About - Ethan Setiawan - Ethan Setiawan, mandolinist

Ethan Setiawan is a Boston-based mandolin player who’s won such accolades as the National Mandolin Championship, the RockyGrass Mandolin Championship, and a full-ride scholarship to Berklee College of Music. His path has wended its way through traditional bluegrass to Bach partitas to free jazz, and his debut full-length album is made up of original tunes drawing from all these wells. The album was conceived and crafted as a whole; the tunes were written for the band, who were chosen for the tunes. To write the album, he dove deep into the compositional techniques and tunes of some of the pioneers of the current wave of bluegrass: Bela Fleck, Matt Flinner, David Grisman and Mike Marshall, to name a few. After months of writing, discarding, and editing, a body of tunes emerged as clear candidates for a record. Over several years, the community around Ethan in the Northeast and Midwest evolved into the perfect band for a project such as this. The band features Julian Pinelli and Avery Merritt on fiddles, Sam Leslie on guitar, and Jacob Warren playing bass. Skilled engineer and mandolinist Dan Bui of Twisted Pine engineered and mixed the album. The recording process took place at the Record Company in Boston, and the resulting album contains close friends and bandmates, a batch of carefully crafted tunes, and the freshest grooves in bluegrass. He has shared the stage with musicians like Julian Lage, Darrell Scott, Bryan Sutton, Mike Marshall, Tony Trischka, Darol Anger, Casey Driessen, the Steel Wheels, Don Stiernberg, Matt Flinner, and Jacob Jolliff. He’s a member of bands Mudskippers, Corner House, The Harmolodic String Band, and Theory Expats.

"Vibrant, thoughtful, and beautifully interactive"

Julian Lage

"Ethan is one of those greatly informed young musicians of today who knows the roots of the music he is creating, but is not afraid to search and carve out his own voice within this new tradition.”

Mike Marshall

“The future of acoustic music is in good hands!”

Bryan Sutton

"Ethan Setiawan is a student of mine of whom I am most proud...given the results his combination of talent and discipline have yielded thus far, it will be very exciting to hear what comes next."