Pam Tillis
2025-09-13 19:30 - 22:00 (America/Denver) | Hamilton Performing Arts Center, 327 Fairgrounds Rd., Hamilton, MT, 59840
Pam Tillis, daughter of Country Music Royalty, carved her own path in music, recording hits like “Shake the Sugar Tree”, “Maybe It Was Memphis” and “Mi Vida Loca”. With multiple number ones and top ten singles, she’s generated three CMA awards, two Grammys, and numerous nominations.
Pam’s soulful approach to songwriting led to acclaimed albums like Rhinestoned, her latest album Looking For A Feeling and successful ventures like ‘Dos Divas’ with Lorrie Morgan. Her captivating performances, whether at the Grand Ole Opry or Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, continue to enchant audiences worldwide. Currently, she tours solo and with Lorrie Morgan on their “Grits And Glamour” tour.

Duende Libre
2025-10-18 19:30 - 22:00
WITH NAOMI MOON SIEGEL
DUENDE LIBRE celebrates the connections between jazz and music from Cuba, Brazil, and the Mediterranean. Their stewardship is a natural continuation of decades of dedicated apprenticeship with master musicians from around the world. DUENDE LIBRES empathic on-stage chemistry, formed through years of performing, touring, and recording together, sets the band apart along with their eclectic sonic palette.

“Each member’s experiences are vital as they filter West African traditional rhythms through their own hands, voices, minds, bodies, each song as much choreography as a composition,” Pop Matters wrote. “Hopeful in sound as well as in ideological foundation [the band creates music] full of heart and historical multitudes.”

“Globally inspired jazz with dimension” – Pop Matters

“Powerfully alluring” – Wisconsin Public Radio

Mark O'Connor's An Appalachian Christmas
2025-11-15 19:30 - 22:00
FEATURING MAGGIE O’CONNOR
Mark O’Connor began his creative journey at the feet of American fiddling legend Benny Thomasson, and the iconic French jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli. Today, he has melded these influences into a new American classical music and is perpetuating his vision of an American School of String Playing. Mr. O’Connor has won three Grammys, seven CMA awards and several national fiddle, guitar and mandolin champion titles. Mr. O’Connor has composed nine concertos and two symphonies recorded by the Baltimore Symphony, London Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony among others. O’Connor is well-known for his chamber music including his million-selling composition “Appalachia Waltz” featuring Yo-Yo Ma for the Sony Classical label. His recent album back on his own label OMAC Records is Life After Life, an Americana music collection of his original songs and some classics he sings with his wife Maggie O’Connor who is featured on lead vocals. 2025 sees the release of their new holiday music album, A Christmas Duet – captured live at Sheldon Hall in St. Louis from Mark’s perennial An Appalachian Christmas tour. O’Connor released his memoir a few years ago, Crossing Bridges: My Journey from Child Prodigy to Fiddler Who Dared the World.
Mr. O’Connor has authored a series of educational books called the O’Connor Method and is now the fastest growing violin method in the country. The O’Connor Method features American music styles, creativity, cultural diversity and western classical technical training. For more information, visit www.markoconnor.com.
American violinist/fiddler and vocalist, Maggie O’Connor performs a variety of musical styles throughout the U.S. and beyond, most recently as a member of the Grammy award-winning bluegrass group, the O’Connor Band. She spends most of her time now performing with her husband, violinist and composer Mark O’Connor. Together they have appeared as guest soloists with the Charlotte Symphony, Singapore Chinese Orchestra, Santa Rosa Symphony, Nashville Symphony, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Winston Salem Symphony, with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center, and appeared in violin duo performances in such prestigious settings as the Yehudi Menuhin Centennial celebration at the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Lockenhaus, Austria Musikfest, and the Leopold Auer Festival in Hungary. In an Americana duo setting, the couple tours music from their new album, Life After Life, a collection of original songs and classics. Her latest album is A Christmas Duet, a live-in-concert album from their annual An Appalachian Christmas tour. Along with performing, Maggie continues to work as co-director with Mr. O’Connor at O’Connor Method String Camp currently taking place in Charlotte, NC featuring the lesson book series that is rising in popularity each year.

Las Guaracheras
2026-01-17 19:30
The all-female sextet Las Guaracheras was born in 2017 in the city of Cali, Colombia, an initiative of the percussionists Laura Linares and Mónica Castro. As lovers of the son (“sound” in Spanish) and guaracha genres, they decided to form an instrumental group in which they could express all their intense musical feelings while, at the same time, preserving the essence of guaracha. Guarachas were played and sung in musical theatres and working class dance salons during the late 19th and early 20th century. The ensemble’s cultural and artistic objective is to uplift the female voice within Afro-Latin music and build a more inclusive, diverse, and respectful cultural space for all.
With improvisation on each instrument as its driving force, Las Gauracheras evoke the sound of the great sextets of history. The vibraphone has a special place in the band, since the women have long been fascinated by its legacy and wanted to incorporate it into an updated version of salsa. Las Guaracheras embody the best and most visionary female orchestras of Caleña and Colombian salsa. Above all, the cultural and artistic objective of the ensemble is to elevate the female voice in Afro-Latin music and thus build a more inclusive, diverse and respectful cultural space where we all fit.

Rising Appalachia
2026-03-14 19:30 - 22:00
As world travelers for nearly two decades, Chloe and Leah Smith have merged multiple global music influences with their own southern roots to create the international phenomenon that is Rising Appalachia
Rising Appalachia established its international fan base due to relentless touring, tireless activism, and no small degree of stubborn independence. Remarkably the band has built its legion of listeners independently — a self-made success story that has led to major festival appearances and sold-out shows at venues across the country. Rising Appalachia has toured British Columbia by sailboat, traversed the U.S. and Europe by train, and engaged in immersive cultural exchange programs in Bulgaria, Ireland, Southern Italy, Central and South America – not to mention the countless miles in a van. Tour highlights include: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco; Music Hall Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York; Boulder Theatre in Boulder, Colorado; and the Showbox in Seattle, Washington. The band consistently sells between 400 and 1500 tickets wherever they play, a testament to their loyal fan base.
Leah and Chloe consider performing to be just one component of a greater overall vision – one that includes advocating for social justice, racial justice, environmental justice, and Indigenous rights.
“Rising Appalachia has come out of this idea that we can take these traditions of southern music – that we’ve been born and raised with – and we can rise out of them, creating all these different bridges between cultures and stories to make them feel alive.” Leah says. “Our music has its foundation in heritage and tradition, but we’re creating a music that also feels reflective of the times right now. That’s always been our work.”

Solas
2026-04-18 19:30 - 22:00
Solas stepped out onto the world stage in 1996, when Irish music was poised at the brink of a new era of innovation and popularity. The five young musicians who made up the band at the time had no idea that they were to be a galvanizing element in the Irish music scene – a lightening rod of talent and inspiration that set new standards for musicianship, repertoire, and intensity. “We thought we were doing a one-off project,” said multi-instrumentalist Seamus Egan with a smile, ten years after the fact. Egan and fiddler Winifred Horan have remained with the band through a decade that has encompassed seven albums and endless international touring and critical acclaim.
“The finest Celtic ensemble this country has ever produced…combines a deep empathy for the wild grace of traditional music with a savvy understanding of modern arrangement, creating a remarkably contemporary and timeless sound that led them immediately to Celtic superstardom…uniquely fluid, warmly melodic and robust.” – The Boston Globe
After an 8-year hiatus, the band announced a 30th anniversary reunion tour starting in 2025, with a stop in Hamilton, MT!
