Vince Gill, 20-time Grammy Award winner, will headline and host ‘String Fever,’ a concert benefitting the Tennessee State Museum Foundation. Gill has sold more than 26 million albums, earned 18 Country Music Association (CMA) Awards, and is an inductee into the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and most recently received his Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Joining Gill will be an all-star cast of 20 legendary musicians, including Phil Brown, Larry Carlton, Steve Cropper, Duane Eddy, Steve Gibson, Rory Hoffman, Johnny Hiland, John Jorgenson, Colin Linden, Jack Pearson, Al Perkins, Andy Reiss, Marty Stuart, Guthrie Trapp, and Steve Wariner. The back-up band includes the multi-talented musicians Peter Abbott, Kenny Greenberg, Jon Jarvis, and Michael Rhodes.
The performance will take place on Wednesday evening, December 12 at TPAC’s Polk Theatre beginning at 8:30 pm. Tickets may be purchased at the TPAC box; online at patron.tpac.org; or by phone at 615-782-4040. A special VIP ticket package includes a VIP reception prior to the concert at the State Museum, reserved priority seating, the 150-page companion exhibition catalog for ‘The Guitar: An American Love Story,’ and a one-year individual membership to the Tennessee State Museum Foundation.
The benefit concert ‘String Fever’ is presented by the Tennessee State Museum Foundation in conjunction with the exhibition, ‘The Guitar: An American Love Story,’ featuring a selection of some of the rarest guitars ever created. More than 150 world-class guitars, both vintage models and celebrity owned favorites, which have been gathered from private and museum collections will be showcased at the State Museum, including Vince Gill’s cherished 1942 Martin D-28. The free exhibition is sponsored by Gibson Guitar Corp., City National Bank, C.F. Martin & Co., PLA Media, Cotten Music, and Nashville Arts magazine.
This is the only time in which this remarkable, assembled collection will appear together in one gallery, available to the general public.
‘The Guitar: An American Love Story’ has been organized by the staff of the State Museum in collaboration with a group of area collectors which the museum’s Executive Director Lois Riggins-Ezzell describes as a “dream team/brain trust” of guitar aficionados: Walter Carter, Joe Glaser, George Gruhn, Jay Pilzer and Paul Polycarpou.
Guitarist and devoted collector Paul Polycarpou, now the CEO and editor of Nashville Arts magazine, said that he has been enamored with string instruments since he was a young boy growing up in London, England.
“It would be hard to replicate this sort of exhibition anywhere else in the world,” he said. “This collaboration is uniquely Nashville.”
The exhibit will be on view through December 30. It also includes an orientation video and viewing stations where visitors can see and hear the soul and personality of the instruments in the hands of great musicians, past and present. Tennessee State Museum, 505 Deaderick Street, is open Tuesday–Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm; Sundays from 1 to 5 pm.
