Excitement is running high for the Syncopaths‘ return to Pasadena this Saturday, July 6, at 8 p.m. in Caltech’s Beckman Institute Auditorium.
This quartet puts a spirited spin on Celtic and American folk traditions. They’ll be playing a blend of classic and new songs, including many from “Be Like the Sea,” their latest album. Advance tickets are available online here.
The Syncopaths can knock you over with the powerful singing by Christa Burch (in red in photo above) and get you jumping with the lively interplay of fiddle and mandolin by Ryan McKasson (left) and Ashley Hoyer, gaining extra drive from Jeffrey Spero on piano and Burch on the bodhrán.
“Make no mistake, the Syncopaths are nothing short of a Celtic supergroup,” according to the Irish Herald.
Check out their newly released video performance of Tear My Stillhouse Down. This song written by Gillian Welch is one of the classics on their new album. Others include Robert Tannahill’s Fly We to Some Desert Isle and Bill Monroe’s The One I Love is Gone. Some tracks on the album are medleys, such as William Blake’s Dead, by Rodney Miller, paired with bandmember Ashley Hoyer’s Wamena Valley, and the title track, by Cathie Ryan, paired with bandmember Ryan McKasson’s Culloden.
The Syncopaths delighted a Pasadena audience at their 2011 concert in our four-decade series of folk music performances. A video from that evening presents a medley of Saoil A Mhor and Antsy Pants.
This Saturday’s concert will be in Beckman Institute Auditorium, where all 200 seats put you near the performers. It is inside the rectangular Beckman Institute building at 400 S. Wilson Ave., Pasadena, just west of the larger, round Beckman Auditorium on the Caltech campus. Free parking is available after 6 p.m. in lots to the east and west of Michigan Avenue a block south of Del Mar Boulevard and also in two parking structures on the west side of Wilson in the first block south of Del Mar.
Tickets are $25 each, or $10 for Caltech students and anyone age 16 or younger. Buy them online here. A $4 service charge per ticket applies to orders online and by phone (626-395-4652) through the Caltech Ticket Office, which is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays (but closed on Thursday, July 4, and possibly the next day). There is no service charge for tickets purchased in person at the ticket office when it is open, in the Keith Spalding Building at 1200 California Blvd. It’s wise to call before you go there, in case of a special schedule.
Some tickets will be available at the door, with no service charge, for purchase only with cash or check. It’s too early to say how many. We have, unhappily, needed to turn away some would-be ticket buyers at the door in the past, when tickets sold out. We’d recommend you arrive early if you don’t have advance tickets. If you’ve waited until the last day to get tickets and would be driving some distance to the concert, you could call 626-616-4559 on Saturday for updated information about availability of tickets.