Mountain Stage

Featuring performances by:

Janis Ian

Multiple Grammy Award-winning artist, songwriter and musician Janis Ian is celebrating a lifetime in music. Having written some of pop music’s most evergreen songs — “Society’s Child,” “At Seventeen,” “Jesse,” and “Stars,” among them — Ian is embracing a new milestone: the art of the farewell. Set for release on January 21, 2022 on her own Rude Girl Records, “The Light at the End of the Line” is Ian’s latest and last solo studio album to bookend a kaleidoscopic catalog that began with her 1967 self-titled debut.

Beppe Gambetta

Beppe Gambetta is a guitarist, vocalist, researcher and composer born in Genova, Italy in 1955, who developed a style of concert presentation that brings American and European roots to speak together with one voice. In his unique approach, Gambetta blends energetic grooves with passionate melodies, giving new life to sources from different times, periods and places. In addition, the original music he composes gives contemporary influences to traditional roots music.

Lido Pimienta

Afro/Indigenous/Colombian/Canadian/punk/folklorist/traditionalist/transgressive/diva/angel. There are so many layers to Canadian-Colombian singer Lido Pimienta’s identity that you might get lost in them. But if you did, you’d be missing the point. Her multi-textural, mind-bending voice and music project what Canada’s “The Globe and Mail” called her “bold, brash, polarizing” persona, which constantly confronts the powers that be. But it also reveals an embrace of the Afro- and Indigenous traditions that is at once defiant, delicate and sweetly nostalgic.

Chris Haddox

Chris Haddox is a West Virginia born (Logan) and based (Morgantown) musician who’s never met a stringed instrument he couldn’t master. He writes and sings his voluminous collection of songs about — in his own words — “religion, firearms, courthouse squares, goats on trampolines, shoes, fiddles, and hurricanes,” whatever catches his eye. He is also a community leader who has directed Habitat for Humanity and worked to preserve old neighborhoods, a WVU professor of sustainable design, and an amateur musicologist who researches musicians from the southern coalfields of West Virginia.

ABOUT MOUNTAIN STAGE

For nearly 40 years, “Mountain Stage” has stood as one of the most beloved and enduring programs in public radio history, broadcasting thousands of raw, unforgettable performances by rising stars and veteran legends alike from the series’ humble home in Charleston, West Virginia.

“From the start, we wanted to make a show where the music could speak for itself,” says co-founder, artistic director and longtime host Larry Groce. “We didn’t want to chase trends or build a cult of personality; we just wanted to showcase the kind of art that deserved to be heard.”

Groce launched “Mountain Stage” as a regional production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting in 1983 alongside executive producer Andy Ridenour and chief engineer Francis Fisher. Bookings on the two-hour, Sunday afternoon program were eclectic, to say the least, with each episode showcasing a handful of artists across a broad range of styles and genres. Audiences responded favorably to the unique mix of down-home talent and household names and the show quickly gained National Public Radio distribution and a national audience.

Groce stepped away from hosting duties earlier this year, handing the microphone to Grammy Award-winner and West Virginia native Kathy Mattea.

“If someone was going to invent a job that combined all of my passions and all of my skills, this would be it,” Mattea reflects. “It’s just the perfect fit in every way. There’s something quintessentially West Virginia about ‘Mountain Stage.’ It’s a culture steeped in humility and generosity, which makes for a groundedness, for a sense of continuity and community that I think artists are really drawn to.”

“Mountain Stage” has been a staple in Morgantown since 2004. It became a regular event in the University Arts Series in 2015 and quickly became a favorite among season subscribers.

“Mountain Stage” is produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting. The live radio show is taped for air and heard on nearly 300 radio stations nationwide and globally via NPR Music.

WVU Canady Creative Arts Center
WVU, Creative Arts Center, Fine Arts Drive, Morgantown, WV, USA