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Back in Time: The Kingston Trio

Around the time Marty McFly went back in time to make sure his parents sparked, college students Bob Shane, Dave Guard and Nick Reynolds struck up a musical partnership. Their revival of long-forgotten American folksongs interspersed with seemingly off-the-cuff comic patter attracted enthusiastic audiences in California’s North Beach area. Their move to San Francisco led to frequent engagements at packed nightclubs, a representation contract (written on a cocktail napkin), signing with Capitol Records and, by 1958, their first chart-topping hit, “Tom Dooley.” They were the vanguard that created the folk song revival, which produced knock-offs like the Smothers Brothers and the Limelighters and laid the groundwork for Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary and others. Although the personnel began evolving in the mid 1960s, the entertainment ethos of the Kingston Trio has never changed. It isn’t often you get to hear the legend that made it all happen, but this Saturday is your chance when they perform with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra at Artpark. The next afternoon, the orchestra presents an all-Beethoven program that includes the first piano Concerto with soloist Sarah Buechner, and the 9th Symphony, a work so visionary that you can hear Beethoven leaping over the heads of his Romantic successors, pointing the way to Mahler and everything modern that followed.

Saturday, July 14 at 8pm. Artpark (450 South 4th St. Lewiston, 754-4375, www.artpark.net). Call 754-4375 for tickets