Jimmy Mazzy enjoys iconic status as both a banjoist and vocalist on the American jazz scene. For more than forty years, this consummate musician has delighted followers of traditional jazz with his uniquely lyrical banjo style and his wonderfully haunting vocals. He is featured on more than 30 albums, many of them on the famous Stomp Off label including the Paramount Jazz Band and his own Jimmy Mazzy & Friends. In a New York Times review of Jimmy and Eli’s Stomp Off recording, Shake It Down, critic John S. Wilson wrote: “Mr. Mazzy sings with husky-voiced intensity and a sentimental enthusiasm that sometimes suggests a cross between Ted Lewis and Clancy Hayes. His banjo-playing is relaxed and flowing, providing light lines that help the tuba rise up and shuffle around.”
Artist Category: Trad
Kate McCann
Kate McCann, also known as Princess Pine, is a folk singer and banjo player based in Belfast, Maine. Kate grew up singing with the Chorus of Westerly in Westerly, Rhode Island, studied classical voice throughout high school, and found folk music during her time as a student at Bennington College. This led her to spend a semester abroad in Limerick, Ireland and write a thesis on the Irish ballad singing tradition.
From 2014 – 2019 Kate lived a transient life traveling around the U.S. and living in different parts of the U.S. as well as a year spent in New Zealand. She began learning the banjo when the tour bus of a folk-punk band she was traveling with broke down and spent a month stranded in the mechanic’s garage on the outskirts of Austin, TX. In 2019 she took a job as a chanteyman at the Mystic Seaport Museum- performing sea chanteys onboard ships and around the museum grounds for patrons of the museum. It was also there she met Yves Corbiere and A.J. Wright and formed the trio Skylark Trad Band.
Kate now lives in Belfast, Maine where she spends her time playing folk music, and occasionally works as a carpenter, farmhand, and deckhand. She is available for a variety of performances ranging from sea chantey workshops to folk music sets. She is also a regular DJ on local community radio station WERU’s old-time program “High on a Mountain.” As an avid music collector and listener, she believes traditional music is not static but ever evolving, and incorporates her love of psychedelia, rock, and punk into her playing.
Seven Times Salt
Since meeting as conservatory students in 2003, for the past 20 years Seven Times Salt has been delighted to bring the music of the 16th and 17th centuries to our audiences, with a special focus on the English Consort repertory. Praised for creative programming and an “impeccably balanced sound” (American Recorder Society), Seven Times Salt has performed at venues throughout New England including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Plimoth Patuxet, Boston Public Library, New England Folk Festival, WGBH radio, and many others. We have researched and presented original programs for music festivals, college residencies, theatrical productions, historical societies, and our own self-produced concert series. We delight in blurring the lines between “art music” and folk tunes, and feel at ease performing in the concert hall, the dance hall, or the beer hall!
Caña Dulce
Caña Dulce y Caña Brava offers a performance which exhibits the music, poetry, dance and traditional attire of Veracruz, Mexico, interpreted by artists who are beneficiaries of the jarocho culture and noteworthy performers with years of experience on both national and international stages. The group stands out as an artistic project that highlights feminine poetry and voices. Creating an experience that connects the spectator with distinct emotions, one is taken on a voyage through multiple rhythms, accompanied by traditional string instruments such as the harp and the jarana, percussion and zapateado, poetic improvisation in rhyme and the projection of visual effects. Offering a assortment of colors, textures and images to diverse and multi-generational audiences, the ensemble is defined by an original aesthetic concept that unites the traditional with the vanguard in a contemporary stage proposal.
Since its formation in 2007, the group has carried the seal of feminine strength and beauty within the traditionally masculine world of Mexican son. The sounds of the strings interweave with the poetic messages written from a woman’s perspective, creating a facet not before seen within this musical genre.
The zapateado (percussive dance) on the tarima (wooden platform) accentuates the beat, while the band’s colorful wardrobe embellishes their musicality. Appealing instrumental landscapes include the captivating vibrations of the horse jaw, the profound and mystical harmonies of the harp, the percussive atmosphere created by the jarana, the robust rhythm of the guitarra grande, and the renaissance-sounding bowed instruments created ex profeso for the group, resurrecting extinct baroque instrumentation.
Thanks to their dedication, innovation and consistency, the group has positioned itself as a reference point for current son jarocho music. They have collaborated with well-known artists such as Lila Downs, Geo Meneses, María Inés Ochoa and La Santa Cecilia (recording “Volver a los 17” by Violeta Parra, in the Grammy nominated album “Amar y Vivir”, 2017). Furthermore, Caña Dulce y Caña Brava has represented Mexico in forums and festivals worldwide in Latin America, the United States, Canada, Africa, Asia and Europe.
Alex Cumming
Alex Cumming is a traditional Singer, Accordionist, Pianist and dance caller hailing from Somerset, England, now living in Brattleboro VT, USA. He performs songs and tunes from around the United Kingdom and America with a great depth of knowledge of the tradition. Alex has made his mark on the folk scene with his rhythmic dance-able accordion style, strong voice and his fun and engaging stage presence. After over a decade of recording albums and touring with various bands, 2023 sees Alex record and release his debut solo album, ‘Homecoming’, featuring fiddler Audrey Jaber (Wake Up Robin, Free Raisins), guitarist Max Newman (Stringrays, Nor’Easter) and regular recording collaborator Pete Ord (Haystack Records).Alex is a member of Celtic trio Bellwether (with Louise Bichan, Eric McDonald), award winning a capella quartet The Teacups and critically acclaimed duo Alex Cumming & Nicola Beazley. You may also catch him playing for dances in many combos, including Stuart Kenney’s Red Case Band and trio Crossover. Alex is also Artistic Director for Revels North.
You know Audrey Jaber is performing if the room is buzzing at a higher level. Her fiddling, featured in bands including The Free Raisins, The Gaslight Tinkers, Audacious (with Larry Unger), and Wake Up Robin, has electrified dance and concert halls across the US and Europe. Hailing from Honolulu and now living in California, she cut her folk teeth in the Boston area, attending Berklee College of Music and spending years exploring the thriving New England folk scene. Audrey’s fiddle playing is rhythmically lively and spontaneous; she’s guaranteed to get you up and dancing. She specializes in English dance, New England, Celtic, and Old Time tunes (and did we mention she’s also an audio engineer?!). You might also have taken a workshop with Audrey, as she’s been on staff at various camps including various weeks at Pinewoods, Ashokan Northern Week, BACDS American week, New London Assembly and Halsway Manor. For more on Audrey, visit her at audreyknuth.com
Max Newman has spent a good portion of his life playing dances great and small across the continent. His guitar playing is refreshing, fun, and creative, and has allowed him to collaborate with a great variety of traditional musicians. In the Stringrays, he often alternates between hammering down rhythms and trading licks with Rodney Miller. His attention to detail with pairing music and dance is almost as well known as his love for a fresh cup of coffee. His playing has been profiled in Flatpicking Guitar Magazine.
When not with the band, he can often be found at his local dance in Concord, Massachusetts.
Alla Boara
Alla Boara seeks to bring recognition and new life to Italy’s diverse history of regional folk music. Their modern arrangements of near-extinct folk songs are variously surprising, playful, mournful, tender, and bewitching. Alla Boara’s dynamic work aims to inspire audiences of all ethnic heritages to treasure their musical roots and consider historical songs’ contemporary cultural relevance. The vision of drummer and composer Anthony Taddeo, Alla Boara also features vocalist Amanda Powell (Apollo’s Fire), guitarist Dan Bruce, trumpeter Tommy Lehman, bassist Ian Kinnaman, and accordionist and keyboardist Clay Colley. Currently touring their first record, Le Tre Sorelle, Alla Boara has received critical acclaim for its originality and accessibility and was recently featured in NPR’s “Shuffle”, SWR2 in Germany, All About Jazz, Jazz Weekly, and was predicted to have a bright future by Cleveland Magazine.
High Horse
High Horse is a progressive-acoustic boy band featuring four friends, three bows, and one pick. A mix of celtic and classical music, it’s a band of brothers playing alternative rock on acoustic instruments, it’s a rollicking romp of great vibes, virtuosic chops, and tight vocals.
Comprised of fiddler Carson McHaney, cellist Karl Henry, guitarist G Rockwell, and bassist Noah Harrington; the band draws from their varied musical backgrounds to explore and perform original compositions and tunes from diverse folk traditions.
High Horse is based in Boston, collecting the skills and artistry learned from their education at the Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory.
Their debut album will be released in 2024, produced by world-renowned mandolinist Jacob Jolliff and engineered by sound wizard Dave Sinko.
Pramod Upadhyay
Pramod Upadhyaya is an internationally acclaimed tabla player, composer, and vocalist from Nepal. He studied with his father, the renowned Nepali tabla player Pundit Hom Nath Upadhyaya, and later studied in Bombay, India with the esteemed Ustad Zakir Hussain. He made his tabla soloist debut at the age of five at the Royal Nepal Academy where he performed for late King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah of Nepal. Over the past three decades, Pramod has toured worldwide both as a soloist and with the band Sukarma, appearing on stages in Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, and India. From 2013 to 2016, Pramod taught tabla performance at the University of California Santa Barbara as a visiting lecturer. He currently lives with his family in Manchester, NH and teaches, records, and regularly tours both locally and internationally.
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.
Ensemble Sangineto
Ensemble Sangineto is an eclectic band which blends skillfully ancient harmonies and sonorities with modern rhythms. The wide-ranging musical experiences of the individual members converge to create fresh arrangements of traditional Irish, Scottish, Breton & Italian tunes and original compositions that display influences from many varied musical genres ranging from classical to folk, from Gregorian chant to
musical, from pop to Celtic music.
The delicate combination of the pure and magic tones of the harp and of the bowed psaltery with the guitar intermingle with the three voice-polyphonic texture evoking dreamlike and airy atmospheres, which are simultaneously joyful and light.
ENSEMBLE SANGINETO IS:
Adriano Sangineto: Celtic Harp, Voice
Caterina Sangineto: Bowed Psaltery, Flutes, Voice, Bodhran
Jacopo Ventura: Guitar, Bouzouki, Voice
