Local axe slammers representing the best of Champaign-Urbana’s music scene will perform in true ELLNORA style in a FREE pre-festival Local Heroes concert on Tuesday, September 3 at 6:30pm. Tim Donaldson of Timmy D and Blind Justice has curated a lineup that promises a high-energy night of rock standards and original music.

ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival held at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts on the University of Illinois campus September 8-10 celebrated its fourth incarnation this past weekend.

On September 8, 9, and 10, 2011, a prestigious assortment of the globe’s greatest musicians will gather for ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival, situated in the vibrant micro-urban setting of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The biennial event provides an unparalleled mixed-genre experience that features performances from many of today’s most distinguished music-makers in a diverse array already being emulated by other festivals.

Tony Rice and Chris Thile & Michael Daves are among the artists to perform free shows at ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival at Krannert Center in Urbana, IL, September 8-10, 2011.

Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo will perform a solo suspended guitar score for Buster Keaton’s 1922 silent film Cops at ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival at Krannert Center in Urbana, Illinois, on September 9, 2011.

Ranaldo’s score for Krannert Center will feature the suspended guitar phenomena of this American musician/record producer/visual artist who’s best known as a co-founder of Sonic Youth. Rolling Stone ranked Ranaldo as #33 of its 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, describing his music as “his own language of strange and blissful guitar noise.”

Grammy Award-winning guitarist and composer Bill Frisell and experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison have collaborated to create The Great Flood, a 75-minute multimedia work of original music and film that will have its world premiere at ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival a

Luther Dickinson, one of Rolling Stone’s “new guitar gods,” has been selected to serve as artist-in-residence at ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival at Krannert Center in Urbana, Illinois, September 8-10, 2011.