Liam Grant, Sam Boston, Jeremy Kizina at RIVEN in Burlington, Sunday, March 15: Nestled unassumingly in Burlington’s South End, RIVEN — the design studio of local furniture maker and experimental musician Matt Hastings — occasionally hosts shows. One such evening last month, Vermonter Jeremy Kizina performed solo on his effected Martin acoustic guitar, easing the small, seated crowd into what was to come. Up next was Liam Grant, a Boston guitarist whose meditative compositions encourage disassociation: In one section, Grant strummed the same chord every 15 seconds or so, and after an indiscernible amount of time I began to float away, carefree and content. To finish the evening, Connecticut’s Sam Boston played a single piece on his “electric duochord with wheel” — a hand-cranked, hand-built device with a wooden wheel riding two bass strings attached to a two-by-four, not unlike a hurdy-gurdy. Again, the listener was led into a state where time and space ceased to exist, distanced from today’s harsh realities. I bet we could all use some of that.
This article appears in Money & Retirement Issue • 2026.
