WDVX presents

David Wilcox

Wednesday, May 14, 8 p.m.

David Wilcox’s songs travel. Like a drive across America in an Airstream trailer, they offer fascinating new places and ideas, along with time to drink in their meaning. That’s no coincidence. The highly regarded singer-songwriter recently returned from two years of traveling with his wife and son in an Airstream trailer. A native of Ohio, Wilcox has based his career out of the South since the 1980s, when he emerged as a live performer in North Carolina and won the music industry’s attention in Nashville. As Wilcox’s career has evolved, in appearances everywhere from seminaries to theaters, and biker bars to yoga centers, he’s found an audience ready to receive his particular brand of road wisdom. Airstream is his fourth CD.

Circle Modern Dance presents InSight

Friday, May 16, and Saturday, May 17, 8 p.m.

InSight, an evening of movement and performance, promises to bring new perspective and grande entertainment as audiences will be witness to performance art as a multi-visionary, extra-sensory, mega-physical expression of fabled wonderment. Dancers will fly and fairy tales will come to life on the evenings. Following months of training, Circle dancers will captivate audiences with the debut of aerial dance on silks, never performed by Knoxville dancers on a Knoxville stage. The aerial experience will be deepened with never-before-seen video footage, collected from the Spirit of Knoxville’s recent trans-Atlantic Balloon Launch, a first of its kind experiment which successfully flew a small, un-manned balloon over the Atlantic ocean. CMD artistic director Joy Davis and local experimental musician Jen Rock have collaborated to fold the balloon footage into a sound and movement landscape, creating a five-part work culminating on how new perspective brings change and growth.

Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile

Wednesday, May 21, 8 p.m.

Within a year of their formation, Punch Brothers are already playing to sold-out crowds across the United States and preparing to release their second recording project. Comprised of the young and blazingly talented musicians Chris Thile (mandolin), Gabe Witcher (fiddle), Chris Eldridge (guitar), Noam Pikelny (banjo), and Greg Garrison (bass), the band has captured the attention of music lovers of all kinds, from bluegrass to classical, veteran to novice. Their first album, How to Grow a Woman from the Ground, was released September 2006 to great critical acclaim and received a Grammy nomination for Best Country Instrumental Performance for the song “The Eleventh Reel.” In March 2007, Punch Brothers premiered “The Blind Leaving the Blind,” a long-form, four-movement chamber suite composed by Thile, at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. The piece is included on Punch, which was released February 26 on Nonesuch Records.

Over the Rhine

with Mary Gauthier

Wednesday, May 28, 8 p.m.

You’ll hear some of the greatest songwriting in American music today during this phenomenal show! The Bijou welcomes back Over the Rhine, who last visited in March with Ani DiFranco. Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist were named to Paste magazine’s list of 100 Best Living Songwriters. Their latest disc, The Trumpet Child, features the pair’s evocative, earthy songwriting and impassioned delivery at its finest. Mary Gauthier has been acclaimed for her dark and powerful songs; 2005’s Mercy Now was listed on a score of year-end best-of lists. Her new CD, Between Daylight and Dark is receiving similar praise. “Gauthier’s songs startle with authority and detail. If she keeps this up, one day she may assume the mantle of Johnny Cash...” — New York Daily News.