He bends over the old instrument, his eyes narrowed, the tortoise-shell pick in his right hand working rapid runs up and down a fretboard that’s as black as an old peat bog. The sounds are tuneful yet ...

My 25th wedding anniversary was approaching. My husband, Bruce, a 50-year piano student who takes a lesson every two weeks, asked me if I might like an instrument for an anniversary present. I love ...

DIM WERE the stage lights of New York in early 1843. With the country trying to shake off a nagging recession at the midpoint of the John Tyler administration, economic unease had trickled down to the ...

From bluegrass to folk to gospel to jazz, the new institute, backed by a $10.1 million gift, is aimed at training a new ...

ALTON — Fiddlin’ Banjo Billy Mathews has been playing music since he was 8 years old when he started piano lessons. Around the age of 13, he added the guitar, and then picked up the banjo during his ...

Early American banjo music is Black music. The banjo was created by enslaved African Americans, and according to the Smithsonian Institute, up until the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively an African ...

“When I was growing up (along Banjo Branch, north of Mars Hill),” old-time musician Roger Howell says, “we had a neighbor, Pearl Ball, who lived across the valley. (She) sat on her front porch and ...