Orrin Star - Millennium Stage (August 21, 2012)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ม.ค. 2025
- The Maryland-based award-winning guitarist and mandolin player combines hot picking, cool singing, and good humor to create an unforgettable live concert experience.
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I am a childhood friend of Orrin. I wrote this remembrance for his mother, Aura Star. Remembering Orrin Star: Acoustic Musician, Music Educator.
My heart is heavy with the passing of a childhood friend, neighbor, Orrin Star. Kendall Park NJ is a suburb, set between NYC and Philadelphia. We lived at 16 Stockton and the Star family was kitty-wampus @ 15. This post war community of Ranch homes, was designed to facilitate the young-couple GI bill loan. 1/3 of an acre, 1,500 sq/ft home for $14,000. We played in the woods and the street, summer block-parties were the norm. Orrin was one of the older kids and was cast as “the-monster” in the first super-8 horror movie our neighbor made, because he was taller than everyone else, Orrin was 9, I was 2 ½ years younger. We used a cold-oatmeal-poultice to make a distorted face on Orrin, he walked with a limp, mimicking the low-budget B movies in the 60’s……….
Orrin was drawn to music and began playing early on, Orrin had wisdom and a mature focus beyond his years, he was disciplined and studious, his mother Aura, a Professor of Botany at a local college, infused their home with dynamic cultural sources, books, objects, food, a Garden of Curiosity!
From the time I was 9, I recall being around Orrin as he played acoustic guitar. He was clear and confident. Later around 11, I often asked him to play a Dylan tune, like Hard Rain, Masters of War, Positively 4th St., Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat, etc., he would entertain us and then play us some obscure tune he was working on. Over time he turned me onto Rev. Gary Davis, Doc Watson, Flatt & Scruggs, David Bromberg, Jorma Koukonen and deeper Roots music-history.
At 17, Orrin began a house-painting-business in the Spring of 1973, I was 15 and worked as his assistant. We painted homes and offices from North Brunswick to Princeton in NJ. I was eager and fine with heights so once, I spent 3 weeks on a 40 ft ladder, painting the top 2 floors of a 3 floor Apt. building, rolling lap-siding, brushing it out, Orrin painted the first floor and trim. During lunch we would head to a Kosher-Deli, grab a roast-beef-sandwich, spicy-dill pickle, wash it down with a Cel-Ray-soda. We painted private homes in Princeton, interior, exterior. During lunch, we would be very careful to paw through the family’s album collection, select records, play on their fancy turn-tables and return them to the place we found them dust-free! Orrin would make comments about the cord changes and compositions, I would learn to separate the individual musicians and understand the mosaic of an ensemble. We would eat dinner in his car, before heading to a night job in an office building. Orrin would pull out his guitar, play for an hour as we ate. He would practice traditional bluegrass songs, flat-picking-style, I’d ask him to play a Rev. Gary Davis song, David Grisman, or Bromberg and the Grateful Dead from Bear’s Choice. Around mid-night we would take a break, Orrin would walk around the office-space playing his Martin Guitar, trying to figure out which room had the best acoustics, he played a bluegrass version of “Kodachrome” by Paul Simon, jamming into the traditional “Goi’n Down the Road Feeling Bad”, we would work until 3am, head home. July was soon ending, Orrin mentioned he had an extra ticket to see The Band and The Grateful Dead, Aug 1, Roosevelt Stadium, Magic, my first show!
Orrin was diverse and deeply talented. In high-school he played soccer, tennis, table tennis, he was graceful, understood strategy, he was an intellectual and graduated as a junior, to attend Antioch in OH, which has a tradition of student-self-governance, activism and social-justice. Orrin could have made a contribution in any of those fields,….. and did, by celebrating the American-Song-Book of Traditional-Acoustic-Music! He had the flat-picking syndrome, in 1976 he entered the National Flat-Picking Competition in Walnut Valley, Winfield KS. Orrin was 21, played flawless and beat Mark O’Connor, Jimmy Gyles and Billy Kay. American Roots music was in a revival stage, America’s Bicentennial 1976 Flat-Picking-Championship: won by a Jewish kid from the NJ suburbs!
Orrin touched many people’s lives with his infectious musical talent and crisp Sephardic-comedic sense of truth, a House-Concert was a therapeutic, ritualized, cornucopia of sonic-craft seasoned with political and cultural wit! Orrin’s full contact-sport of entertainment is how to live and why we live………Goi’n down the road…………
I will leave you all with this clip of Orrin Star playing: South Wind/Colored Aristocracy /Blackberry Blossom on mandola.
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Visit Orrin’s web-site and listen to the songbook of America: www.orrinstar.com/
RIP old buddy. We made some good music together.
You sure did mate. Premium blend contains my favourite renditions of some bluegrass and old time numbers. Both of your guitar styles and vocals worked perfectly together. I only wish there was more!
amazing performance, love orrin star! RIP to the late legend