Mark and Maggie have been existing in an uninterrupted musical collaboration since the day they met eight years ago in 2014. As they were perfecting the finer points of Mark’s American Classical violin duos, it got so good that they decided to get married. The next stage of their musical journey turned into a larger family collaboration for which they each took home a Grammy for playing bluegrass in the O’Connor Band. Now, they have turned yet another musical corner. With a year-and-a-half of isolation from touring during the world-wide pandemic, they dedicated their days and nights towards further musical growth together. The couple workshopped new songs during seventy weekly online concerts from home; Mondays with Mark and Maggie. A group of dedicated viewers watched as they made their musical experiments, some fans tuning in for all of them. What came out of this exploration is an Americana album project of mostly original vocal songs they sing together, other popular songs reimagined, and all of them supported by a small universe of acoustic instruments they’ve brushed up on in the time off the road. The album reveals the pair’s most sincere and deeply personal work yet.
Artist Category: Bluegrass
Naomi Sommers
Naomi Sommers is an Ithaca, NY-based singer-songwriter, guitar-, banjo-, mandolin- and flute-player. She performs solo, with her family (as the Sommers Rosenthal Family Band), and a number of other groups, and has recorded and performed professionally since childhood.
Over the years Naomi has sung and played flute, banjo, and guitar on more than 20 records released on her father Phil’s independent American Melody label, and has recorded three albums under her own name, as well as one with Lisa Bastoni as the slow-grass duo Gray Sky Girls.
While living Germany for nearly a decade, Naomi toured in the Netherlands and the UK. Gentle As the Sun was released by Continental Records in the Netherlands, and received stellar reviews & radio airplay in the UK and Europe.
Currently, Naomi teaches classes and workshops on singing and songwriting to elementary-aged students through the public schools in Ithaca and beyond. (She also now works for the Coalition for Healthy School Food as Ithaca Program Manager, bringing healthy, plant-based food, nutrition education, and cooking classes to students in the Ithaca City School District.)
Other recent music projects include a new Ithaca bluegrass band with veteran musicians Rick Manning, Dana Paul and Alice Saltonstall (tentatively called “The Afterlife, )duo shows with Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter Lisa Bastoni, and re-uniting with another long-time duo partner Dan Tressler for performances and a record in-progress.
Catfish in the Sky
Catfish in the Sky is a band that’s hard to pin down. With an instrument make-up of fiddle, cello, cajon, and ukulele, these young musicians are breaking musical barriers in ways that frankly shouldn’t work, but somehow do. With a style described as “Upbeat Americana Folk-Grass for All Ages,” these Berklee students are able to combine the vast array of styles and musical backgrounds they come from, creating sets that often cause bystanders to stop in their tracks. Ranging from fiddle tune standards to original music, Catfish in the Sky is sure to have something everyone will love.
Catfish in the Sky is made up of Ruth Shumway on Fiddle, Sammy Wetstein on Cello, Owen Miller On Cajón, and Sho Humphries on Ukulele. With music described as, “upbeat electric Americana folk-grass for all ages”, the quartet combines styles from the diverse musical worlds they each come from. The quartet currently attends Berklee, pursuing their studies while performing in Boston and beyond.
Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer
TWO-TIME GRAMMY Award Winners, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer are master musicians with a career spanning over 35 years. Their superb harmonies are backed by instrumental virtuosity on the guitar, five-string banjo, ukulele, mandolin, cello-banjo, and many other instruments. An eclectic folk festival on their own terms, their repertoire ranges from classic country to western swing, gypsy jazz to bluegrass, and old-time string band to contemporary folk including some original gems. Their versatility defies a brief description, perhaps “well rounded Americana” does it best.
Cathy & Marcy have performed at hundreds of bluegrass and folk festivals and taught at close to 100 music camps. The Washington Area Music Association has recognized the duo with over 60 WAMMIE Awards for folk, bluegrass and children’s music. They have performed with Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, Tom Paxton, Patsy Montana, Riders in the Sky and a wide range of musical luminaries.
They are happily known as “social music conductors” ready to start a jam session, a community sing or to cre- ate a music camp helping others learn to play and sing. Past students include Kaki King and Rhiannon Giddens. Through their long relationship with the Music Center at Strathmore they collaborated with positive hip-hop artist Christylez Bacon. They continue to mentor up-and-coming artists on navigating the professional music world.
They have entertained the Queen of Thailand, been keynote singers for the AFL-CIO, performed at hundreds of folk festivals, appeared on the “Today Show” and on National Public Radio. They have advocated in Washington for unions, health care for children and the rights and livelihoods of artists.
As curators, performers and hosts, Cathy & Marcy produce A Tribute To Hank Williams at The Birchmere Music Hall, 2019 will be their 23rd annual concert. Their annual weeklong Ukulele & Guitar Summit at The Music Center at Strathmore goes into its 11th year in 2019.
Cathy & Marcy have earned two GRAMMY® Awards for their recordings cELLAbration: a Tribute to Ella Jenkins and for Bon Appétit!. Their CDs Postcards and Banjo Talkin’ were both GRAMMY nominated in the Best Traditional Folk Album category.
Cathy & Marcy have toured worldwide from Japan to New Zealand, Vancouver to New York and everywhere in between. Shows include The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum (OH), Smithsonian Institution and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. American Voices Abroad chose Cathy & Marcy with fiddler Barbara Lamb to perform in China, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu for the U.S. Department of State.
Micah John & Lillian Chase
Micah John is an award-winning fiddler, guitarist, and singer. At only 17, she has spent the last decade immersed in the roots music community of the Northeast and has performed at legendary venues such as Club Passim and The Burren Backroom. Micah placed 1st in the Open Bluegrass Fiddle Contest at the 2019 Lowell Banjo & Fiddle Contest and 2nd in Old-time fiddle at the 2022 Lowell Banjo & Fiddle Contest.
Lillian Chase, a 19-year-old fiddler and vocalist, grew up enveloped in the old-time and bluegrass scene in and around Asheville, North Carolina. She has played at well-known Southern venues including Merlefest and Song of the Mountains, and is now studying Music Performance at Berklee College of Music. She placed 4th in the 2022 Open Old-Time Fiddle Contest at Clifftop and 1st in Old-Time Fiddle at the 2022 Lowell Banjo & Fiddle Contest.
Micah and Lillian were initially connected by their shared mentor, Bruce Molsky, and met at the 2021 Ossipee Valley Music Festival. The two started performing as a duo after competing together in the Twin Fiddle category at the 2022 Lowell Banjo & Fiddle Contest, where they placed 1st. Their duo quickly became well-established in the Boston area after playing a sold-out show at Club Passim in fall of 2022.
Micah and Lillian share a love for old-time fiddle tunes and ballads, and interlace their sets with newer songs and tunes. Their shows are full of tight harmonies, twin-fiddling, and rocking guitar & fiddle duets.
Alex Formento
Alex Formento is a guitarist, vocalist, and pedal steel guitarist based in Boston, MA. While his early roots are in rock and jazz music, he can now be seen playing among Boston’s thriving Bluegrass scene.
Hailing from northern New Jersey, Alex studied classical piano at a young age before picking up the electric guitar. Drawing inspiration from The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, he got the “Bluegrass bug” eventually after discovering a local jam session. His adventurous flatpick-guitar playing has become one of the main driving forces of his musicianship. As a songwriter and guitarist with the acoustic trio “Pretty Saro”, he has appeared at the Ossipee Valley Music Festival, Joe Val, Podunk, Club Passim, Rockwood Music Hall and other esteemed venues and festivals around the northeast. Since graduating from the Berklee College of Music in 2020, Alex has also been playing a single-neck pedal steel guitar. He has recorded for several artists in the Boston folk scene such as Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light, the Talking Hearts, Patrick Mulroy, and Matt Hannigan.
Tim O’Brien & Jan Fabricius
Multi-Grammy award winner Tim O’Brien and his wife Jan Fabricius have performed together nationally and internationally either as a duo or as part of the Tim O’Brien Band since 2015. In a duet setting with a guitar, a mandolin, and their two voices, they bring an intimate and warm acoustic music roots repertoire that’s at once both original and traditional.
Singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist O’Brien, born in Wheeling WV in 1954, grew up singing and playing guitar in church and in school. After seeing Doc Watson on TV, he became a lifelong devotee of old time and bluegrass music. Co-founder of Colorado’s Hot Rize, he toured the world with that band from 1978 until he started his solo career in 1990. His songs have been covered by Kathy Mattea, Garth Brooks, and the Dixie Chicks, and his collaborators onstage and in the recording studio include Darrell Scott, Dirk Powell, Mark Knopfler, and Sturgill Simpson. Awarded Grammy’s in both the Folk and Bluegrass categories, he is a member of both the West Virginia and the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. He lives with Jan Fabricius in Nashville TN.Jan Fabricius grew up in WaKeeney, Ks. and sang from an early age in church and school, taking up clarinet and then mandolin.
A registered nurse and mother of two, she kept her hand in music through local jams and regional bluegrass festivals while raising her family. Jan’s music with O’Brien started informally around their home as he wrote or learned new songs, and she soon found herself singing and playing mandolin in the studio and onstage. O’Brien’s 2021 release “He Walked On”, and his upcoming release “Cup of Sugar” feature original songs cowritten by Tim and Jan.
Tray Wellington
Growing up in western North Carolina’s Ashe County, Trajan “Tray” Wellington heard a lot of music — and from the first time he heard the banjo as a young teen, he was, he says, “hooked.” Even before he graduated from East Tennessee State University’s renowned Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country program, Wellington had earned acclaim as the banjo player with Cane Mill Road, performing across the country and winning a 2019 International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year award while the group took Momentum Band of the Year honors.
A well-received, independently released 2020 EP under his own name, the creation of his Tray Wellington Band and signing with Mountain Home Music Company that same year marked Wellington’s decision to make his own path going forward. As he began releasing singles in advance of his full-length debut, Black Banjo, Wellington continued to garner attention, leading banjo workshops at the prestigious Merlefest and Gray Fox festivals; performing on the IBMA’s 2020 World of Bluegrass Main Stage and acting as host for the Momentum Awards ceremony; gaining coverage in publications like No Depression, The Bluegrass Situation and Folk Alley; and appearing on David Holt’s PBS NC series, being interviewed by Rhiannon Giddens for a BBC documentary series and by W. Kamau Bell for his CNN series, United Shades of America.
Upon its release in May 2022, Black Banjo earned a glowing review in the Wall Street Journal that concluded: “This is a record that breaks right through subgenre boundaries. If bluegrass is about spotlighting virtuosos, here’s a new one people will be checking in on for some time to come.”
Aiden Schnell
Aiden Schnell is a bluegrass guitarist from southwest Michigan who grew up playing both old time and bluegrass music on mandolin, banjo, and guitar. Aiden’s goal in teaching is to aid his students in understanding their fretboard in a simple and approachable way so that the task of playing in jams and with friends doesn’t feel as stressful or daunting. If you are looking for help in understanding the fretboard and upping your solo and/or backup game, then Aiden is the teacher for you!
Seselia
Seselia is a Boston-based folk and bluegrass band consisting of three Berklee students (and the occasional upright bassist for hire). Playing everything from sea shanties and love songs to old mountain tunes, Seselia is known for its unique approach to acoustic music.
Founded by Leo Austin Muehleck, Caleb Swan, and Jack Holland in the spring of 2021, the band felt an immediate musical chemistry while playing together. After spending the rest of that year writing and arranging music new and old, they are looking forward to recording this summer. Seselia performs mostly original music but has a large repertoire of bluegrass and old-time standards as well.
