Peter Shickele is one of the performers for the next season of the Music Center's Performing Art's Series. Photo courtesy of Public Relations.

When the audience rises for its customary ovation on March 30, 2010, it will conclude a 2009-2010 Performing Arts Series featuring the most prestigious lineup of artists the series has ever seen.

Sauder Concert Hall has been attracting top international recording artists with its world-class acoustics ever since its 2002 opening, but it has never seen such the star-studded lineup as the one announced on Tuesday.

The slated group of performers has combined to receive over 30 Grammy awards. Seven of the eight total acts have been honored, many of them on multiple occasions.

The season will begin on September 19 with Doc Severinsen and El Ritmo de la Vida. Severinsen, best known as the former bandleader for “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” will present a mix of traditional Spanish music and jazz with the Ritmo trio.

Legendary banjo player Bela Fleck will headline the second concert of the year on October 16, playing alongside string bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer and Zakir Hussain, one of the world’s most recognized percussionists, on the Indian tabla drum.

For the first time in Performing Arts Series history, a recognized rock ‘n’ roll act will heat up the Sauder stage when Los Lobos comes to town on November 21.

A cure for the long winter blues will never be far away in 2010. The concert series will only be halfway through when Peter Schickele, best known for creating the comedic character P.D.Q. Bach, entertains the crowd on January 24.

February will bring bluegrass legends Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, recently of “O Brother, Where Art Thou” fame, to Sauder Concert Hall, on February 5, followed by the Julliard String Quartet, who the Los Angeles Times called “the standard by which all other quartets must be judged,” on February 19.

Irish music extraordinaires, The Chieftains, are slated to play on March 5, and the season will conclude on March 30 with the African Children’s Choir, a group of needy children selected from across the continent to perform around the world together.

Season tickets, which begin at $115 for the basic six-show plan, go on sale to the public on April 27. Any remaining individual concert tickets will go on sale in August. Tickets can be reserved by mail, phone or fax as well as by visiting the Welcome Center located in the Union lobby.

Photo courtesy of Public Relations.

Audience members for the final Performing Arts Series concert of the year shouldn’t get too comfortable in their seats.

The main event on Tuesday, Poncho Sanchez and his Latin Jazz band, is sure to have the crowd moving with their Afro-Cuban salsa beats. The evening will also include the highly-anticipated announcement of next year’s Performing Arts Series lineup.

Next year’s cast will feature more combined Grammy awards than any previous lineup in the prestigious series, which has included musicians such as Wynton Marsalis, Dave Brubeck and Bobby McFerrin.

Sanchez – a Grammy award winner for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2000 – is one of the most recognized congueros (conga drum players) in the world.  He will be joined by seven other musicians incorporating bass, bongos, saxophone, flute, trumpet, trombone and many other jazz instruments with Sanchez’s percussion and vocal stylings.

The concert on Tuesday will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Sauder Concert Hall. Tickets, starting at $20, are available by phone at 574-535-7566; online by e-mailing welcomecenter@goshen.edu; or by visiting the Welcome Center in the Union.

But don’t expect the same mix of folk-y bluegrass Thile dealt out as one-third of the former band Nickel Creek. As frontman of his new band, The Punch Brothers, Thile is experimenting with genre-blending.

Where Nickel Creek floated along on pleasant melodies and sweet harmonies, Punch Brothers ramp up the speed and challenge listeners with densely arranged, sometimes contradictory instrumentation on songs like “Punch Bowl,” which sounds more inspired by garage rock than the Appalachian Mountains.

“The Blind Leaving The Blind,” the gigantic, four-movement, 40-plus minute composition that makes up the majority of Punch Brothers’ debut album, “Punch,” covers a nearly indescribable expanse of musical styles and emotions.

In concert the band is known to play not only their own original tunes and bluegrass standards, but cover artists ranging from Bach and Mozart to The White Stripes and Radiohead.

Punch Brothers will perform at 7:30 p.m. on April 3. Tickets are still available at all price levels, starting at $15. Choral terrace seating will be available for $12 once all other tickets sell out. Tickets can be purchased from the Welcome Center by calling (574) 535-7566 or e-mailing welcomecenter@goshen.edu.

Ivers was accompanied by band members Tommy McDonnell (vocals, percussion), who was a member of the member of the “ORIGINAL Blues Brothers Band”; Buddy Connolly (accordion, whistles, keyboards), a three time All-Ireland accordion champion; Greg Anderson (guitar, bouzouki), who played with The Klezmatics when they toured with Itzhak Perlman; and Houseand Leo Traversa (bass guitar), a faculty member of the Bass Collective in New York City.

Ivers and Immigrant Soul performed live in every sense. Ivers sidled up next to Connolly, the fast-plugging accordion-player, for perfectly in-sync duets. Ivers often swapped her fiddle for a deep blue-black, electric violin and dug wildly into its strings to simulate the sounds of an electric guitar.

McDonnell left his post at the drums to lead the audience in singing several tunes, including, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

From the group’s own rendition of “Pachelbel Canon in D,” to slower, more mournful ballads such as “Reconciliation,” a piece which advocates for peace in Northern Ireland, Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul presented their history-rich, melodically beautiful repertoire to the audience of approximately 1,000 people.

Ivers has previously performed in the musical “Riverdance,” as well as with the London Symphony, the Boston Pops and the Chieftains, among many others.

Eileen Ivers & Immigrant Soul perform music from a variety of roots, with African and Latin percussion and bass, Irish instrumentalists and American vocals.

The band includes Tommy McDonnel (vocals and percussion), Buddy Connolly (accordion, whistles, keyboards), Greg Anderson (guitar and bouzouki) and Leo Traversa (bass guitar).

Regular seating for the concert is sold out, but there are $12 tickets available in the choral terrace, located behind the stage. Also, tickets are sometimes returned to the Music Center box office the night before the concert. These tickets would be available an hour before the concert at the box office.

A Capella legend Bobby McFerrin conducts a chorus of volunteers from the audience, many of whom are GC choir members. Photo by Chase Snyder

Everyone at Sauder Concert Hall was out of their seats long before the standing ovation concluded Sunday afternoon’s sold-out Bobby McFerrin concert.

McFerrin may go down in popular culture history as a one-hit wonder who sang “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” But with talent as playful, raw and imaginative as McFerrin’s, the fact that his definitive hit was conspicuously left off the set list did not seem to bother the crowd. They were given several opportunities to go on stage and perform alongside the music legend.

In light blue jeans and a tight, short-sleeved black shirt, McFerrin’s dress was as unassuming as his calm stage presence. After he tied back his long dreadlocks and took a sip of water, McFerrin launched into the first of nearly two dozen songs that showcased his four-octave vocal range, improvisational skills and mastery of the human body as a percussive instrument.

McFerrin scatted and sang his way through six more songs, including a cover of The Beatles’ “Blackbird,” before he finally spoke for the first time and offered an invitation for the audience to sing “Ave Maria” along with him.

This was the first of many subsequent interactions that broke down the typical division between audience and performer. Whether it was an invitation to members to go on stage to accompany his music with interpretive dance, join in on a vocal jam session or provide spontaneous choral backup to a song, dozens of attendees who had anticipated watching an afternoon performance instead became part of it.

Although McFerrin – has a relatively standard repertoire of story and song, witnesses of this real-time creation noticed feelings of immediacy and genuineness rarely found in live performance.

After his impromptu duet with Jesse Landis-Eigsti, a senior, McFerrin requested that the audience sing along. McFerrin said that he had received an e-mail from Vance George, Goshen College alumnus and former San Francisco Symphony Choir director, which said that McFerrin should simply say the words “six-oh-six” and the audience would know what to do.

McFerrin stood silently on stage with a smile as the approximately 900-person audience stood and performed “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow” for him.

“That may be the first time an audience has sang to me like that,” McFerrin said. “Wow!”

It was a show for all ages, as McFerrin’s set list ranged from jazzy scatting and gospel standards to a “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” sing-along and full reenactment of “The Wizard of Oz,” which ended as McFerrin soaked himself in his remaining water.

Perhaps the audience’s only complaint was that McFerrin could not stay around for the customary post-show meet-and-greet. He had to catch a plane that evening to attend Barack Obama’s inauguration in Washington.

Renowned vocalist Bobby McFerrin will play in Goshen College's Sauder Concert Hall next week. Photo courtesy of Public Relations.

Who hasn’t heard 10-time Grammy Award winner Bobby McFerrin’s captivating hit, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”? The song exhibits some of his best-known qualities, including his four-octave range and improvisational use of boops, bops and dweedle-dees.  However, it far from encompasses McFerrin’s music’s versatile use of vocal chords and intuitive comfort in jazz, classical and folk styles.

The Los Angeles Times calls McFerrin’s greatest gift to his audience inviting spectators to become participants and “transforming a concert hall into a playground, a village center, a joyous space.”  This Sunday, Goshen College’s Performing Arts Series invites him to the stage of Sauder Concert Hall.

As a celebrated conductor, McFerrin has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Chick Corea, the Vienna Philharmonic and Herbie Hancock. His weekend performance will exhibit his unique knack for one-man-band explorations of the musical world. As of Wednesday,  choral terrace tickets were still available for Sunday’s concert for $20. For availability, contact the GC Welcome Center at (574) 535-7566.