Tommy Emmanuel in Ottawa

Tommy Emmanuel is an Australian acoustic guitarist, born in Muswellbrook, New South Wales, in 1955. He is known for fingerstyle playing that carries melody, bass and rhythm at once, heard on pieces such as “Angelina” and “Mombasa,” the album Endless Road and his arrangement of “Classical Gas.” Chet Atkins gave him the title Certified Guitar Player. In 2000, Tommy Emmanuel performed with his brother Phil at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games. Later concert releases documented his solo touring work: Center Stage was recorded at the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, while Live at the Ryman captured a theatre performance in Nashville. A Tommy Emmanuel concert is typically a solo acoustic set in which he plays melody, bass lines, chords and percussion on the same instrument. His long-standing stage instrument is an Australian-made Maton acoustic guitar.

Molly Tuttle is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, born in Santa Clara, California, in 1993. She plays bluegrass and roots music shaped by precise flatpicking, and became the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year award. Her albums include When You’re Ready, Crooked Tree and City of Gold; Crooked Tree won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. Following Crooked Tree, Tuttle toured with Golden Highway, the band assembled around the record, and brought the material to the Grand Ole Opry. Their shows center on her guitar and vocals in a bluegrass lineup of banjo, fiddle, mandolin and bass. The group later took City of Gold on the 2024 Down the Rabbit Hole Tour.