The Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College will present, BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet on Saturday, December 5, 2015 at 8 PM in Milliken Auditorium. Tickets are $27 advance, $30 at the door and $24 for museum members plus ticket fees. Tickets may be purchased on line at www.dennosmuseum.org or by calling the box office at 231-995-1553 or My North Tickets at 800-836-0717.
For the past 40 years, BeauSoleil avec Michael Doucet has been making some of the most potent and popular Cajun music on the planet. Born out of the rich Acadian ancestry of its members, and created and driven by bandleader Michael Doucet’s spellbinding fiddle playing and soulful vocals, BeauSoleil is notorious for bringing even the most staid audience to its feet. BeauSoleil’s distinctive sound derives from the distilled spirits of New Orleands jazz, blues rock, folk, swamp pop, Zydeco, country and bluegrass, captivating listeners from the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, to Carnegie Hall, then all the way across the pond to Richard Thompson’s Meltdown Festival in England.
Since their inception in 1975, BeauSoleil has not only spearheaded a cultural Renaissance but has elevated Cajun music to one of domestic and international acclaim. Along the way, they have appeared regularly on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion and garnered eleven Grammy nominations. In 1998, they became the first Cajun band to win a Grammy for their L’Amour Ou La Folie effort in the traditional folk category. While they’ve introduced their sources of inspiration, Dennis McGee, Canray Fontenot, Varise Connor, Wade Fruge, Dewey Balfa, Amédéé Ardoin and Freeman Fontenot, to new audiences, they’ve also daringly blended zydeco, Tex-Mex, western swing, blues, New Orleans traditional jazz and Caribbean calypso into their framework. As a result, any ethnomusicologist would be hard pressed to speculate where Cajun music would be today without the contributions of BeauSoleil.
Tickets to this concert includes free admission to the museum’s galleries one hour before the concert and a post-concert reception with the performers.
The Dennos concert season is made possible with support from the Robert T and Ruth Haidt Trust and Osterlin Performance Endowment, the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs with media support from WNMC 90.7and TV 29&8. Housing for our performers is provided by the Cambria Suites.
The Dennos Museum Center is open daily 10 AM to 5 PM, Thursdays until 8 PM and Sundays 1-5 PM. Admission is $6.00 adults, $4.00 for children and free to museum members. For more information on the Museum and its programs, go to www.dennosmuseum.org or call 231-995-1055. The Dennos Museum Center is located at1410 College Drive, Traverse City, MI 49686, at the entrance to the campus of Northwestern Michigan College.