Friday, July 7, 2006 (7 - 10pm)

Wide Open Spaces is pleased to host the grand opening of Marlborough's newly renovated "Olde Firehouse", downtown Marlborough's newest performing arts venue located at the corner of Bolton and Main Streets. Join us to kick off the 2006 "Summer in the City" series sponsored by Marlborough 2010, Inc.

7:00 - 7:45 Hot Club of Marlborough

Local restaurants will be offering discount appetizers, drinks, and desserts, so have a bite and then come to the Olde Firehouse to digest the "aprés-dinner music" of the Hot Club of Marlborough, featuring the jazz violin and fiddle tunes of Jason Anick.

Marlborough's Jason Anick has been turning heads for a long time with his facility on the violin. At age six, he won the Bolton Fair Fiddle Contest's Junior Junior Division. As a teenager, he played for President Clinton at the Martha's Vineyard Ag Fair and performed in Japan as part of the Marlborough exchange program with its sister city Akiruno. He was concert master of the Marlborough Orchestra and the first violinist to play with the MHS jazz band. He is currently studying jazz violin at the Hartt Conservatory in Connecticut.

With Peter Anick on rhythm guitar, the Hot Club of Marlborough will present a program of swing tunes in the style of Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, interspersed with Irish and country fiddle tunes.

8:00 - 10:00 Wide Open Spaces, with special guest fiddler Jason Anick

Continue the celebration with a concert of bluegrass, ballads, and blues from Metrowest's most versatile bluegrass band, Wide Open Spaces. Featuring Marie Demers on vocals, the Spaces take you on a wide open tour of foot-tapping bluegrass that runs the gamut from Bill Monroe to the Beatles - full of harmony singing and hot picking on fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and banjo.

The band combines the talents of five veterans of the New England acoustic music scene. Marlborough resident Peter Anick is well known to fiddlers as a columnist for Fiddler Magazine - his musical travels have taken him to Gypsy campfires, Irish pub sessions, even longhouse dances in Borneo. Glenn Nelson on banjo runs the Mockingbird Music Store in Berlin, where he builds custom-made banjos and guitars. Marie Demers recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of her popular folk duo "Chuck and Mud". Matt Carlen is a sought after guitar teacher in Worcester and bassist Chris Dombrowski from Maine beats on the stand-up bass like a chiropractor (which he is). Together, they put a colorful, contemporary spin on good old-time bluegrass.

Just back from Mark O'Connor's Nashville Fiddle Camp and a guest appearance at Northampton's "Django in June" Festival, Jason Anick will join the band for some jazzy fiddle tunes.