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0000017b-f971-ddf0-a17b-fd73f3be0000For 25 years, KPBX Kids' Concerts have brought different genres of music and performances to generations of children. These family concerts are at the heart of the station's mission to provide music awareness and entertainment to our listening region, which compliments our on-air programming.Eight free one-hour concerts are held throughout the year at rotating venues. At each concert, attendees may be treated to a mix of music and historical information. Each KPBX Kids' Concert highlights a musical style. Past concerts have featured classical, jazz, big band, folk, bluegrass, latin, calypso, reggae, klezmer, rockabilly, and lots more.ALL KPBX KIDS' CONCERTS ARE FREE.

KPBX Kids' Concert: Caridwen Irvine-Spatz & Kevin Brown Concert Broadcast

Spokane Public Radio would like to thank everyone involved in this recent performance of SPR Folk Producers Kevin Brown and Caridwen Irvine-Spatz at the KPBX Kids’ Concert.

Thanks to:

• Caridwen Irvine-Spatz, Greg Spatz, Kevin Brown and Caleb Brown.

• Verne Windham, Chris Maccini, Leona Vander Molen, Stephanie Ingoldby, Alexis Lucey and SPR staff.

• Event donors: Numerica Credit Union, Harvard Park Children’s Learning Center North, and Rocket Bakeries, with a grant from the Johnston-Fix Foundation.

• Spokane Public Radio members and volunteers.

On KPBX 91.1 on Friday, June 12, at 10 a.m. you could hear performances by two of our own community producers, Caridwen Irvine-Spatz, host of Nacho Celtic Hour, and Kevin Brown, host of Front Porch Bluegrass, with guests. We worked to bring the music and fun of our Kids' Concerts to you in your own home. You can see videos of the perfomances below!

KPBX Kids’ Concerts continue this August with a concert of classic and fun summer songs with Linda Parman and Steve Simmons. More information will be on the website soon!

Caridwen’s husband Greg will be joining her for this special concert, and Kevin with be joined by his son Caleb.

Special thanks to KPBX Kids' Concert donors Harvard Park Children's Learning Center NorthNumerica Credit Union, and Rocket Bakeries, with a grant from the Johnston-Fix Foundation.

About the musicians:

Caridwen and Greg Spatz have been playing music together since first meeting in 2000, as instructors at the British Columbia Bluegrass Workshop in Sorrento, BC.  Founding, core members of the celebrated Washington State acoustic world-music quartet Mighty Squirrel, they are known as well for their stellar, individual fiddle work with the ever popular bands John Reischman and the Jaybirds (Greg) and Prairie Flyer (Caridwen).  As a duo they sometimes accompany autoharp legend Bryan Bowers, and they are session regulars around the Spokane area.  

Aside from their musical endeavors, both Caridwen and Greg are acclaimed artists in other fields.  Greg is a fiction writer with six published books to his credit, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Washington State Book Award, and short stories published in The New Yorker, New England Review, and The Iowa Review, to name but a few. He also teaches in and directs the MFA program for writing at Eastern Washington University. And Caridwen, after many years as an apprentice repair-person in Spokane’s premiere violin shop, Violinworks, went to Portland, ME in 2014 to study violin building with the world renowned builder, Jonathan Cooper.  She’s been making violins ever since. Both of the violins she plays on their latest album, All Along the Sea, are from her own bench. 

 

Singer-songwriter Kevin Brown makes his home in rural NE Washington state, not too far from the farms where two sets of great-grandparents settled a century ago. The rich natural surroundings serve as a metaphor for exploring the landscapes of the heart and soul that play out in Kevin's songs. Over the past 10 years Kevin has released four critically-acclaimed albums of original material, including his latest, Heroes and Sparrows, which was #3 on the national folk radio charts for the month of November, 2019. Kevin also plays mandolin in the long-running rhythm & bluegrass band Big Red Barn.

Caleb Brown grew up in the same little slice of rural NE Washington heaven, and shares a passion for music equal to his father’s, but from an early age gravitated towards Jazz as a musical language, and the saxophone as his instrument of expression. Caleb spent 4 years as one of the principal saxophonists in the acclaimed Whitworth University Jazz Ensemble. During this time he had the opportunity to share the stage with such jazz legends as Joshua Redmond and Chris Potter — the latter with whom he had the thrill-of-a-lifetime experience of trading solos with. Caleb also plays with the local pop supergroup Super Sparkle, and frequently sits in with Big Red Barn.

And again, a big thank you to KPBX Kids' Concert donors Harvard Park Children's Learning Center NorthNumerica Credit Union, and Rocket Bakeries, with a grant from the Johnston-Fix Foundation.