The Milk Carton Kids join Adelaide Guitar Festival 2020 program

After an off-year program led by progressive bluegrass troupe The Punch Brothers, the Adelaide Guitar Festival returns its gaze to the American folk scene with Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan – better known as The Milk Carton Kids. Picking up the baton from the aforementioned Punch Brothers – whose leader Chris Thile regularly collaborates with Ryan on popular podcast Live From Here – the duo will showcase their finely tuned vocal harmonies and acoustic guitar interplay with a one-off Festival Theatre show on Friday 7 August, joined by US/Canadian songwriter Vera Sola.

Also announced this week is a collaboration between singer/songwriter Lior, Adelaide Guitar Festival artistic director Slava Grigoryan and his brother Leonard, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and composer Nigel Westlake. The Saturday 8 August concert, dubbed Leaving The Western Shadows, will be a reprisal of sorts of Lior and Westlake’s 2014 Festival Theatre performance. This time, audiences will see Westlake conduct a program that encompasses his soundtrack to the 1991 IMAX feature Antarctica alongside selections from Lior’s back catalogue.

These two new additions to the 2020 Adelaide Guitar Festival program join Brink Productions’ The Bridge of San Luis Rey, an adaptation of Thornton Wilde’s Pulitzer-winning novel led by the always-dynamic theatre mainstay Paul Capsis accompanied again by the ever-busy Grigoryan Brothers. Penned by Adelaide/Melbourne playwright Phillip Kavanaugh (Deluge, Tartuffe) with set design by Jonathan Oxlade, this Chris Drummond-directed three-hander looks set to be a fascinating blend of music and theatre.

The full Adelaide Guitar Festival program arrives in April.

7 August

Adelaide Guitar Festival:
The Milk Carton Kids

8 August

Adelaide Guitar Festival:
Leaving The Western Shadows

10 – 25 July

POSTPONED:
The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Walter Marsh

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Walter is a writer and editor living on Kaurna Country.