MATTHEW LARSEN

On February 29th and March 1st, I’m playing at P.A.C.E. for the 5th Anniversary Celebration Taste of P.A.C.E. I’ll be performing 2 songs each night. It should be a fun show– basically a ‘review’ of all the music, theater, dance, comedy, etc. that’s been on the P.A.C.E. stage for the past 5 years.

I remember walking around the Easthampton Fall Festival with my cousin Steve Biegner and meeting Sonia for the first time. She suggested that we stop in and soon after we booked ourselves a Smokejumpers show. In the very early days of P.A.C.E., the rooms weren’t separated and there were folding chairs only. There were three risers and that was about it. I think we played a few shows with me on piano, Steve Biegner on guitar, and Adam Bach on bass. We each had our own little 4′x5′ riser. It was fun times. We used to document these things in our livejournal, but I haven’t read that in years.

Between Smokejumpers shows, Northernly shows, Steve Biegner shows, and my own performances at P.A.C.E., I really feel like I’ve made a little dent in the P.A.C.E. stage. I’ve seen some really wonderful shows there too– Haunt, Stephen Brodsky, Mark Schwaber, The Low Anthem, David Berkeley, Swing Caravan. So I’m psyched that I’ve been asked to play this event, because I get in for free to see everyone else playing and performing on those nights.

Also, Steve Biegner and Julia Suriano are the leads in the upcoming production of West Side Story, so some sort of tidbit of that will be happening I imagine.