WXPN Welcomes:
Darlingside with Maggie Pope at Bryn Mawr Twilight Concerts
Friday, August 8, 2025 | Doors at 6pm | Show at 7pm
Produced by Rising Sun Presents in partnership with Lower Merion Township
All Ages! Kids 12 & younger may attend for free & do not need a ticket
This show is Rain Or Shine (No Refunds)
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Location / Directions / Parking:
The Bryn Mawr Gazebo's address is: 9 S. Bryn Mawr Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
> Click here for directions
Metered parking spots are free after 6pm. Non-metered spots are free, including the Library / Gazebo parking lot
> Click here for more parking info
The Bryn Mawr Gazebo is just a couple of blocks from Septa's Bryn Mawr Regional Rail train station, and a bus stop on Lancaster Ave
> Click here for more public transit info
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About Shows at Bryn Mawr Twilight Concerts:
🍺 Beer & other beverages will be available for purchase on-site
🍕 Outside food and non-alcoholic beverages are allowed to be brought into the concert
🚭 The Bryn Mawr Gazebo Park is a smoke-free venue
🪑 Patrons may bring lawn chairs and blankets
🤝 Please note: Low beach chairs and blankets only in front of the white line
👍 Tall camping chairs are permitted behind the line
♿︎ The concert site is accessible to all, as are our on-site restrooms
🎟️ All guests should enter via the RSP “Box Office” Tent located on Bryn Mawr Ave, by the Gazebo, with tickets (paper or digital) ready to be scanned
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For more information & to buy tickets in person without service fees:
Visit BrynMawrTwilightConcerts.com + call or email the Ardmore Music Hall Box Office:
> 610-649-8389 | info@risingsunpresents.com
Tickets can be purchased at the AMH Box Office with NO SERVICE FEES!
> Hours: M-W-F from 12PM – 5PM + before & during shows
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About Darlingside
Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify
Everything Is Alive, Darlingside’s fourth LP, marks a subtle but remarkable departure for the Boston-based quartet NPR once described as “exquisitely arranged, literary minded, baroque folk-pop.” While the album retains much of the lushness and sophistication of Extralife (2018) and Fish Pond Fish (2020), the band’s latest work highlights the individuality of the four songwriters in a way that adds a fitting element of reinvention to an album that captures brilliantly the quality of the moment in which it was made. Grappling with change both personal and universal, with quandaries domestic and existential, Everything Is Alive is an album about loss and the struggle for a semblance of redemption.
Comprised of Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, Harris Paseltiner and David Senft, four likeminded multi-instrumentalists who first met at Williams College in 2009, Darlingside’s career has been defined by the elegance of their compositions and the remarkable unity of their four voices. Their talent for harmony and melodic world-building is part of what garnered praise from outlets like NPR, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker, and what has created demand worldwide for their extraordinary live performances. Becoming beautifully unindividualized has, in other words, worked very well for Darlingside in the past. With a vigor and discipline more common to graduate-level writing workshops than to indie rock, Darlingside have, over the years, experimented with all manners of idiosyncratic methods for elevating and upholding a truly democratic process of songwriting—processes that include multiple rounds of group writing and recording exercises—all with the aim of escaping the trap that bands with multiple songwriters often fall into: the ruse of ego-driven infighting and artistic incoherence.
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About Maggie Pope
Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify
Life has taken some interesting and unexpected turns for Philadelphia-based Singer-Songwriter, Maggie Pope. Like most people, she had always had a response to the question: “so… what do you do?”. The answers slowly shifted over time to accommodate the various passions that occupied the largest spaces of her life: Athlete. Biologist. Educator. Mother.
Music was there. A steady undercurrent that floated in and out of her consciousness. It was the involuntary and persistent humming of melodies that totaled a second grade teacher’s efforts to keep her apparent intolerance of humming in check.
The music… the light… it had to find the cracks. That available space in the life of a biology major and dual-sport Division I athlete with All-American honors and a brief stint on the US Women’s National Water Polo team under her belt and occupying her world. The space through her work as a marine biologist and then environmental educator, where she worked passionately to share a deep love and respect of a natural world that she cared so very deeply about.
The space in motherhood.
“Motherhood hit like a freight train”, she says. “I once read something that likened motherhood to being on a little boat adrift in the sea. Your baby is the captain and you are just along for the ride, bobbing up and down along with the swells and dips in the ocean. The sleepy smiles that threaten to melt you, and the sleepless nights that threaten to break you.” She would also soon experience a shift in her personal world as a profound and significant loss hit the extended family. Grief, isolation, and that heavy weight of loss mingled strangely with the joy and comfort that came with the birth of her fourth child. All the cracks this time.
And so the music crept in. Nap-time practice and some dabbling into the world of songwriting eventually led her to a local open mic. “I awkwardly stumbled through quiet, fingerpicked renditions of Dolly Parton’s Jolene, and one of my favorite Townes Van Zandt tunes, If I Needed You. “ she says. “My now very dear friend, Adam Monaco, was the host at the open mic that night. I still remember his words when I finished playing - he looked at me, paused, and said... you are a star”.
Eventually, she and Adam together founded the folk band, Under the Oak, and teamed up with their friend, John Fisher at Winding Way Records, signing to his label… cheerleaders. They played festivals and coffeeshops, recorded a studio album, and recruited Chris Peace and Peter Oswald to join the band, making it a quartet. And then on January 25th, 2019, Maggie Pope released a 5-song collection of organic, home-recorded folk tunes on the Winding Way Records label… it was a humble endeavor that started on a quiet night in June of the previous year, when she recorded the songs within the walls of a modest bedroom closet, so as not to wake her children who slept just down the hall. The tracks eventually made their way into the hands of Shani Gandhi, Grammy-winning producer and engineer, who mixed the EP and polished up the songs before release.
This debut solo offering, June Tapes, resonated authentically with listeners, many of whom noted a nostalgic quality to her vocals that seemed to hold a sensitivity and texture harkening back to voices the likes of Eva Cassidy or Joan Baez. The cracks are all bigger now and perhaps not even cracks at all anymore, but permanent fixtures that nourish a steady flow of creativity and purpose. She has emerged a respected songwriter; blending poetic lyrics with a performance that brims with introspection and vulnerability - songs that invite the listener to embrace all the sundry of emotions that clothe the human spirit.