Chris Thile

No mandolin player below the age of 50 has done more to stretch the boundaries of that instrument than Chris Thile. Now in his mid-40s, Thile began playing 40 years ago, forming his first band—the eventual progressive pop bluegrass standouts Nickel Creek­—long before he was 10. When that band began to achieve crossover status at the start of the new millennium, though, Thile was not content to ride its wave of popularity. He began churning out exploratory solo albums with contributions from esteemed elders like Béla Fleck and Jerry Douglas and then considering how his mandolin might fit in wider contexts. As he began working with bassist and mentor Edgar Meyer, he also launched Punch Brothers, a band of bluegrass ringers who toyed with form by including a 40-minute suite about divorce on their first album and generally roping in ideas of jazz improvisation and classical harmony into their songs.

Thile is a MacArthur fellow with multiple Grammys and IBMA accolades, but he remains a relentless experimenter and technician, constantly practicing while scouting new directions. To that end, he released a set of Bach sonatas and partitas for solo violin in 2013, taking care to ace every nuance and complex idea. “I spent most of its development and execution worrying about whether Bach would like it,” he has said of that first batch of Bach. But on a new set of partitas and sonatas, released late in 2025, Thile tosses at least parts of the rule book out, recording himself in parks and concert halls and Tennessee hotels as he aims to express his spiritual understanding of these pieces as much as their endless technical aplomb. He records this music because he simply loves to practice and play it, so why not have fun with it? Thile performs Bach on solo mandolin at Big Ears 2026.