Banjo | Grace Van’t Hof | Intermediate | Period 3 | Week 2 (July 13-18, 2025)
It’s all about the song! A big part of playing in a band is interpreting and arranging songs to give them a fresh and personal new feel. Over the course of the week we will tackle a new bluegrass or bluegrass-adjacent song each day and work through the chord progression, talk about finding a key, and transposing different techniques and common licks to suit it. The banjo is a remarkable tool that has something to add to so many songs in a myriad of styles. We’ll work together and listen to what other players have chosen to do in the past while we create a new interpretation ourselves using tools we accumulate throughout the week.
About the Instructor
Michigan’s Grace van’t Hof discovered the banjo in high school when they built a five-string prototype that won second place in a statewide science olympiad. Inspired by a classical and liturgical music background and artists from Charlie Poole to Puccini, Grace’s banjo, ukulele, and accordion playing proffer equal parts rhythm and ornamentation to projects of varied musical genres, though never straying too far from the genre bending pop, country, and stringband music of the 1920s and 30s.
A founding member of both the Grammy-nominated group Della Mae and the internationally known old-time group Bill and the Belles, van’t Hof’s career has taken them around the world. In addition to performances with various Detroit ensembles, Grace also tours the U.S. and beyond with the bluegrass group Chris Jones & the Night Drivers.
In their writing and solo work, Grace seeks to explore, map, and poke holes in the varied and complicated roles of men, women, and those in between in early country, bluegrass, gospel, and old-time music.