QUILCENE — For the season finale this weekend, the Olympic Music Festival is offering a pair of concerts unlike any heard in its history.
The Jeremy Kittel Band — a quartet specializing in traditional and original bluegrass, Celtic, folk and jazz — will play the festival farm this Saturday and Sunday.
Kittel, along with mandolin man Joshua Pinkham, cellist Nathaniel Smith and hammered-dulcimer player Simon Chrisman, will take the stage at 2 p.m. both days in the Olympic Music Festival’s restored, century-old barn.
The musical program will be announced from the stage each afternoon.
A native Michigander, Kittel went to the University of Michigan and then earned a master’s degree in jazz violin from the Manhattan School of Music in 2007.
He’s played on public radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” won the Detroit Music Award for Outstanding Folk Artist and is a U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion and two-time Junior National Scottish Fiddle Champion.
“They are some of the best musicians I’ve ever met,” Olympic Music Festival artistic director Julio Elizalde said of Kittel’s band.
“I’ve been blown away by their creativity, spontaneity and commitment to their craft,” he added.
“They’re on par with any of the great classical artists we’ve had here this season.”
At the family-friendly concerts this weekend, listeners can sit inside or outside on the grass where the music is broadcast.
They can come early, too, as early at 11 a.m. when the gates open, to stroll and picnic.
Tickets range from $14 to $32. The festival farm is at 7360 Center Road in Quilcene, 18 miles south of Port Townsend.
This weekend’s performances cap the first Olympic Music Festival season under Elizalde’s direction.
The San Francisco Conservatory and Juilliard School alumnus succeeded festival founder Alan Iglitzin, who retired just before the season began.
For information and reservations for this final weekend, phone 360-732-4800 or visit www.OlympicMusicFestival.org.
