Jens Krüger & Jonah Horton @ Key City Sessions

Name: Jens Krüger & Jonah Horton @ Key City Sessions
Start: 2025-01-04T19:30:00-05:00
Location: 402 E Main St., Wilkesboro, NC

Schedule

Sat, 04 Jan, 2025 at 07:30 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

402 E Main St., Wilkesboro, NC | Wilkesboro, NC

Don't miss banjo virtuoso Jens Krüger (of the Krüger Brothers) alongside prolific mandolin player, Jonah Horton, for a special evening of bluegrass, jazz, and roots fusion.
Doors at 7:30 PM. Music at 8:00 PM. Event is free. Suggested event donation of $10 - $20. For parking, please use the driveway to the right of the home (not the left) or any public parking nearby (e.g. Yadkin River Greenway access to the left of Mavis Tire).
JENS KRÜGER
Originally from Switzerland, Jens Kruger began playing North American folk music at an early age and was particularly inspired by recordings of Doc Watson, Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe, and other progenitors of country, bluegrass and folk music.
Jens and his brother Uwe started singing and playing instruments at a very young age. Growing up in a family where music was an important part of life, they were exposed to a wide diversity of musical influences. The brothers were performing regularly by the time they were eleven and twelve years old, and they began their professional career in 1979.
While Jens has written and continues to write the music for all of The Kruger Brothers’ original tunes, in 2006, Jens began his “official” venture into the themes and forms of classical music when he was commissioned to write Music from the Spring for banjo, guitar, bass and full symphonic orchestra. Since then, he has received three commissions to write classical pieces which The Kruger Brothers have performed with various orchestral ensembles: Appalachian Concerto with string quartet; Spirit of the Rockies with a small orchestra, and most recently in 2013, Lucid Dreamer, a chamber music piece written specifically for and commissioned by the Kontras Quartet and debuting in 2014.
Jens is a member of the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame, having been inducted in 2011. In 2013, he was awarded the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass Music. Jens is the first winner of the award who resides in North Carolina and the first born outside of the United States. Happy Traum, guitarist, folksinger, teacher, and writer for aspiring musicians, has described Kruger as, “One of the world’s most musically sophisticated and technically accomplished five‐string banjo players.”
While Jens plays in a melodic style that has roots in bluegrass, his music is distinguished by long, melodic passages and a complex compositional foundation, often building on jazz or classical themes and techniques.
See more at krugerbrothers.com.
JONAH HORTON
An improviser at heart from the mountains of North Carolina, Jonah Horton blends his wide array of influences such as Joni Mitchell, Sam Bush, John McLaughlin, Jaco Pastorius, and Béla Fleck to create his signature sound that is easily recognizable whether he is playing mandolin or bass. As a sideman, he has worked with John Cowan (Newgrass Revival, The Doobie Brothers), The Krüger Brothers, Joseph Henson (US Army Blues), Charles Billingsly, and Scott Vestal (Sam Bush Band). His love for performance, when paired with his passion for creating a unique fusion of folk, jazz, bluegrass, and Americana, make him an exciting artist for any music lover to enjoy.
He began playing mandolin at the age of seven and immediately fell in love with music. He grew up attending bluegrass festivals and fiddler's conventions nearby his hometown of Wilkesboro, NC. During his childhood, he got the opportunity to perform with and learn from many established artists such as Sierra Hull, The Steep Canyon Rangers, Sam Bush, The Appalachian State University Big Band, The Krüger Brothers, and more. A particularly notable performance from his childhood was being selected by the International Bluegrass Music Association's (IBMA) Kids on Bluegrass program to perform at the La Roche Bluegrass Festival in the French Alps in 2015 at the age of 13.
As a teenager, Jonah was a founding member of The Trailblazers as a mandolinist (2016-2020). This group was a progressive bluegrass ensemble that went on to win two IBMA Momentum Awards, toured across the eastern US, and released two albums, the most recent of which, Space and Time, he produced and arranged.
In 2021, he graduated from Appalachian State University with a bachelor’s degree in marketing with a sales concentration, but he continued to pursue music full-time. That summer at age 19, he traveled to Nashville, TN to be the featured mandolinist on Scott Vestal's upcoming Bluegrass 2022 instrumental project which featured an all-star cast including Vestal (3x IBMA banjo player of the year), Cody Kilby (Ricky Skaggs, The Travelin' McCourrys, 1x IBMA Guitar Player of the year), Randy Khors (Grammy-winning resonator guitarist), Byron House (Nickel Creek, Dolly Parton), and Tim Crouch (Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks). Bluegrass 2022 received multiple IBMA nominations, including a second-round ballot appearance for Jonah for IBMA mandolin player of the year. In the fall of 2021, Jonah began attending Liberty University to study music, and bought his first electric bass that August.
With a quickly growing interest in jazz, funk, and R&B fueled by a summer of playing electric mandolin with The Eli Yacinthe Band, Jonah made the decision to study bass as his primary instrument while at Liberty. He quickly picked up the new genre and instrument and was honored to be the featured bassist on acclaimed jazz saxophonist Joesph Henson's (director of jazz studies at Liberty University) 2022 release "A Thousand Words" after only playing bass for ten months. In 2023, he was the featured mandolinist on the Krüger Brothers' Doc Watson 100th Birthday Celebration which also featured Grammy-Award winning dobro player Jerry Douglas.
Jonah graduated from Liberty University in May of 2024 with a master’s degree in music performance and is plowing full-steam-ahead with his music career. Most recently, he appeared as the featured mandolinist on John Cowan's (The Doobie Brothers, Newgrass Revival) new album "Fiction". In the fall of 2024, Jonah got the opportunity to go on a three week tour of Switzerland as a featured artist with the Krüger Brothers and even got to perform two nights with the Swiss National Orchestra. Jonah currently plays with several groups including The Krüger Brothers, The Jay Ware Group, The Kim Fox Band, and more. He recorded a solo project in the summer of 2023 titled "Let in the Light" that was released in the October of 2024. For more information on this project, see the "Let in the Light" tab on this website.
See more at jonahhorton.com, and follow him on Instagram @jonah.horton.music.