Music Maker Foundation Returns to Telluride for the 2021 Festival
Music Maker Foundation programming will include artist performances, a photo exhibition, book talks from founder Tim Duffy and more!
Music Maker Foundation - dedicated to helping the true pioneers and forgotten heroes of Southern music gain recognition and meet their day-to-day needs.
As the 2021 Telluride Blues & Brews Festival draws closer, we are thrilled for the opportunity to once again partner with and contribute to the endeavors of the Music Maker Foundation (MMRF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. This year’s programming will include artist performances, a photo exhibition, book talks from non-profit founder Tim Duffy, a photo booth and more!
Drink House Lounge & Exhibition
Back again this year, the festival will host the Music Maker Foundation Drink House Lounge and Exhibition in the Blues Stage lobby. This lounge and exhibition will feature art, a record listening station and music history/educational programming that reflects Music Maker’s mission and culture. The new Music Maker Drink House will give attendees a chance to take a peek at American music history.
The MMRF was founded to preserve the musical traditions of America's South by directly supporting the musicians who make it, ensuring their voices will not be silenced by poverty and time. Through programs dedicated to cultural access, musical development and musician sustenance, the Foundation gives future generations access to their heritage through documentation and performance programs that build knowledge and appreciation of America's musical traditions.
Blue Muse, Hanging Tree Guitars Book Talks with Timothy Duffy
Wednesday, September 15
4:30 - 5:30 pm Madeline Hotel & Residences
Saturday, September 18
4:00 pm Outside of the Music Maker Drink House at the Blues Stage
Join us for book talks featuring Timothy and Denise Duffy, co-founders of the Music Maker Foundation. They will profile the foundation's most recent books: Blue Muse: Timothy Duffy's Southern Photographs and Hanging Tree Guitars by Freeman Vines with photographs by Timothy Duffy. Tim will share stories and insights from his career working with Southern roots musicians, talk about his exploration of the unique process of tintype photography, and Denise will discuss the mission of Music Maker Foundation that supports these musicians financially and creatively.
About Blue Muse
The tintype is rooted in more than 150 years of photographic method. In this collection of extraordinary portraits, Timothy Duffy brings new vitality to this old form, capturing powerful images of musicians who represent the roots of American music. These American blues, jazz, and folk artists are living expressions of a cultural legacy, made and remade by everyday people and passed down through generations. In the hands of the people in Duffy's portraits, centuries-old traditions find new expression in this digital millennium. Likewise, Duffy's photographic techniques fuse old forms and the original collodion wet plates with modern lighting. In this collaboration between photographer and artist, music and image meet around a history of struggle, adaptability, and creativity. It is this ethos that Duffy captures in his tintypes.
Some of the musicians in Duffy's photographs have found fame, but most have not. While the world finds inspiration in the grassroots creativity of these musicians, barriers of class, race, and place often keep them under acknowledged and obscured. But in these photographs, Duffy demands they be seen.
About the Hanging Tree Guitars
To meet Freeman Vines is to meet America itself. An artist, a luthier and a spiritual philosopher, Vines’ life is a roadmap of the truths and contradictions of the American South. He remembers the hidden histories of the eastern North Carolina land on which his family has lived since enslavement. For over 50 years Vines has transformed materials culled from a forgotten landscape in his relentless pursuit of building a guitar capable of producing a singular tone that has haunted his dreams. From tobacco barns, mule troughs, and radio parts he has created hand-carved guitars, each instrument seasoned down to the grain by the echoes of its past life. In 2015 Vines befriends photographer Timothy Duffy and the two begin to document the guitars, setting off a mutual outpouring of the creative spirit. But when Vines acquires a mysterious stack of wood from the site of a lynching, Vines and Duffy find themselves each grappling with the spiritual unrest and the psychic toll of racial violence living in the very grain of America.
Music Maker Artist Performances and the Music Maker Revue
The Telluride Blues & Brews Festival is pleased to present traditional blues and gospel sets from Music Maker Foundation artists throughout the festival on the Main Stage, Blues Stage, Campground Stage and at Juke Joint late night shows! Enjoy performances from Gospel Comforters, Robert Lee Coleman, Herman Hitson, Sugar Harp, Albert White, Ardie Dean, Fred Thomas and a mix of the artists together for a special Music Maker Revue.
Music Maker Foundation
Since their founding in 1994, the Foundation has assisted and partnered with over 300 artists, issued over 150 albums and reached over a million people with live performances in over 40 states and 17 countries around the globe. We are honored to work alongside this compassionate organization in an effort to ensure the continuity of some of the purest and most honest forms of music in American history. Want to get involved? You can change lives with a simple music shop purchase or by making a tax-deductible donation today.
"What is worth keeping is worth passing on. Help preserve American music"