Seven acts performed at this year’s Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert, showing a diverse sampling of the National Endowment for Arts National Heritage Fellows. These artists are selected by the NEA for proving mastery in practicing and preserving traditional and folk arts in the United States. Talented as they are, there is plenty of room for impromptu musical collaborations.

At the end of the Andy Statman Trio’s set, Dobro player Jerry Douglas joined them for a rendition of “Surfin’ Slivovitz,” a song for Statman’s 2013 album Superstring Theory. This is just a taste of the kind of collaborative jams we can expect at the 2017 Folklife Festival, with an entire program on National Heritage Fellows.

Videography: Shaun Weber, John Wetmore, W.N. McNair, David Barnes, Caleb Hamilton
Editing: Charles Weber