Orkney (Scotland) born fiddler Louise Bichan and Indiana (USA) mandolinist Ethan Setiawan present a collaboration and meeting of their musical worlds in Hildaland. A path steeped in the fiddle traditions of their respective sides of the Atlantic, the journey taken wends through Scottish, oldtime, and Swedish inspired music intertwined with contemporary compositions. Bichan’s fiddle is a melodic foil to Setiawan’s counterpoint and harmonic depth, and the two weave in and out seamlessly.
Setiawan has won such accolades as the 2014 National Mandolin Championship, the 2017 RockyGrass Mandolin Championship and has shared the stage with the likes of Julian Lage, Darrell Scott, Bryan Sutton, Mike Marshall, Tony Trischka, Darol Anger, Casey Driessen, the Steel Wheels, Don Stiernberg, Matt Flinner, and Jacob Jolliff.
Bichan has won awards for her compositions and playing, and has travelled far and wide to perform in various line ups since a young age. She has appeared at the likes of the BBC TV’s Hogmanay Live show, Edinburgh Castle, Reading Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival, Lorient Interceltique Festival, Milwaukee Irish Festival and Sligo Live festival. In 2016 she released her first solo album, Out of My Own Light, to great acclaim.
Acoustic Music supergroup Mr Sun, featuring renowned fiddler Darol Anger, guitarist Grant Gordy, Scottish bassist Aidan O’Donnell, and mandolinist Joe Walsh, will soon be celebrating their upcoming CD release Extrovert on Compass Records. Their appearances in the last 4 years at Wintergrass, Grey Fox and Freshgrass, and at IBMA conventions, have created a powerful presence throughout the Acoustic Americana music scene.
If you haven’t heard of the cheerfully named supergroup Mr. Sun, you’ve certainly heard its proponents, four of the finest musicians on the American roots scene: Renowned fiddler Darol Anger, Professor Emeritus at Berklee College of Music, who has released many solo albums in addition to his work with David Grisman and Mike Marshall, and founded the Turtle Island Quartet, Psychograss, and Republic of Strings; Joe K. Walsh, mandolin virtuoso and vocalist who spent four years with the award-winning bluegrass act the Gibson Brothers before becoming solo artist and songwriter and Strings Department Professor at Berklee; all-around guitar genius Grant Gordy, a former member of Dawg Music guru David Grisman’s band; and the phenomenal Scots bassist Aidan O’Donnell, who has backed harpist Maeve Gilchrist and countless modern Jazz heroes.
Mike Block Trio, featuring Joe K. Walsh (mandolin/vocals) and Zachariah Hickman (bass/vocals), is led by cello player, singer, and composer, Mike Block, who has been hailed as “one of the bravest, most intriguing musicians on the American fusion scene” by Gramophone Magazine. The trio fertilizes American roots music with contemporary and international influences, bringing an exciting and personal perspective to the acoustic music scene.
First meeting in Scotland, Jocelyn Pettit and Ellen Gira joined their musical forces. Fusing together traditional and contemporary influences, they create powerfully uplifting and soulful music. Their instruments weave a dynamic, rhythmically driving and textured sound, with nuanced fiddle-cello interplay through delicate and fortissimo arrangements. They bring life and fire into their own original melodies, and high-energy tunes from Scotland, Ireland, North America, and Scandinavia – with Canadian stepdancing, to boot. Jocelyn and Ellen are keen to perform, and have been gracing stages and captivating audiences in both North America and the UK.
Performance highlights include: Celtic Connections Festival, Northern Streams Festival, Niel Gow Festival, Edinburgh Castle, Blair Castle, a Royal Visit performance for HRH Prince Charles, and live broadcasts on BBC Radio 3.
With “a voice for the gods that can transport listeners to other realms” (Boston Globe), Mary Fahl is an expressive, emotional singer/songwriter who first achieved fame as lead singer and co-founder of the mid-1990s NYC- based chamber-pop group October Project.
As a solo artist, she’s had more freedom to pursue her own muse, whether that means writing and recording songs for movies (including the theme for the Civil War epic “Gods and Generals”), singing arias and medieval Spanish songs for Sony Classical or releasing unique album-length take on Dark Side of the Moon. As befits a former Catholic schoolgirl who went on to major in medieval studies and develop a lifelong interest in Hermeticism, Mary Fahl makes music that feels timeless, esoteric and ecumenical. Her elegant, cinematic songs draw on classical and world music sources, American art song, as well as thinking man’s folk-pop which she performs with an earthy, viscerally powerful contralto that bridges the generational gap between Fairport Convention’s Sandy Denny and London Grammar’s Hanna Reid. Like her music, her voice is eerily self-assured, with a hauntingly gothic romanticism that inspired Anne Rice to portray it emanating from a dead woman’s room in her 2013 novel The Wolves of Midwinter.
Her most recent album “Live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House”, winner of the Indie Acoustic “Album of the Year” award, is a collection of twenty-four tracks recorded live at one of America’s oldest vaudeville theaters that captures the soaring vocals and musical breadth that makes the Mary Fahl concert experience what the Portland Press called “soul-permeating”. The show was filmed for PBS and is currently airing on PBS affiliates around the country.
Sara Gougeon writes contemporary folk songs with heart-wrenching lyrics that she gently tucks into sweet, folky melodies. Sara is a seamstress of words, quilting together songs that you find yourself wrapped up in. Using stories and personal experiences, she crafts songs that are honest and relatable. Sara is primarily a solo act: a vocalist who accompanies herself on acoustic guitar.
Sara’s accomplished writing led her to be selected as a finalist for the well-respected John Lennon Songwriting Contest in 2018, an international contest established by Yoko Ono in 1997.
Sara originates from Sudbury, Ontario, and has moved several times over to pursue music. At 14 years old she packed her bags for Northern Michigan, where she spent her high school career studying songwriting at Interlochen Arts Academy. Following high school, Sara was accepted to the prestigious Berklee College of Music, where she continues her studies in songwriting, music business and music production & engineering.
In the last five years, Sara has written over 300 songs. Working hard for years on the challenge of writing a song a week, she finally exceeded her goal and wrote 82 songs in 2018. Sara expanded this challenge and wrote 100 songs in 2019.
“Home Again”, Sara’s debut EP was released on August 17th, 2018 and was followed by a 10 day tour of Ontario. Sara then released “Invisible Closet” a ‘gay anthem’ for the LGBT community, and a single about respecting personal boundaries on June, 12th, 2019 for pride month.
Sara is in the process of recording her EP “Thank the Pines” which will be released at Club Passim on May,11th, 2020. The “Thank the Pines” EP is a precursor to her upcoming album “The Long Road”.
The Fretless has toured and recorded together since 2012, winning multiple Canadian Folk Music Awards, Western Canadian Awards, and most recently, a JUNO Award for Instrumental Album of the Year.
The Fretless is a new approach to folk music that is quickly gaining high acclaim around the world. This unique band is taking string music to fascinating places as it transforms fiddle tunes and folk melodies into intricate, beautiful, high-energy arrangements.
Wes and Simon started down the musical road at around the same time, on the same small island, but only met by chance and with the accidental help of Bill Frissell and a local noodle shack. Fast friends from the start, they’ve made music together every chance they’ve had along the way, making two records with chamber grass outfit the Bee Eaters, and stealing chances to get in a tune or two when passing through each other’s city of residence while on tour with other bands. Now, sixteen years after meeting, they’re releasing their first duo recording.
A native of the Pacific Northwest, Wesley Corbett has been playing the banjo since he was 16, after a split from the classical piano. He has performed with many of the most influential acoustic musicians of our time, including Mike Marshall, Darol Anger, Sarah Jarosz, Sierra Hull, Bruce Molsky, Robert Earl Keen, Tony Trischka, Molly Tuttle, and Laurie Lewis (among many others), as well as touring internationally with the Indie-Popgrass band Joy Kills Sorrow. From 2011-2015 Wes was the professor of banjo at Berklee school of music in Boston MA. He now lives in Nashville TN and plays in the Molly Tuttle Band.
Hammer dulcimer virtuoso Simon Chrisman brings an unusual style to an instrument that has previously been thought to have limited range and technique… his inventive virtuosic touch and sophisticated rhythmic sensibilities are redefining the instrument and earning the attention of musicians from all over the world. He tours with the Jeremy Kittel Band and the Bee Eaters, and has performed with Darol Anger, Bruce Molsky, Mike Marshall, Laurie Lewis and Seamus Egan.
World-renowned composer, producer, cellist and kora virtuoso Tunde Jegede brings a new vision to contemporary African and Western classical music. A renaissance man of the harp-lute with over twenty years experience, his work is a unique synthesis of classical, jazz and traditional music and embodies the legacy of the idiom; African Classical Music.
Tunde Jegede’s work has changed the face of classical and contemporary music in Europe and Africa. He is one of the only composers in the world to be steeped in both Western and African music who is rooted in two cultural musical legacies. Tunde Jegede studied both Western classical music and the Griot Tradition of West Africa from a very early age, attending the Purcell School of Music in London and learning from a Master of the Kora in the Gambia, Amadu Bansang Jobarteh.
This unique cultural inheritance has since informed his work as a composer and multi-instrumentalist, creating links between European classical music and that of Africa. With his music he has created a set of mirrors between the old and new world, between compositions for solo cello and kora. Tunde Jegede is, in himself, a dialogue between contemporary classical music and a renewed vision of an oral tradition rooted in Malian culture – the Griot vision. He is truly a C21 renaissance man.
Tunde Jegede is the founder of several ensembles including the Art Ensemble of Lagos and the African Classical Music Ensemble. He is also the curator of Living Legacies, Gambia’s first traditional music archive, and the director of New Horizons, an educational initiative to develop young musicians in Nigeria. Over the last few years Tunde has been the Artistic Director of the MUSON Centre, one of West Africa’s only music conservatoires that specialises in classical music. He consequently set up the NOK Foundation, a charitable organisation dedicated to raising consciousness through music, arts and culture.
