Laura Cortese might best be described as a sonic magpie: a curious and resourceful adventurer traversing great distances, collecting melodies and rhythms that glitter like jewels in the sun. Driven by the gravitational pull of human connection, her tendency towards exploration and collaboration have led her into countless niches, each providing its own unique feather with which to decorate her distinct and ever-evolving sound. But all of these explorations have one thing in common: the power of strings. This may seem limiting to some. To her, it is anything but. “Strings are at the core of what I do,” she says. “Genre is secondary to that palate.”
When Laura is alone on the stage, the audience becomes her band, stamping and clapping like a kick and snare drum, sometimes singing along sweetly and occasionally reminiscent of an enthusiastic gang vocal.
Laura Cortese has built a career weaving together a musical tapestry as diverse as it is masterful, highlighted with experiences like playing the Newport Folk Festival with Pete Seeger in 2009, standing onstage at the iconic Carnegie Hall in New York with Band of Horses in 2009, and a stint touring alongside Uncle Earl in 2007. She has recorded with artists ranging from Aoife O’Donovan and Brittany Haas to Tao Rodriguez Seeger and Session Americana, and has released 7 albums under her own name–All in Always (2016), Into the Dark (2013), Simple Heart (2012), Two Amps 1 Microphone (2011), Acoustic Project (2010), Blow the Candle Out (2007), Even the Lost Creek (2006), and Hush (2004). She has toured across the globe, acting as an ambassador of American music on behalf of the US State Department by performing and teaching in India, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Estonia, Greece, Ukraine, and Montenegro. Now, she holds space and builds community for musicians in Belgium as the co-founder of the monthly Bright Lights Session in Ghent. As always, her vision is as expansive as her background. “We’re working to basically write a new folk tradition,” she says. Were it anyone else, you’d think it impossible. But with Laura Cortese at the helm? It just might come true.
Alex Radus is known as a “versatile crooner” (UMC Nashville) and “master guitarist” (Courier News), but his songwriting takes center stage. Known affectionately for his unique brand of “genre whiplash”, Alex pairs whimsical and poignant storytelling with an eclectic mix of Americana, swing, blues, folk and more.
During his early career, Alex was awarded a youth scholarship to the Augusta Heritage Center, where some of the nation’s best finger-pickers helped influence his unique finger style and respect for traditional music.
He’s opened for Richie Havens, Jeffrey Gains and Darrell Scott and performed with John Gorka as a member of the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band. Most recently, he was selected as a 2024 Falcon Ridge Folk Fest Emerging Artist and voted a “Most Wanted” artist to return to the Main Stage in 2025. Alex hails from Pennsylvania’s artistically rich Lehigh and Delaware River valley region where he lives with his wife and two daughters.
“Alex Radus is a remarkable artist. He is an excellent guitarist, songwriter and singer. He moves across multiple genres with effortless virtuosity. Whether playing solo or with an ensemble, Alex is surely worth going out of your way to hear.” – John Gorka
Tina Ross is a compelling NY based singer-songwriter known for her reflective lyrics and distinctive voice that resonate deeply with her audience. Drawing inspiration from Folk, Jazz, Americana, and her own life experiences. Tina’s songs are richly textured, layering vivid lyrics and intricate melodies that capture the nuances of human experience, much like a brushstroke conveys both light and shadow. Whether solo or collaborating in a songwriter round, Tina’s music is both soothing and stirring.
After hurting her hands as a chiropractor and re-learning to sing after an accidental blow to her throat, Tina has overcome and created a guitar style that accommodates her disability and sings with gratitude that she can indeed sing once again. “While I’m Here”, her debut album was released to wonderful reviews February 17, 2023.
Tina has been chosen as a 2024 Falcon Ridge Emerging Artist and was voted a “Most Wanted” to return in 2025, she is also the winner of the prestigious 2023 FocusMusic Heyman Rising Artist Award. Find her song, “Summers Like These” on Christine Lavin’s newest Compilation CD. She’s been recognized by the UK Songwriting Contest, The International Acoustic Music Awards and The International Blues and Roots Radio Contest as a finalist, the UK Songwriting Contest as a semi-finalist and the John Lennon Songwriting and SolarFest Contests as an Honorable Mention. Tina has performed with supporting artists such as John Gorka, Christine Lavin and Tom Chapin.
“Tina’s songs “warm the soul like a fireplace in the winter and fill the room with a special amber glow.” ~ John Apice – Americana Highways.
Instrumental trad duo Tim and James began two years ago over a Tuesday morning cup of tea, sparked by friends urging that they write music together. Originally hailing from the farmlands of California and the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Georgia, Tim and James’ compositions are laden with their nostalgia of rural and agricultural landscapes with flowers in bloom. Playful and emotive their performance feels like a cinematic canvas to paint your own story into. From simple, daily, cozy like working in the garden or cooking a meal for friends to hiking to your favorite mountain swimming hole.
Cosy Sheridan has been called one of our era’s finest and most thoughtful songwriters. She has played everywhere from Carnegie Hall to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame as well as most of the folk clubs across the country. As The Chicago Examiner wrote: “You can’t continue touring for twenty or so years, unless you know what you’re doing, and do it well.”
She plays a percussive, bluesy guitar, often in open tunings and occasionally with two or more capos on the neck. Backed by the strong bass rhythms and harmonies of Charlie Koch, her concerts are a wide-ranging, entertaining, and tuneful experience. “Frank, feisty, sublimely and devilishly funny” as described by the Cornell Folksong Society.
She first appeared on the national folk scene in 1992 when she won the songwriting contests at both The Kerrville Folk Festival and The Telluride Bluegrass Festival. The Albuquerque Journal dubbed Sheridan “a buddhist monk in a 12 step program trapped in the body of a singer-songwriter.”
Cosy teaches workshops in songwriting, guitar, and performance all over the country, and is also the founder and director of Moab Folk Camp in Moab, Utah.
“A wonderfully lively, very funny, and enormously amiable entertainer with a keen and wicked eye for the excesses of our fast-food, tv-happy and noisome culture.”
– Boston Globe
Sloan Wainwright is a songwriter, singer, performer, teacher, mentor and collaborator. A unique hybrid of pop, folk, jazz and blues, Wainwright’s music is unified by her melodious tone and rich, powerful contralto. Over the course of a 30-year career in music, she has played the great concert halls, the most storied listening rooms and top music festivals while also teaching at the nation’s leading music retreats. She has inspired hundreds of students on their creative journeys and collaborated with dozens of musicians, writers, choreographers and performers.
Most of all, Wainwright is an artist. As a member of an acclaimed family of artists (brother Loudon Wainwright, sister-in-law Kate McGarrigle, nephew Rufus Wainwright and nieces Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche), Wainwright has charted an artistic path all her own, one based in close observation, joy, and spiritual connection.
Now, standing on the foundation of a rich and diverse career, Wainwright is tapping into fresh material as she continues to provide transformative, healing, and energetic experiences for her audiences. Always looking to grow as an artist, these days Wainwright is pursuing new collaborative partnerships, exploring traditional music, and developing fresh avenues for teaching and mentorship.
“They say you stand a chance of being a good musician if you first become a good human being. Sloan is a wonderful singer and all-round musician, and as a teacher really overlaps into the role of a life coach ~ she has given skill and confidence to so many.” -Richard Thompson
Mitch Greenhill cut his musical eyeteeth at the old Club 47. He has since released 9 albums and 2 books. After joining the family business Folklore Productions (FLi Artists), he represented musicians like Taj Mahal, the Klezmatics and Doc Watson, for whom he produced a Grammy-winning recording. He has composed music and designed sound for regional theaters and on Broadway, and has appeared in a couple of Hollywood movies.
Mitch is delighted to return to Cambridge and to the Passim. And to reunite with James Field, whom he met on their first day of college, on the other side of Harvard Square.
Anand Nayak is a Grammy-nominated producer, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist living in Florence, Massachusetts. Anand has been the guitarist for folk band Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem since 2000, performing all over North America on stages large and small. He also performs and has toured with many artists including Polly Fiveash, May Erlewine, Jeffrey Foucault, Lui Collins, Alastair Moock, Heather Maloney, Pamela Means, Cloudbelly, Jim Eagan, Wishbone Zoe, and PBS Kids host Steve Roslonek (aka Stevesongs), along with other acts from the pioneer valley. Anand has produced, tracked or mixed for Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem, The Pixies, Alastair Moock, Stevesongs, Lui Collins, Judith Avers, Adam Dunetz, Maria Sangiolo, Wishbone Zoe, And The Kids and many others.
ALMA VATYA is a twenty-one-year-old guitarist, singer, and banjo player who performs American vernacular music inspired and informed by a lifelong exploration of pre-war country blues, ballads, and spirituals. ALMA grew up in the high desert of Bisbee, Arizona. Her love for country blues began when a neighbor gave her a small handmade fretless banjo along with cassettes of Mance Lipscomb and Mississippi Fred McDowell. During formative travels to Mississippi, she learned the Bentonian blues style from Jimmy “Duck” Holmes at his Blue Front Cafe, and the trance blues of Robert Belfour in Clarksdale juke joints. Her polyrhythmic guitar and banjo stylings and nuanced vocals have been honed through hundreds of performances to national and international audiences.
In Death’s Little Black Train, ALMA VATYAs singularity as a performer of acoustic blues and Southern mountain music is on full display. Her intricate fingerpicking propels renditions of idiosyncratic 1920’s blues gems Cairo Blues and Down On Me; her virtuosic bottleneck slide animates soul-stirring recompositions of the Southern spirituals Death’s Little Black Train and Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning. ALMA breathes new life into unreleased Southwestern field recordings encountered during her years of friendship and collaboration with Tucson folklorist and musician “Big Jim” Griffith, exemplified in a vibrant rendition of Gila River Valley tune Lonesome Live Oak. As a trans woman, ALMA foregrounds the brilliance of historically obscured black female blues and gospel musicians Geeshie Wiley, Sister O.M. Terrell, and Rosalie Hill.
Writes AV: “In Death’s Little Black Train, I hope to honor the radical creative legacy of black folk musicians who brought American music into being through beautifully intricate acts of cultural cross-pollination. In these thirteen songs, I synthesize geographically, historically, and culturally disparate traditions, with the hope that they reflect the necessity of American vernacular music in the 21st century as a living, vital, expression of the fundamental humanity that connects us all”
Describing herself simply as a ‘modern English musician’, Eliza Carthy is one of the most recognisable faces in British folk.
She has received an MBE; numerous BBC R2 Folk Awards; two Mercury Prize nominations; was the first English traditional musician to be nominated for a BBC R3 Award for World Music, and in 2021 became President of the English Folk Dance & Song Society.
Born into a formidable musical dynasty, her mother Norma was one of The Watersons and her father Martin Carthy is a hugely influential singer and guitarist, the incredible range of traditional and contemporary musicians who were part of the extended Waterson/Carthy world helped her develop her own unique approach to music.
Launching head-on into the UK folk scene in the early 90s, she quickly became one of its great innovators. Championed from an early age by the likes of John Peel, Andy Kershaw & Billy Bragg, Eliza has rarely stood still artistically.
From the purest unaccompanied traditional songs to original music incorporating myriad influences, she has moved through English folk music like a force of nature, both stirring it up & putting it back on the map, and as a member of big bands The Imagined Village, and the musical force-of-nature that was The Wayward Band she has headlined main stages at festivals around the world.
With a wealth of musical & life experience under her belt, Eliza’s talent has matured and is flourishing. She continues to bring new audiences to English folk through well-judged recordings, performances, and collaborations with the likes of Paul Weller, Jools Holland, Patrick Wolf, and Kae Tempest.
