Saturday night, Lisa and I saw the Punch Brothers at the Diane Wortham Theater in downtown Asheville. Some people would describe the Punch Brothers as Chris Thile’s band. He is certainly the most notable name in the band, stands center stage, etc., but it’s unfair to his band-mates to simply call it Chris Thile’s band.

They played to a sold-out theater full of old, young, and in-between fans. It was Thile’s birthday and as the second set opened, the crowd spontaneously sang Happy Birthday to him. The band picked up our key quickly and played along.

These guys have taken over the new-grass acoustic string virtuoso space previously held by the “Strength in Numbers” crew (Fleck/Bush/Douglas/Meyer/O’Connor), who, along with Tony Rice, pushed the boundaries of acoustic string music over the last couple of decades.

Taking nothing away from the giants, on whose shoulders the Punch Brothers stand, this new breed is truly climbing higher. Every one of them is an absolute virtuoso on his instrument and they push themselves and the audience at every turn. These young men could play bluegrass standards in their sleep and still blow your socks off. Instead, they roll out pieces such as “the second half of the first movement – the most requested half of that movement” of Thile’s 45-minute chamber piece Blind Leading the Blind. It is virtually through-composed (not the familiar verse/chorus repetition) with tempo and rhythm changes throughout. And yet there’s not a sheet of music in sight – it’s all memorized.

Their sense of ensemble is as good as any chamber orchestra or string quartet I’ve ever seen (which is quite a few). And their joie de joue, particularly Thile’s, reminds me of nothing so much as Yo-Yo Ma’s ineffable delight in being in the middle of the music he helps to create.

Imagine watching a figure-skater do a routine that was nothing but the most difficult moves imaginable and nailing every one. Furthermore, doing those moves with easy grace and fluidity that made you 100% sure that he simply was not going to fall. Period. That was what it was like being at the Diane Wortham Theater Saturday night.

This all translated to the crowd, which was pre-loaded to love the show. Asheville is an acoustic music hotbed and the relationships between people in the town and the band members run deep. So the crowd was absolutely silent for every note (modulo the Happy Birthday outburst), giving the musicians the same courtesy they would an orchestral performance. [1]

Here’s the deal: if everybody, every one of us, was as good at his job as the Punch Brothers are at theirs, the world would have virtually all of its problems licked in a generation or two.

But talking about a music performance is, as somebody wrote so well, like dancing about a painting. Here’s the band [2] performing Cazadero in San Francisco. When they did this Saturday night, I sat there with a stupid grin on my face the whole time. I didn’t want the moment, or the song, to end. For those 4-5 minutes, the world was basically a perfect place. And lest you think this was just yet another “bluegrass breakdown” sort of instrumental piece, watch closely right around 3:00. The four lead instruments are doing intertwined melodies that weave an exquisite whole.

There is something life-affirming about watching a group of people truly excel at something; it made me glad to be part of the human species.

[1] This is one of the aspects of modern music that I detest. Why did we suddenly decide it was okay to talk, shout, scream, etc. during a musical performance just because the musicians (and audience) aren’t wearing tuxes and ball gowns?

[2] One personnel change since: the bass player is now a 22-year-old recent Curtis Institute graduate (and Edgar Meyer prodigy) named Paul Kowert. It’s clear this kid could have picked any orchestra or chamber group (pretty much world-wide) he wanted to be in; he chose the Punch Brothers.