MEDIA RELEASE
Stone Church Arts presents…
Cold Chocolate
7:30 pm, Friday, September 27
The Chapel at Immanuel Episcopal Church
20 Church St., Bellows Falls, Vermont
BELLOWS FALLS: Cold Chocolate, a genre-bending Americana band that fuses folk, funk, and bluegrass to create a unique sound all their own, performs on Friday, September 27 at 7:30 pm. The concert takes place in the Chapel at Immanuel Episcopal Church, the stone church on the hill, 20 Church St., Bellows Falls.
Feauturing Ethan Robbins on guitar, Ariel Bernstein on
percussion, and backed by some of the root’s music scene’s finest players, this
group from Boston is impressing audiences throughout New England and beyond. Punctuated
by tight harmonies and skillful musicianship, and with a focus on
songwriting, Cold Chocolate has quickly gained recognition for their
original music and high-energy shows. The band has shared bills with Leftover
Salmon and David Grisman, and regularly performs at venues and music festivals
up and down the East Coast.
Guitarist/songwriter Ethan Robbins began his bluegrass career at Oberlin
College. A founding member of The Outhouse Troubadours, an Oberlin
Bluegrass Phenomenon, he began to explore how
this hard-driving fast-paced genre could be stretched. A
classical violinist from age four, Ethan fell in love with the
guitar when he turned fourteen and his father bought him
five quintessential albums: The Band’s “Music from Big Pink,” Bob
Dylan’s “Bringing it all Back Home,” John Hartford’s “Steam Powered
Aereo-plane,” Hank Williams “Live at the Grand Ole Opry,” and the
Grateful Dead’s “Workingman’s Dead.” Ever since, Ethan has
attempted to bring those raw, rootsy sounds into his own original
material. Kathy Sands-Boehmer of No Depression writes, “[Ethan] feels
the music in his heart and soul and it shows when he plays. Ethan becomes the
music on stage. There’s an almost mystical connection between his guitar
and the notes that flow out of it.”
In 2012, Ethan met percussionist Ariel Bernstein at a mutual friend’s gig in
Boston. As a student of Jim Tiller, the Principal Percussionist and
Assistant Principal Tympanist of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Ariel
Bernstein earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Percussion for Performance at the
State University of New York, Geneseo. A master of restraint, the
loose-wristed Ariel brings a light and tasteful groove to Cold Chocolate’s
tunes, filling out their sound and heightening the band’s live energy. In
addition to playing in Cold Chocolate, Ariel can often be found
at Dimension Sound Studios in Jamaica Plain, engineering the records
of many of scene’s finest acoustic musicians, including Josh Ritter, The
Ballroom Thieves, Darlingside, and Mr. Sun.
Writes Simon Waxman of The Boston Review says, “[Cold Chocolate]
sounds softer than the dew on the mountainside, harder than a Harley pushing
back red dust, sweeter than true love.”
Stone
Church Arts in Bellows Falls presents Cold Chocolate on Friday, September 27 at 7:30 pm in the Chapel at Immanuel
Episcopal Church, 20 Church St. Tickets in advance are $25 for Premium, up
front in comfortable chairs, and $20 for Standard sections. Seniors may use
promo code “senior” to save $5 per ticket. Tickets at the door cost $5 more.
Tickets are available in person at Village Square Booksellers, Bellows Falls,
and Phoenix Books Misty Valley, Chester, by phone at 802-460-0110, and online
at www.stonechurcharts.org.