Andy Hall, a key player on the International Bluegrass Music Association's 2007 Album of the Year, will be heading back to the 2008 awards ceremony Sept. 30, along with his five band mates.

And with good reason: He and his chums in the Infamous Stringdusters are up for Best Instrumental Group of the Year at the Grand Ole Opry-based awards show.

Not bad for a native New Yorker who didn't even become aware of the joys of bluegrass until his first year at Berkeley College of Music in Boston.

Not bad for a 2-year-old group that won that IBMA best album honor with its first jump out the recording gate, "Fork in the Road."

Closer to home, we can see what all the award-laden fuss is about, at 8 p.m. Saturday in the Illinois State University Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall.

That's where the critically embraced Infamous Stringdusters will make their area concert debut in a WGLT-sponsored show pitched in the general direction of the station's popular "Acousticity" series.

"As a teen-ager I was playing rock 'n' roll electric guitar, and trying to do it in a sort of Joe Satriani kind of style, as virtuosic as I could," recalls Hall, who handles Dobro guitar chores.

Then the would-be heavy metal god received a Christmas gift from his Uncle Ed: a boxed set of recordings by bluegrass legend Bill Monroe. Uncle Ed, a music attorney in Nashville, obviously had his nephew Andy's best's musical interests at heart.

"That really got me excited about the music and the musicianship - and the energy of it really connected with me."

In fact, says Hall, the leap from heavy metal to bluegrass isn't all that great, when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it.

"The energy and technical skills of Monroe's stuff was always bursting with excitement and energy," and, soon, in between his formal classroom music education during the day, Hall was testing the waters of the Boston area's acoustic scene.

That led to his first bona fide bluegrass band, the Too High String Band, which gigged around the city.

Hall's bluegrass evolution to the music's cutting edge was abetted by his exposure to the assorted acoustic influences on the Boston scene. Hall worked that scene for four years before heading to Nashville.

"I left Sept. 10, 2001, for Nashville," he recalls. "My first day there was Sept. 11, 2001. I'd had four or five gigs scheduled that weekend, but I spent it sitting on a couch trying to figure out what was happening. But at least it made me a little less worried about being new in Nashville, and gave me a broader perspective about being alive and safe."

Eventually, Hall's musical path would lead him into the union destined to emerge as the Infamous Stringdusters: guitarist Chris Eldridge, banjo man Chris Pandolfi, fiddler Jeremy Garrett, mandolin-meister Jesse Cobb and upright bassist Travis Book.

All roughly the same age, late 20s to early 30s, the sextet of proven musicians instantly bonded as a democratic union of songwriters.

In the short history since, each has been granted an equal creative voice in the band's fusion of "jamgrass" improvisation, tightly bound harmonies, indie spirit and deep-seated respect for the American bluegrass tradition.

One defection recently occurred: Eldridge, son of famed banjoist Ben Eldridge, left the Stringbusters to move onto a new band, the Punch Brothers, the band founded by Chris Thile, Nickel Creek's mandolin player (by coincidence, the Punch Brothers played Urbana's Canopy Club earlier this week, just days before the Stringbusters' ISU show).

Eldridge's replacement is another of Hall's New England-begat colleagues, Andy Falco, whom the other Andy calls "a fantastic guitar player."

At Saturday night's ISU show, expect, says Hall, a livewire evening in which some of that electrified heavy metal energy of his teenage past finds its way into the acoustic byways of the band's unplugged present.

"We love to have a really good time on stage," a state of mind and body Hall says he expects will be reciprocated by the folks seated in front of them.

How?

By no longer remaining seated, he suggests.

At a glance

What: The Infamous Stringdusters

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Illinois State University Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall

Tickets: Advance, $22; at door, $25

Ticket number: (309) 438-8910