Formed in 2006, Punch Brothers are composed of five musicians — Chris Thile (mandolin), Gabe Witcher (fiddle), Chris Eldridge (guitar), Noam Pikelny (banjo) and Paul Kowert (bass), and have captured the attention of music lovers across several genres around the world.

CAPA presents Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile at the Lincoln Theatre, 769 E. Long St. at 8 p.m. Feb. 13.

Tickets are $25 at the Ohio Theatre Ticket Office (39 E. State St.), all Ticketmaster outlets, and www.ticketmaster.com.

The group’s first album, How to Grow a Woman from the Ground, received a Grammy Award nomination, and 2007’s Punch featured Thile’s ambitious four-movement chamber suite, The Blind Leaving the Blind, which received much critical acclaim. The band debuted the piece in March 2007 at a sold-out performance at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall as part of composer John Adams’ "In Your Ear Festival."

The resumes of the members of Punch Brothers—whose name is taken from the Mark Twain short story, “Punch, Brothers, Punch!”— are formidable. For more information, visit www.capa.com.

Chris Thile
Widely regarded as one of the most interesting and inventive musicians of his generation, Thile has changed the mandolin forever, elevating it from its origins as a folk and bluegrass instrument to the sophistication of jazz improvisation and classical performance. For more than 15 years, Thile played in the popular band Nickel Creek, with whom he released three albums for a combined 2 million records sold, was awarded a 2002 Grammy and traveled the world on sold-out concert tours. As a soloist, he has released four albums of varying musical styles.

 
Gabe Witcher
Witcher began his musical training at age 5, learning classical violin and bluegrass fiddle simultaneously. By age 6, he was performing professionally with his father in the bluegrass band The Witcher Brothers. In 1994, Witcher was recruited by veteran musician Herb Pedersen to fill the shoes of three-time national fiddle champion Byron Berline in the group The Laurel Canyon Ramblers. By age 17, Witcher was recording for heavyweights such as Randy Newman, Bernie Taupin and producer Don Was. He has since contributed to more than 300 records and countless movie and television scores, including 2006 Oscar winner Brokeback Mountain.

Chris Eldridge
Although initially drawn to the electric guitar, by his mid-teens Chris Eldridge had developed a love for acoustic music thanks in part to his father, a banjo player and founding member of the seminal bluegrass group The Seldom Scene. Eldridge later gained exposure to a variety of different musical styles while studying at Oberlin Conservatory, where he earned a degree in Music Performance in 2004. During his time at Oberlin, Eldridge studied with legendary guitarist Tony Rice. Before joining Punch Brothers, he was a founding member of the critically acclaimed bluegrass band The Infamous Stringdusters.

Noam Pikelny
Pikelny hails from Chicago. During high school, he played all over Illinois and Indiana with several traditional bluegrass bands. He studied music at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, before loading up the truck and moving to Boulder, Colo. In 2002, he became the principal banjoist with the award winning Colorado ensemble, Leftover Salmon. His debut solo record, In the Maze, was released on Compass Records and in 2006, he relocated to Nashville to play with New Grass Revival bassist and vocalist John Cowan. He started performing and recording withThile in 2005, and relocated to Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2008. 

Paul Kowert
Kowert is from Madison, Wisc., and recently graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. As a classical musician, Kowert has performed with various orchestras as a soloist and as a section member, most recently playing in the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland in the summer of 2008. He was one of the performers at Edgar Meyer’s Carnegie Hall workshop in 2006, and since then, has appeared in concert with Darol Anger’s Republic of Strings, Tristan and Tashina Clarridge, Alex and Tatiana Hargreaves, Futureman’s Black Mozart Ensemble, Jordan Tice, Brittany Haas and Jeremy Kittel.