimes complicated music environment, oftentimes less is truly more. Lyric, not loud. Soft, not strident. Romantic, not raucous. Mandolinist Butch Baldassari has created new interest in this age-old instrument and is luring legions of new admirers to the music he creates. With mastery of a wide variety of mandolin styles, Baldassari's versatility is unmatched. He moves from bluegrass festivals to symphony halls with ease and grace, earning respect and admiration in these seemingly disparate worlds.

A native of Scranton, PA, he was first introduced to the mandolin at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1972, where he saw Andy Statman with David Bromberg and Barry Mitterhoff with the Bottle Hill Boys. He was so inspired by their playing, that he resolved to learn to play the mandolin. He began studying immediately, experimenting with the mandolin's unique sound and delving more deeply into the history of the instrument.

In 1985, Baldassari became a member of Weary Hearts, a critically acclaimed bluegrass band, winners of the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBGMA) 1988 Best Bluegrass Band Award.

After attending the Classical Mandolin Society of America convention in November 1990, and intrigued by the existence of mandolin orchestras in America at the turn of the century, he returned to Nashville (where he had moved in 1989) and founded the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble in June 1991, recruiting some of Nashville's best and most talented string players. The ensemble, composed of mandola, mandocello, guitar and bass, in addition to mandolins, is among the city's most unusual and sought-after entertainment.

"We surprise our audiences every time we play," Baldassari laughs. "People just revel in the sound of all these marvelous instruments and in the tremendous variety of music we perform. Our repertoire includes Bill Monroe's Bluegrass, as well as the music of O'Carolan and Vivaldi."

Baldassari has appeared on "A Prairie Home Companion," "CBS This Morning," CNN and "Riders in the Sky Radio Theatre." Not just a performer and bandleader, Baldassari is widely respected as a teacher, currently serving as Adjunct Associate Professor of Mandolin at Vanderbilt University's renowned Blair School of Music. His instructional videos, books and tapes are among the most widely used by aspiring mandolin players, and his workshops at festivals including Telluride, Rocky Grass Bluegrass Academy, Winterhawk and Grass Valley are standing-room only sessions. His annual appearances at the Classical Mandolin Society are among the event's most popular. With his own successful record label, SoundArt Recordings, Baldassari has broadened both his reach to new audiences and his influence on the music. In Butch Baldassari and the music he creates, the past, present and future of this small, yet richly powerful instrument are in the best of hands.


Butch & Dale
Dale Cockrell

Dale Cockrell is director of the Program in American and Southern Studies at Vanderbilt University and Professor of Musicology and American Studies.

He has published widely in the field of American music studies, including Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), which was the recipient of the C. Hugh Holman Award presented by The Society for the Study of Southern Literature; and Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1842-1846 (Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon, 1989), which won the Irving Lowens Award.

Dale is a former president of the Society for American Music and a member of the American Antiquarian Society. He is currently at work on a volume for the Music of the United States of America series, titled The Ingalls-Wilder Songbook (a critical edition of the music referenced in the Little House® books by Laura Ingalls Wilder); a study of music in the lives of common-class antebellum southerns (titled Common People and Their Uncommon Music); and an exploration of the place of American Music Studies in the pantheon of scholarly disciplines.

He is the founder, owner, and president of Pa’s Fiddle Recordings, LLC, a record label dedicated to recording the music referenced in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books so that children and their parents might once again engage and enjoy the magnificence of America’s musical heritage.

HarperCollins Publishers, which owns the trademark to Little House®,
has not been involved, either implicitly or explicitly, in the production of this recording.
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