'We were attracted to each other initially musically out of this shared bond of instrumental music and what was possible within this string band format'
(contributed photo)
The Grammy-winning Punch Brothers return to UConn's Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, November 7 as part of The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers tour in support of the ensemble's seventh album.
Punch Brothers, formed by mandolinist Chris Thile in 2006, is known for pushing the boundaries of acoustic music. In addition to Thile, the band currently comprises guitarist Chris Eldridge, bassist Paul Kowert, banjoist Noam Pikelny, and violinist Brittany Haas. Punch Brothers has garnered critical acclaim, including a Grammy for Best Folk Album for "All Ashore" (2018). The Washington Post applauded them for taking "bluegrass to its next evolutionary stage, drawing equal inspiration from the brain and the heart."
Over the past two decades, Punch Brothers has become a pioneer in modern string music, with albums like "Antifogmatic" (2010), "Who's Feeling Young Now" (2012), and "The Phosphorescent Blues" (2015) showcasing the group's genre-defying sound. Rolling Stone praised their work as "wild virtuosity used for more than just virtuosity," cementing their reputation as trailblazers in contemporary acoustic music. The band's most recent album, "Hell on Church Street" (2021), is a reimagining of, and homage to, the late bluegrass great Tony Rice's landmark solo album "Church Street Blues."
Most recently, Punch Brothers have been focused on the band's musical variety show, The Energy Curfew Music Hour. Season One is available on all podcast platforms, with season two exclusively out on Audible. Season 1 was nominated for a Webby Award in the Podcast: Features, Experimental & Innovation category; it also won Most Innovative Audio Experience, Best Live Podcast Recording, and Best Sound Design in the Listener's Choice category of the 2025 Signal Awards.
"The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers," the seventh album from the Grammy-winning band-and its first comprising all instrumental tunes as well as its first with fiddle player Brittany Haas, who joined the quintet in 2023-is out now on Nonesuch Records. The album features eight new original compositions by Punch Brothers as well as three traditional songs they arranged.
"Not to downplay the singing one bit, but we are a band of instrumentalists, I think, first and foremost," Pikelny told WHUS this week in discussing the band's first instrumental recording and the tour. "We were attracted to each other initially musically out of this kind of shared bond of instrumental music and what was possible within this string band format. When we kind of took a step back and looked at our catalog it just felt like there was this real blind spot and that we didn't have an instrumental record. We're doing our best to incorporate a lot of music from all of our records (on this tour), drawing from all of the records we've made."
