FOLK/Music Tony Ellis, Banjo tunes and songs

Saturday: 1:40 p.m., Two Rivers; Sunday: 1 p.m. Heritage, 4:15 p.m. Penobscot.

Tony Ellis is a banjo and fiddle player of astounding skill and innovation, a legend among people who really know bluegrass and old-time music. Ellis was born in Sylva, N.C., in 1939. The son of an old-time fiddler, he learned to play banjo from his grandmother, who played in the claw hammer style. What really caught his attention, though, was a new way of playing that was being developed by Earl Scruggs. Ellis and thousands of other young Southerners took up this new style. He learned quickly, and, by the time Ellis was 20, Bill Monroe asked him to join the Bluegrass Boys.

After several years with Monroe and Mac Wiseman, Ellis married and settled down, restricting his playing to weekend jobs. He played with the Beaver Creek Boys in Bristol, Va., and with Dr. Bruce Mongle’s old-time group in the same city. In the mid-’70s he moved to Ohio, where he still lives, and fell in with bluegrass and old-time musicians there. During 1993 and 1994, Ellis was a featured performer on the National Council for the Traditional Arts’ “Masters of the Banjo” tour. In 2003, he was honored with an Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award for the Performing Arts.

Over the years, Ellis has continued to grow as a musician, developing a solo personal style that incorporates bluegrass and old-time elements – a slowed-down, deeply introspective and highly melodic style that is his own. His skills as a composer match his instrumental abilities, and he has created numerous stunning solo pieces for the banjo.

In this century the banjo has been mainly an ensemble instrument played loudly and fast. By playing quietly, slowly and solo, Ellis is finding new ways for banjoists to communicate with those who love the instrument. He also loves to play the fiddle and always includes a tune or two on that instrument in his performances.

Ellis’ unique approaches to the banjo are captured on his recordings, which feature his solo compositions and unusual pairings of the banjo with instruments such as the pump organ, trombone and trumpet. All of the musicians appearing with him at this year’s festival are featured on his latest CD, “The Quest.” They include his wife, Louise, on pump organ, his accomplished son William Lee Ellis on guitar, and Larry Nager on bass, washboard and mandolin.