Acoustic Music Legend Darol Anger Releases Valedictory Album Diary of a Fiddler #2: The Empty Nest

“Darol’s music has been life-changing for me in all our collaborations over almost 25 years. His vision and selfless contribution to roots music and jazz are incredibly important and really unmatched, and the whole community of players and listeners loves him for it.” – Bruce Molsky

Adhyâropa Records is thrilled to announce Diary of a Fiddler #2: The Empty Nest (ÂR00128), the extraordinary new album by acoustic music legend Darol Anger. Intended as a summation not only of his career as a performing and recording artist but also as a capstone to his enormously influential career as an educator, Diary of a Fiddler #2 appears as the acoustic world prepares for the 50th anniversary of the hugely influential David Grisman Quintet recordings which featured Anger. To herald the occasion, and to author a bookend to his own career, he has called upon dozens of his former mentees – three generations of fiddlers – who, taken together, make up a veritable who’s who of the violin-playing world.

Just a sampling of the talent Anger calls upon in this collection of duets and trios is eye-popping: Mike Barnett (in possibly his final recorded performance), Alex Hargreaves (Billy Strings), Brittany Haas (Punch Brothers), John Mailander (Bruce Hornsby), Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (Molly Tuttle), and more than twenty more fill the album with astounding virtuosity, an authoritative collective statement on the state of contemporary violin, and serve as Anger’s valedictory address to the world of acoustic music he had an outsized role in creating.

Indeed, Anger’s contributions to the acoustic music world read as a history of the genre itself. After launching his career with the epochal Dawg Music recordings, he was GRAMMY-nominated for his project Fiddlers 4 (with Michael Doucet, Bruce Molsky, and Rushad Eggleston), was a founding member of the Turtle Island String Quartet and Mr Sun (featuring Joe Walsh and Grant Gordy), made recordings for the Windham Hill label which sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and created the Republic of Strings, a repository of American fiddle styles which helped to further the careers of Punch Brothers’ Brittany Haas, Jeremy Kittel, and Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins. He has collaborated with musicians such as Dr. Billy Taylor, Bela Fleck, Willie Nelson, Mavis Staples, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bill Evans (both saxophone & banjo), Edgar Meyer, Jerry Douglas, Snuffy Walden, Bobby McFerrin, Bill Frisell, Tony Rice, Mark O’Connor, Michael Hedges, Barbara Higbie, Mike Marshall, and Stephane Grappelli. He is a MacDowell and UCross Fellow, and has been a featured soloist on dozens of recordings and motion picture soundtracks.

But this project is a celebration of his influence as an educator, which can not be overstated. Anger is Professor Emeritus at Berklee College Of Music, operates his innovative online fiddle school at Artistworks.com, and has taught at The Swannanoa Gathering, Rockygrass and Wintergrass Academies, Augusta Heritage, the Mark O'Connor, Alasdair Fraser, Julie Leiberman and  Mike Block String Camps, Amherst College and Interlochen summer programs, and more. He received a 2020 International Bluegrass Music Association award for Distinguished Achievement for his mentorship and support of young string musicians. He held the string chair of the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE), and was a founding member of IAJE’s String Caucus. He has been a contributing editor for Strings Magazine and a member of the Editorial Board of the American String Teacher’s Association (ASTA), with over fifteen years of presentations, clinics and performances delivered at ASTA and MENC conventions.

The new album speaks to his passion for mentoring young fiddlers. The first track, ‘Liza Jane Parade,’ kicks off the proceedings with a rollicking, collective improvisation featuring no fewer than twenty-two fiddlers. “I hit upon the idea of having each fiddler improvise remotely on a track which I created at home, in a New Orleans Second-Line style,” Anger says. “Because each person had to record their part at home individually, each fiddler only played to my original track. There was an arrangement, and everyone knew the general plan and chord changes, and everyone was invited to express themselves freely within these parameters. The result is mad, uplifting, hilarious, and absolutely hair-raising.”

Among the highlights, nearly too numerous to single out, are the incendiary shred-fest ‘The Coal Burnin’ Grease Fire’ featuring Avery Merritt (Sierra Hull) and ‘You Noticed Too,’ a wistful, harmony-draped song featuring The Lonely Heartstring Band’s Patrick M’Gonigle. ‘The Amen Corner,’ a funky, gospel-tinged mid-tempo jam session, features Casey Driessen, who along with Rushad Eggleston is credited with taking the “chop” technique Anger developed (extending Richard Greene’s invention which he used to solidify the pocket behind Bill Monroe) and taking it to new heights. 

‘Key Signator,’ featuring Alex Hargeaves (Billy Strings) and Nathaniel Smith (Kacey Musgraves) in a reunion of their famously telepathic collaboration with Sarah Jarosz, is a showcase for Anger’s versatility as well as a perfect illustration of his effect on younger generations. Fully four decades Hargreaves and Smith’s senior, Anger nimbly leads the trio with sinewy fiddle declarations while Hargreaves and Smith dance in and around Anger’s lines with gymnastic grace, and the three blur roles of soloist and accompanist seamlessly. They speak a common musical language in the way a family speaks with the accent brought from the old country by its patriarch.

This album also features a touching tribute to the great Mike Barnett, who experienced a debilitating brain aneurysm shortly after his ‘Liza Jane’ overdub. For the track ‘Liza Jane Reboot,’ Barnett’s original contribution was extracted and re-edited with himself as the featured soloist, with Anger and Barnett’s dear friend Alex Hargreaves as the only accompanists. This document may be the last recording to feature one of the greatest talents the fiddling world has ever known. 

“If it happens by chance to be the last thing I release, I believe I can consider my work on this Earth complete,” Anger says. The acoustic world is fortunate to have had Darol Anger to help shape it these past several decades, and this album is a perfect capstone to a legendary career… or it would be, if it didn’t appear, for all we can tell, that he’s just picking up steam. Play on, fiddler. 

Artist: Darol Anger

Album Title: Diary of a Fiddler #2: The Empty Nest

Label: Adhyâropa Records

Release Date: July 28th, 2025 (single: ‘I Coulda Told U’); August 11th, 2025 (single: ‘The Unbearable Gift’); August 25th, 2025 (single: ‘Liza Jane Parade’); September 5th, 2025 (album: Diary of a Fiddler #2: The Empty Nest)

Purchase: https://darolanger1.bandcamp.com/album/diary-of-a-fiddler-2-the-empty-nest

Performers: Darol Anger (fiddles); with Mike Barnett, Louise Bichan, Hanneke Cassell, Tristan Clarridge, Casey Driessen, Trent Freeman, Brittany Haas, Alex Hargreaves, Tatiana Hargreaves, Ella Jordan, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Carolyn Kendrick, Jeremy Kittel, Kimber Ludiker, Patrick M’Gonigle, John Mailander, Emily Mann, Avery Merritt, Jenna Moynihan, Kathleen Parks, Enion Pelta, Julian Pinelli, Lauren Rioux, Katie Shore, Nathaniel Smith, and Annie Staninec (fiddle)