Artist Category: Fiddle | Page 10

Rosin

It’s not classical music — it’s disreputable classical music.

We know what the rules are. We just like breaking them. We’re here to create art, and our one purpose is to move people, to change their lives a little bit in the way only art can, and we don’t let propriety get in the way of that. We shrug at labels. We throw aside convention for convention’s sake and relentlessly pursue the music that makes us shout, grin, laugh or cry. Everything else is just details.

We love instrumental music. And too often, instrumental music is a beautiful and talented lady confined to a luxurious but dreary castle. Our mission is to storm that castle and rescue that lady, placing her beside us on a valiant steed and riding off to conquer someplace a lot more aggressive — say, the sweaty heart of Mexico City or the gritty streets of the Lower East Side. Her dress will probably get dirty, her hair might get messed up, she will whoop and cheer in decidedly unladylike fashion, and she will have the time of her life.

In the end, we love music, and we play it like someone’s going to take it away from us when the show is over.

Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki

Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki is a New Hampshire-based fiddler who specializes in Celtic music but often joins other performers and bands in genres ranging from folk to rock. He was awarded the title of “Master Artist” by the NH State Council On The Arts, and named “Best Fiddler 2016” by NH Magazine. He has toured nationally with various projects, written soundtracks for audiobooks and television, and appeared as a guest on over 60 albums. He currently performs about 200 shows each year, mostly with his own band, the Jordan TW Trio.

Rachel Reeds

A Michigan native living in Boston, fiddler Rachel Reeds has immersed herself in the Cape Breton and Scottish musical traditions and has become a familiar face at sessions, camps, workshops, and house parties around New England.

Summer 2017 marks the release of her debut album, ‘Sparkjoy’. Produced by acclaimed fiddler, Hanneke Cassel, the album is rooted in the traditions of Cape Breton and Scotland and presents driving arrangements of original and traditional tunes. Joined on piano by Cape Breton fiddler and pianist Andrea Beaton, the album also features Hanneke Cassel (fiddle, piano), Natalie Haas (cello, Alasdair Fraser), Yann Falquet (guitar, Genticorum), and Katie McNally (fiddle, The Katie McNally Trio).

Rachel has played for dances at the Canadian American Club of Watertown and DEFFA, has performed at the Tamworth Lyceum, taught at the inaugural Cape Breton Weekend at Pinewoods Camp, and has been a session and workshop leader for the Boston Scottish Fiddle Club. She served on the organizing committee of BCMFest (Boston’s Celtic Music Festival) from 2011-2014, has been a frequent performer at BCMFest, and produced a Cape Breton feature for the 2017 festival’s Nightcap Concert. Rachel is the 2013 New England Regional Scottish Fiddle Champion.

De Temps Antan

Using Quebec’s vibrant living music tradition as a springboard for musical innovation De Temps Antan forms a power trio catapulting audiences headlong into the future French-Canadian music and culture.

It takes a special blend of musical talents to revisit and revitalize traditional music with equal measures of reverence, humor, Joy, natural ability and breathtaking turn-on-a-dime instrumental virtuosity. Welcome to the musical world of De Temps Antan!

Since 2003, Éric Beaudry, André Brunet (Celtic Fiddle Festival) and Pierre-Luc Dupuis have been exploring and performing time-honored songs and melodies been fine tuned and adapted to the needs of each generation. Using fiddle, accordion, harmonica, guitar, bouzouki and foot percussion (among a number of other instruments) these three virtuosos blend boundless energy with the infectious ‘joie de vivre.’ With De Temps Antan you will enjoy a musical event unlike any other.

Joy Compass

Clara Stickney and Jamie Oshima are Joy Compass, a Maine-based duo known for their expressive and groovy music for contra dancing. Surrounded by traditional music all of his life, Jamie delights dancers with his genre-blending and dynamic use of rhythm instruments (guitar, piano, mandolin, and foot percussion). Drawing from her classical background and love of traditional tunes, Clara Stickney provides melody lines both playful and compelling on the fiddle and occasionally on the harp. Together they co-create a sound that dancers respond to with joy.

Alden Robinson

Alden Robinson learned to play the fiddle as a child growing up in coastal Maine. His earliest lessons came from Tamora Goltz, Katie Newell, and from the teachers at Maine Fiddle Camp. In college, he studied Irish fiddle in Ireland at University College Cork, and in several pubs.

For the past five years or so he has toured and recorded with The Press Gang, an Irish trad band from Portland. He also loves playing for contra dances and performs to several dance bands, including “Riptide”, which features Owen Marshall and Glen Loper. When he’s not playing with these groups, you can often see him carrying his fiddle around the streets of Portland to play in the city’s busy music scene.

Kalos

Ryan McKasson, Eric McDonald and Jeremiah McLane are masters of tradition who purposefully explore the dark corners floating on its edges. Their individual artistry is enhanced when together. In short, the sum creates a greater whole. The result is an alluring complexity, full of spontaneous musicality.

Kalos is drawn to water. Every performance is like stepping into a river—they never play a song the same way twice. They make music inspired by the maritime traditions of Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia and North America. Their album titles—Harbour and Headland—honor the meeting point between the land and sea and they sing songs about shorelines, seafarers and drownings. They revel in the driving danceability of Irish tunes, but also take inspiration from the pastoral melodies and naturalistic metaphors of Scottish music. But while the music they write is forged in tradition, it is nonetheless cast and tempered in new and unexpected ways.

Ryan McKasson

Ryan McKasson has gained a reputation as a performer, composer, collaborator, and teacher. In 1996 he was the youngest to win the National Scottish Fiddle Championship. In 1997 he was awarded a Merit Scholarship for Viola Performance from the University of Southern California where he studied with Donald McInnes.

Ryan has also been a member of a baroque/celtic/fusion combo, Ensemble Galilei. He helped co-write and co-produce First Person: Seeing America with them, a collaboration between Ensemble Galilei and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This multi-disciplinary project includes photographs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, poetry and prose about America, and the music of Ensemble Galilei. He also recorded with Ensemble Galilei on A Change of Worlds (2012), and Surrounded by Angels: A Christmas Celebration With Ensemble Galilei (2013).

Ryan has recorded with Hanneke Cassel on her albums Silver, For Reasons Unseen, and Dot The Dragon’s Eye, and also with Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas on their album Highlander’s Farewell.

Ryan has also taught at fiddle camps around the US and New Zealand, most notably: Boston Harbor Scottish Fiddling School, Southern Hemisphere International School of Scottish Fiddle, Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling School, Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp, and Swannanoa Gathering.

The Mammals

Indie-roots trailblazers, The Mammals, are a high-octane Americana quintet from New York’s storied Hudson Valley carrying on the work of Pete Seeger & Woody Guthrie with a deep original repertoire, searing American roots sound, and a message of hope for humanity.

Known for their jubilant, high-energy shows, The Mammals deftly move from older-than-dirt banjo duets to sound-the-alarm topical fare that’s right in line with the times, bouncing from rafter raising hoe-downs to hear-a-pin-drop a cappella balladry.

The new album, Sunshiner, bottles The Mammals’ on-stage effervescence and lyrical intellect along with some very beautiful studio magic. Sunshiner bursts open with the soaring, up-tempo idealism of Merenda’s “Make It True,” with echoes of The Byrds, and then takes a more modern, Feist-inspired, turn with Ungar’s soulful plea,“Open The Door.”

The Mammals treasure the timeless traditions of song, story-telling and dance. Their work is to continue a musical odyssey so that the same handmade music passed down to them makes it thru to future generations one song, one concert at a time.

Joe Crookston

Joe is a force of nature on stage. He is in his power AND he communes with his audience and welcomes them into the magic.

From touring with Gordon Lightfoot, headlining major US festivals, receiving Folk Alliance International “Album of the Year,” releasing NINE BECOMES ONE (2023) to being named Folk Alliance International Artist-in- Resident, Joe is on fire. He’s played with Suzanne Vega, Dar Williams, David Francey, John McCutcheon, John Gorka, Judy Collins and 100’s more.

He’ll surprise you. He awakens the cynics. He’s plumbing for lyrical gold.

His rhythm is infectious. In concert, he is funny as hell one moment and transcendent the next. photo: Linda McDonald

HE BELIEVES IN STORIES
Come to a show. Visual, artful and surprising. Brooklyn in July, Oklahoma towns, rattlesnake tails, turbary thieves, meter maids and drunk roosters. At the end of the night, you’ll leave inspired. “The Long Note” is a phrase in Irish culture. “The Long Note” is that place of resonance and transcendence where the music, the voices, the instruments, and the community ALL come together and unite.

THERE IS A LONG NOTE & JOE IS REACHING FOR IT
Whether he’s weaving through lap slide songs or fiddling an American Southern tune, he’ll draw you in. It happens every time. Watch a YouTube video…it’s fine, but it’s not the same. You gotta come to a show. With unwavering courage to be himself, he is literate, poignant and funny as hell.

He lives in Ithaca NY, and tours regularly in the US, Ireland and Canada.