Blame the gentrification of bluegrass nation on O Brother, Where Art Thou?, NPR, or handsome young bands like Nickel Creek, whose ability to cross over to an open-minded rock audience must chafe home-pickin’ traditionalists to the calloused bottoms of their clogging toes. Of course, bluegrass has been through this all before, when college folkies discovered Bill Monroe and his brethren; since then, it’s never been a purely hick endeavor. And someone like Darol Anger makes us grateful for that. This fiddle and violin virtuoso approaches bluegrass with musicianship so precise, intelligent, and classically ground that the rustic vernacular gets lost in his own searching and all-inclusive approach to the music. The Turtle Island Quartet, Anger’s jazz-oriented acoustic band, gave him the opportunity to perfect complex playing styles of his own invention; indeed, no one plays quite like him, although folks like Stephane Grappelli, Mark O’Connor, and Bela Fleck line up to accompany him. On this tour, lucky young Nickel Creek singer Sara Watkins joins Anger for an evening of bluegrass that is really much bigger than a genre usually gets. 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org
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