Bloomingrass Festival feat. Väsen, Hawktail, Michael Cleveland & The Foreign Landers

BloominGrass is a new mini music festival taking place at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater for one night only, featuring some of the most exciting music in contemporary folk and bluegrass. For its debut this year, Bloomingrass will headline Bloomington favorites Väsen and Hawktail, introduce The Foreign Landers, and feature a special guest the world of bluegrass knows and loves to be announced soon.

Hawktail is the instrumental acoustic group comprised of fiddler Brittany Haas (Crooked Still, Dave Rawlings Machine), bassist Paul Kowert (Punch Brothers, Dave Rawlings Machine), and guitarist Jordan Tice. Though at first glance Hawktail looks like a superpicker side-project, their all-original music is cohesive and unique, distinguishing them as an ensemble with a sound built from the ground up. Flush with orchestral sweeps and sparse vigils, with strains of the American South and the North Atlantic, this cosmopolitan sound is not what you’d expect from a string band.

Väsen hails from Uppsala, Sweden and is a perennial favorite at the Lotus World Music Festival, leading Bloomington to name a street after the group and the band to name an album after the street: Väsen Street. Olov Johansson (nyckelharpa) and Mikael Marin (viola) will perform on this tour as a duo and together in collaboration with Hawktail for a set not to be missed.

With his sixth solo studio release, LOVIN’ OF THE GAME, veteran fiddle virtuoso Michael Cleveland seizes his opportunity at this one wonderful life and swings for the rafters. The album positively hums with energy. Not beholden to one specific genre or pigeonholed label, it showcases Cleveland’s inclusive musical nature—placing value in the process over the output. It is in this release of control that we find something truly sublime: the sound of artists working together in the act of creation without regard for any preconceived notion of what “should” be. The sound of genuine musicianship.