Friends of Warner Parks have announced the final Full Moon Pickin’ Party of 2009 on Friday, October 2nd. This fundraiser features Middle Tennessee’s finest bluegrass music from 7:00 – 11:00 p.m. under the light of a full moon. All of the monies raised from this laid-back affair will go directly back into the Parks to ensure preservation, protection, funding educational programs…

The list of contributing artists to a new CD, The Road Home, A Tribute to Butch Baldassari, reads like a chapter from Who’s Who in Acoustic Music.

In other words, some of the top names in several genres of acoustic music “combined to give us this great musical tribute to mandolin master Butch Baldassari,” according to a statement issued by the label, Sound Art Recordings.

Gallatin, Tenn. — Several groups have gotten in line to play for the 16th annual McReynolds Memorial Bluegrass Music Spectacular, which will be staged Thursday (Feb. 12) in the Gallatin (Tenn.) Civic Center.

This year’s show will honor the memory of Nashville-based mandolinist Butch Baldassari, who died Jan. 10 after battling inoperable brain cancer.

Tributes are piling up for the late mandolin great Butch Baldassari, who died this past weekend in a Nashville, Tenn., hospital.

Appropriately, those seem to be finding a central location on the Web site, www.mandolincafe.com, which is an Internet hangout for mandolin enthusiasts.

According to a posting there from Lelia Sinclair Baldassari, Butch Baldassari’s widow, a funeral service will be held Saturday in Scranton, Pa., and a memorial service is planned Jan. 31 at the Blakemore United Methodist Church in Nashville….

Butch Baldassari, a beloved mandolinist in the bluegrass community, has died, according to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where he was an instructor.

According to the school, Baldassari died Jan 10 at a Nashville hospice. He was 56.

Baldassari was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor nearly two years ago, according to the Vanderbilt Web site. In 2007, some of his friends including musicians Ricky Skaggs, Bela Fleck, Mark O’Connor and Dierks Bentley, participated in a benefit concert at the university to help defray his medical expenses….