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“We played at Pomfret Town Hall once, but that was essentially a house concert,” Wright, who grew up in North Pomfret, said during a telephone conversation last week. “The Woodstock Town Hall Theatre is another thing altogether. I went there to see concerts when I was in elementary school. For me, there was no bigger venue than Pentangle for the Arts. It’s very special to me. We’ve played all over Canada, at big halls in Luxembourg and in Hamburg, Germany, but I’m more nervous for this show because of the hometown crowd.”
Wright’s musical memories go back long before he started playing for audiences. While he was growing up in North Pomfret, his parents often hosted jam sessions in the kitchen.
“There would be 40 people downstairs, having this raucous party, playing fiddles and guitars,” Wright said. “I never felt any safer and happier than when I fell asleep upstairs hearing those sounds.”
The next sound to catch his attention was the cello, during a classical concert by Suzuki musicians at the then-Pomfret Elementary School, in which one of his friends in second grade was performing.
“When it was over,” said his father, Will Wright, “he went up to a cello and said, ‘That’s what I want to play.’ ”
The younger Wright stayed with the instrument even though “he did not like to practice,” Will Wright recalled. “It was like pulling teeth. But he loved to play with other people. When we started taking him to lessons in the Burlington area, it was still a battle, but afterward he’d go to rehearsals of the Vermont Youth Orchestra, and he would sit there with rapt attention, never complaining one bit.”
Still, it took a while for him to find a way to play folk music for a living. After graduating from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Wright lived for a while in Los Angeles, scoring documentaries and horror movies and later working as a consultant to producers of radio and television programs. Then in 2011, Fretless fiddlers Trent Freeman, Ben Plotnick and Karrnnel Sawitsky were searching for a cellist with whom to record an album, and a teacher at Berklee recommended Wright.
“They just sent me a cold email, out of the blue,” Wright said. “Essentially they were asking me to quit my job and make a record.”
That record, Waterbound, earned The Fretless awards for ensemble of the year and instrumental group of the year at the 2012 Canadian Folk Music Awards, and led to invitations to perform around North America and Europe. This past spring, the band’s most recent record, Bird’s Nest, won the Juno Award, Canada’s equivalent of the Grammy, for best instrumental album of the year.
“I was crying at the ceremony,” Wright said. “I couldn’t believe it. It’s one of the surreal moments you have in your life. It’s always a dream that you get an award like that, but you never think it’s actually going to happen.”
A member of the audience at a Fretless show later in the year helped Wright come back to earth.
“This guy came up and said, ‘That was amazing,’ ” Wright said. “ ‘You’re no Yo-Yo Ma, but you’ll do.’ ”
The Fretless performs at the Woodstock Town Hall Theatre on Sunday afternoon at 4. While admission is by a suggested donation of $15 at the door, the Pentangle Council on the Arts recommends reserving seats by visiting pentanglearts.org or call 802-457-3981.