VIP tickets and regular tickets are available, along with picnic baskets provided by Hal ‘n Mal’s. 

The Mississippi Museum of Art presents An Evening of Music in Architecture with Mississippi architect and musician James Ray Polk and The Mississippi Sawyers, a concert celebrating the connection between music and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. 

Wright’s work first inspired Polk as a young musician who believed his future would be in music. Encountering Wright’s buildings in books  changed everything. “I remember thinking,” Polk recalls, “this is more than walls and roofs—these buildings have a soul.” That moment led him to a career in architecture spanning four decades, including teaching at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. 

Now the journey has come full circle. Polk has written and recorded a collection of mandolin-based instrumental compositions inspired by the music of Bill Monroe and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. The album, Organic Architecture, will be released in June and performed across the country as An Evening of Music in Architecture at iconic Wright sites including Fallingwater, Taliesin, and Taliesin West. 

This special concert in The Art Garden at MMA celebrates the Museum’s stewardship of Fountainhead, a beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Fondren.  

Polk performs with The Mississippi Sawyers, a bluegrass ensemble rooted in the Piney Woods of south Mississippi. The band features Shelby Kemp on guitar, Alexis Frenette on fiddle, Jim Elledge on banjo, David Pellow on bass, and James Polk on mandolin. 

All proceeds from the concert will go to the restoration of Fountainhead.