Punch Brothers bring their instrumental album to The State Theatre on Feb. 18

The Grammy-winning string band booked a winter Thursday on West College Avenue, months after releasing their first all-instrumental record.

February in State College is the stretch of winter when a night out has to earn the walk down College Avenue. Punch Brothers just gave people a reason.

Punch Brothers play The State Theatre on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2027. Doors open at 7 p.m., the show starts at 8, and tickets run $76.38–$98.87 through the theatre's box office. The date was announced Oct. 20, and the venue lists it in The Friedman Auditorium, its main room.

That is not a cheap ticket by downtown standards, and it is not meant to be. Punch Brothers are one of the most decorated acts working in acoustic music. The current lineup is Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Paul Kowert, Noam Pikelny and Brittany Haas, and the band won the Grammy for Best Folk Album for *All Ashore*, released in 2018.

The reason for this trip is the newest record. *The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers*, the band's seventh album, came out July 24 on Nonesuch Records, and it is their first made up entirely of instrumentals. For a band so closely tied to Thile's voice, that is a real swing: a full record where the five players carry the songs with nothing but strings.

The tour behind it has been on the road through the fall under the name Unsung North American Expedition, with stops at college and civic halls across the country, including Ithaca's State Theatre on Nov. 14. State College gets its turn in the new year, after the band's European dates in January.

A full record where the five players carry the songs with nothing but strings.

The room is a good match. The State Theatre is a restored downtown house at 130 W. College Ave., with seats split between a main floor and a balcony, and it is small enough that a quiet passage on a banjo or fiddle actually lands in the back rows. Instrumental string music lives or dies on that kind of attention, and a seated theatre is where it gets it.

Fans who know the band from its older, vocal records shouldn't worry about being shut out. The new album sets the agenda for the tour, but this is a band with two decades of catalog to draw on, and the setlist is the band's to call on the night.

A few practical notes. Tickets are sold through the theatre's own box office, which you can reach at 814-272-0606 or boxoffice@thestatetheatre.org; that is the place to go for seat questions rather than a reseller. Doors at 7 gives you an hour to find a seat and a drink, and an 8 p.m. start should have most people back out on College Avenue at a reasonable hour on a school night.

It's four months out, which feels like a long time until you remember how fast shows at this price and this size go in a town of this many people who know what a mandolin is. If you want in, the box office is open now.

Sources: The State Theatre, State College, PA (thestatetheatre.org); Events — The State Theatre (thestatetheatre.org); About — The State Theatre (thestatetheatre.org); Ticketing & Seating — The State Theatre (thestatetheatre.org); Punch Brothers — State Theatre tickets (tickets.thestatetheatre.org); Punch Brothers Add Dates to Extensive North American Tour — Nonesuch (nonesuch.com); Punch Brothers Unsung North American Expedition — Hancher Auditorium (hancher.uiowa.edu); Punch Brothers - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)