Red Hot Strings Workshop at Centrum May 15th-19th

 Red Hot Strings is once again happening in person, May 15th-19th 2024 and our staff will be announced in December, with registration open early next year. We’ve got a bunch of staff lined up, so hold the dates and check back soon!

In 2019 the great folks at Centrum hosted a workshop focusing on the complex gumbo of New World string traditions which were all bubbling along throughout the dawn of Jazz, and Red Hot Strings was the result. RHS is a celebration of the “Jazz Age” string players – a long line of musicians birthed in ragtime and blues, and unleashed in the popular music of the 1920s and ’30s. This means 1920’s Hot Jazz and 1930s Swing, and naturally the string-reliant sub-genres of Western Swing, Hawaiian Swing and even the jazzier jugbands of the444 American south. We also regard other stringed instrument innovators throughout The Americas – the Caribbean, Latin America, New Orleans etc. – who were likewise enmeshed in their own dialogues with the era’s emergent Jazz language, as being connected to this acoustic stringed instrument renaissance. From Ragtime to Blues, Classical to Creole, many musical traditions had a hand in the development of the harmonically and rhythmically compelling improvising vocabulary of Jazz, and stringed instrument players were in the mix from its inception!

We’ll offer instruction on guitar, mandolin, tenor banjo and guitar, fiddle, bass, and steel guitar; ensemble classes putting it all together; and lots of opportunities for evening jamming and community building. Please check out our roster of inspiring instructors and classes, and please help spread the world – we are excited about creating a place for this resurgent community to come together and grow!