Max Hatt / Edda Glass at The Kennedy Center, Washington D.C.

08/03/2017  - Washington, DC - Max Hatt / Edda Glass's "unique sound" (Larry Groce, NPR) and "incomparable spook” (Nashville Scene) have taken them from their start in Montana to New York City's Lincoln Center, NPR Mountain Stage, the Sundance Film Fest, and Wilco's Solid Sound Festival. Next stop is Washington DC's Millennium Stage at Kennedy Center, where they will play a free concert as part of Verse → Refrain: An Exploration of Song presented by NewSong Music. JBird Shogren, "dissonant folk & roots" artist and Nobel Peace Prize winner from Wyoming, will join them on the bill. Show begins at 6 pm on August 17th, and will also be live streamed on the Kennedy Center website and youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-FlM8a7tFs . More information at https://www.kennedy-center.org/Video/Performance/63401  Max Hatt / Edda Glass's fall tour will also include the Avalon Theatre's Stoltz Listening Room on September 17th, in Easton, MD, along with dates TBA in New York City, New England, and Philadelphia. 

Max Hatt / Edda Glass's 2016 album, Ocean of Birds, was produced by Wilco's Pat Sansone, and saw press from Huffington Post to Paste. Praised for her "impeccable vocal command" (PopMatters) and compared to a gamut of singers from Astrud Gilberto to Billie Holliday, Glass's voice is ultimately "one of a kind...you cannot confuse her with another artist" (New York Theatre Guide). Hatt's equally distinctive guitar work combines the harmonic innovations of jazz with the melodic resonance of folk, creating music that's "subtly poignant, elegantly funky, and haunting without trying to be" (Nels Cline, Wilco). Together, "Max Hatt/Edda Glass create exquisite, evocative music" (John Platt, WFUV) as they evoke a world that stretches from the beaches of Rio to the mountains of the American West. 

Hatt and Glass started playing together in Montana, where Hatt had a jazz trio and Glass had a knack for singing in Brazilian Portuguese— they soon became the state's only Bossa Nova band. On long drives between shows, Glass began writing lyrics to Hatt's solo guitar compositions, taking inspiration from the western landscape, and spinning tales of migrating geese, dispossessed tribes, and love in the wheat fields. This highway collaboration took them all the way to NYC's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where the two unknowns won the 2014 Grand Prize of the NPR Mountain Stage / NewSong Competition. There they also captured the attention of their future producer, Wilco's Pat Sansone. “I was mesmerized from the first moment I heard them," he recalls. "They have the ability to create a deep sonic landscape with only voice and guitar, with songs that posses a mysterious and soulful magic.“ 

JBIRD SHOGREN 

J Shogren from Centennial WY (pop 100, 4 bars) has a singular vision of what he is doing musically—Roots & folk music filtered through a contemporary dissonant transmitter. He calls the music “catawampus american music”. Shogren plays all over the US & Europe, represented Wyoming in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, and as a finalist in the 2016 NewSong Songwriters held at the Lincoln Center in NYC. “Brilliant storyteller from Wyoming. Hard Boiled, sometimes dark humorous stories delivered with a voice that clearly have lived through them." Lennart Persson (SWE) Rootsy. His latest album Why so Blue, Bird? explores his own family's adventures and death in the Great Northwoods  - "This could well be one of the first albums, in the hundreds of reviews written, that I simply can't compare to anyone else or even come close to slotting into a genre." American Roots UK 

NEWSONG PRESENTS 

NewSong Music is excited to present in partnership with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. the upcoming three part weekly music concert series 'Verse –> Refrain: An Exploration of Song.' 

In the spirit of community and collaboration, each of the three weekly performances will feature and pair two emerging artists or acts from the NewSong community, to share the stage to explore, perform and discuss their own inspirations and methods of songwriting. 

The concerts take place on each of the last three Thursdays in August (17, 24, 31), are free to the public and begin at 6 PM at the Kennedy Center's Millinneum Stage. No advance ticket purchase is required, and there is no free parking for these free events. 

MORE PRESS FOR MAX HATT / EDDA GLASS 

“Beautiful… #chills” — Ann Powers of NPR Music (@annkpowers on Twitter) 

“…like hand-printed photographs that speak and sway, the material is hypnotic…" — Lizz Wright 

“Mesmerizing… cinematic folk-jazz” — ASCAP’s Playback Magazine at Sundance Film Festival 

“Edda Glass's voice must be heard to be believed.” — Nels Cline (Wilco)  

"Max Hatt/Edda Glass create exquisite, evocative music as they journey through the landscape of jazz and folk with Hatt's atmospheric guitar playing and the landscape of the West with Glass's literate lyrics." — John Platt of WFUV, New York City 

"Unique voices and rare musicians." — Eric Funk, PBS host and internationally renowned composer 

“Their lyrics/ instrumentals encapsulate the confusing sentiment of feeling both lost and found, all at once…This album is for those that want to hear a song that tells them it is okay to be human, and that you are not alone in not knowing what that exactly means” — New York Theater Guide 

"an exemplification in the beauty of contemplation" — PopMatters 

“Brimming with soul and steeped with lush, mellow melodies, Ocean of Birds captures a moment in time and releases it in one lovely breath. “ — That Mag 

“Music that creates a sense of vastness within its quiet.” — Yes Weekly, John Adamian