Live from the Grange returns to West Tisbury Friday night at 7 p.m. with a performance by Nashville-based folk musician Sean Della Croce, who has spent every summer calling the Vineyard home.
“I took my first steps on the Island when I was a baby — it’s a very special part of the world that means a lot to me,” Ms. Della Croce said in a phone interview from Nashville. “Every day that I’m home, I wish I was on the Vineyard.”
The show is the third installment in the series, a partnership between Circuit Arts and MVY Radio. Tickets for the show, like most Circuit Arts events, are pay-what-you-can in an effort to make arts programming more accessible to all, said Brooke Ditchfield, director of theatre and live arts for the organization.
Ms. Ditchfield said she and her husband, Brian Ditchfield, executive director of Circuit Arts, first met Ms. Della Croce on the Island at a dinner party, where she played some of her music toward the end of the evening.
“It was just, kind of, one of those Vineyard nights where you’re hanging out at someone’s house,” Ms. Ditchfield said. “And someone gets out a guitar and then you think, oh wow, you’re really amazing.”
Ms. Della Croce’s music is open, emotional and guitar-forward and often draws on her Nashville roots, where there is a strong tradition of narrative songwriting. It’s all about honesty and storytelling, she said.
“It’s not music that you’re necessarily going to break out a dance routine to,” she said, laughing. “But it’s music that I would hope somebody would play very loudly in their car as they thoughtfully drive down a highway.”
As she begins to write a song, Ms. Della Croce thinks about what story she will tell. Most times, her songs evolve organically — “out of pure inspiration,” she said. She focuses on capturing vignettes of a specific time period, place, person or experience. She said lyric-driven narratives are her “true north,” at the heart of all of her music.
“Everything around that, for me, is just furniture,” she said.
Her last show on the Vineyard was in 2019 at Alex’s Place at the YMCA. Ms. Della Croce said she is excited to return to the Island for another performance.
“I find Vineyard crowds to be a singer-songwriter’s dream,” she said. “They’re all such great listeners, so it’s always a fun experience as a performer.”
The energy of the Grange Hall’s second floor space inspired Circuit Arts to produce intimate live music performances, which eventually led to the creation of Live from the Grange. Each iteration of the series pairs a young musician with an established headliner, who provides mentorship and often invites the younger musician to open the show.
“It was really a brainchild of Brooke and Laurel Redington at MVY,” Mr. Ditchfield said. “I love the intimacy of the space and the connection that the musicians have with the younger, up-and-coming generation of musicians on the Island.”
In June, Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School student Viggo Bossi wowed crowds as he opened for Willy Mason, and 12-year-old Fiona Brown opened for John Forte in July.
“It highlights and gives the stage to our next generation of musicians, being up there with the established ones,” Ms. Ditchfield said. “And it makes for a pretty special and unique evening.”
Friday’s show will be no different — regional high school student Elliot Stead will open for Ms. Della Croce.
Ms. Della Croce hopes people will enter the show with the same openness they would a dinner party. Most of all, she wants people to feel more understood, by her and each other, when they leave at the end of the show.
“If even one song can accompany one person through something they’re experiencing in their life, whether that be heartbreak, grief or loss, or joy and delight, I want somebody to feel like wow, Sean Della Croce really stood by me on that.”
For tickets and information, visit circuitarts.org.
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