‘The Local Girls’ opens the Ironton Council for the Arts Concert Series

Published 10:35 am Tuesday, October 14, 2014

The inaugural performance of the Ironton Council for the Arts (ICA) 2014-2015 Concert Series takes place this Saturday when Athens-based group “The Local Girls” takes the stage at 7:30 p.m. in the Ohio University Southern Riffe Center Mains Rotunda.

“The ICA Concert series has six high-quality performances between October and April,” Pat McCoy, ICA communications director, said. “Making Musical Memories is the theme of the 2014-2015 ICA Concert Series, which features six outstanding performances by local, regional and nationally recognized performers.”

The Local Girls, an all-female vocal trio, consists of Mimi Hart, Gay Dalzell and Brenda Catania. The group is described as transcending nostalgia and delighting fans of “live and lively” music.

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“Their swinging three-part harmony and engaging delivery have delighted audiences at the White House, on NPR, PBS-TV, A Prairie Home Companion, and throughout France, Germany and Austria,” McCoy said. “Their special children’s program, ‘Cowgirls: Their Songs and Stories,’ presents a history lesson of Western women in song with cattle calls, lullabies, yips and yodels.”

Covering a century of American songwriting, The Local Girls create a warm and varied musical event, bringing good humor and haunting harmonies to songs from the silly to the heartbreaking, while performing music from the swing era of the 1930s and 1940s, blues, bebop and cowpoke yodeling.

Other concerts planned for the series are:

The Backyard Dixie Jazz Stompers from the Huntington-Charleston area will perform on Saturday, Nov. 8, in the Riffe Center Mains Rotunda. They perform Dixieland jazz in the New Orleans style. They have been featured in festivals and events throughout Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and North Carolina and have performed on such venerable riverboats as the Delta Queen, the Mississippi Queen, the West Virginia Belle and the P.A. Denny.

The Greater Huntington Symphonic Band, directed by Tommy Thompson, returns for its annual concert of holiday music on Saturday, Dec. 13, in the Riffe Center Mains Rotunda. It draws its membership from the greater Tri-State, which includes students, retirees and working professionals ranging in age from teens through octogenarians. Throughout the year the band performs a variety of music at local concerts including marches, show tunes and classics.

A multimedia folk performance by native New Englander John Mock takes place on Saturday, Feb. 14, in the Collins Center Bowman Auditorium. Mock is an artist and the sea and its coasts are his muse. He captures in music and in photographs the heritage of the sea.

He performs original instrumental compositions on the guitar, concertina, mandolin, and tin whistle. His own nature photography is projected onto a screen behind him providing a scenic backdrop for the music.

On Saturday, March 27, a concert by the father-and-son duo of Ken and Brad Kolodner from Baltimore, Maryland, playing old-time music, also in the Collins Center Bowman Auditorium takes place. Ken Kolodner, regarded as one of the most influential hammered dulcimer players and old-time fiddlers in the nation, has joined forces with his son, Brad Kolodner, a rising star in the clawhammer banjo world.

The duo started in 2009 and two years later they released their first recording, Otter Creek, which became the most played instrumental recording on the international folk DJ radio charts.

The 2014-15 concert season concludes with a performance by the Albany, New York-based Capital Trio performing chamber music for violin, cello and piano in the Riffe Center Mains Rotunda.

All performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 and students are admitted free by presenting a valid ID. Tickets may also be purchased or by visiting the Ironton Council for the Arts web site at www.southern.ohiou.edu/irontonarts.