Chris Thile

bluegrass · newgrass · folk

Chris Thile is an American mandolinist, singer and composer born February 20, 1981, in Oceanside, California. He began mandolin lessons at age five and by 1989 had formed Nickel Creek in Carlsbad with siblings Sara and Sean Watkins; the trio's self-titled 2000 album and its follow-up This Side (2002), which won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, made them one of the most visible acoustic acts of their generation, and they reconvened for A Dotted Line in 2014. In 2006 Thile founded Punch Brothers, the quintet he still fronts alongside fiddler Gabe Witcher, guitarist Chris Eldridge, banjoist Noam Pikelny and bassist Paul Kowert. That band's catalogue runs from Punch (2008) and Antifogmatic (2010) through Who's Feeling Young Now? (2012), The Phosphorescent Blues (2015), the Grammy-winning All Ashore (2018) and Hell on Church Street (2022). Thile's solo records include several for Sugar Hill, among them Leading Off (1994), Not All Who Wander Are Lost (2001) and Deceiver (2004), and, for Nonesuch, Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1 (2013), Thanks for Listening (2017) and Laysongs (2021). His collaborations are unusually wide: The Goat Rodeo Sessions (2011) and Not Our First Goat Rodeo (2020) with Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer and Stuart Duncan; the duo albums Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile (2008) and Bass & Mandolin (2014); bluegrass duets with Michael Daves on Sleep With One Eye Open (2011); and a 2017 duo record with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012 and has won Grammy Awards in folk, contemporary folk and contemporary instrumental categories. From 2016 to 2020 he hosted the public radio variety show Live from Here, which he took over from Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, and he now co-creates The Energy Curfew Music Hour, an all-acoustic variety program for Audible built around Punch Brothers and guest artists. He tours on two parallel tracks, playing solo mandolin-and-voice concerts as well as full Punch Brothers dates.

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