The musical partnership between consummate performer Alasdair Fraser, “the Michael Jordan of Scottish fiddling”, and brilliant Californian cellist Natalie Haas spans the full spectrum between intimate chamber music and ecstatic dance energy. Over the last 20 years of creating a buzz at festivals and concert halls across the world, they have truly set the standard for fiddle and cello in traditional music. They continue to thrill audiences internationally with their virtuosic playing, their near-telepathic understanding and the joyful spontaneity and sheer physical presence of their music.
Fraser has a concert and recording career spanning over 30 years, with a long list of awards, accolades, radio and television credits, and feature performances on top movie soundtracks (Last of the Mohicans, Titanic, etc.). In 2011, he was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame. Haas, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, is one of the most sought after cellists in traditional music today. She has performed and recorded with a who’s who of the fiddle world including Mark O’Connor, Natalie MacMaster, Irish supergroups Solas and Altan, Liz Carroll, Dirk Powell, Brittany Haas, Darol Anger, Jeremy Kittel, Hanneke Cassel, Laura Cortese, and many more.
This seemingly unlikely pairing of fiddle and cello is the fulfillment of a long-standing musical dream for Fraser. His search eventually led him to find a cellist who could help return the cello to its historical role at the rhythmic heart of Scottish dance music, where it stood for hundreds of years before being relegated to the orchestra. The duo’s debut recording, Fire & Grace, won the coveted the Scots Trad Music “Album of the Year” award, the Scottish equivalent of a Grammy. Since its release, the two have gone on to record five more critically acclaimed albums that blend a profound understanding of the Scottish tradition with cutting-edge string explorations. In additional to performing, they both have motivated generations of string players through their teaching at fiddle camps across the globe.
Jenna Moynihan is regarded as one of the best of the best in the new generation of fiddle players. Versatile and inventive, her fiddling style draws strongly from the Scottish tradition, but is not bound by it. Folk Radio UK said of her playing, “…from the first time you hear Moynihan, it is clear that her playing is resonating straight from the depths of her soul.” Jenna graduated from Berklee College of Music with honors and was a recipient of both the Fletcher Bright Award & The American Roots Award. She performs around the world, and has toured with The Milk Carton Kids, Darol Anger & the Furies Old Blind Dogs, Laura Cortese & The Dance Cards, A Celtic Sojourn & more. She has appeared as a soloist at Symphony Hall, on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and CBS Sunday Morning Her debut solo album Woven was released in 2015. Jenna also performs in a duo with harpist Màiri Chaimbeul, their album One Two was released in 2017. www.jennamoynihan.com
Vogue magazine calls musician Owen Marshall “A guitar/mandolin/banjo player rivaled in character only by the occasional three-pronged carrot” (Vogue 2009). With the music traditions of Quebec and Nova Scotia just over the border from his home in Vermont and the strong Irish musical scene of Boston to the south, Owen was immersed in the various textures and sounds of the Celtic music from an early age. In addition to touring with acts such as The Press Gang, Copley Street, and The Seamus Egan Project, Owen is in demand at music camps throughout New England and the U.S., where he shares his approach to accompanying traditional music. www.owenmarshallmusic.com
Since she was 12 years old, Samoa Wilson has been captivating audiences with a voice the New York Times calls “sweet, effortless, old-timey”. Raised in the riverbed of traditional North American folk music, she came up in the Boston scene, under the wing of jug band and folk legend Jim Kweskin. Her current duo, the Four O’Clock Flowers, a stark and electrifying exploration of gospel, blues and jazz, with slide guitar maestro Ernie Vega, has become a staple of the thriving New York City folk community. Her choice of repertoire makes the difference: torchy and honeyed renditions of haunting little-known tunes, from a woman’s perspective. From the source of the traditional and classic material, she poses a modern complaint, salutes the transformation of women’s work and suffering into women’s triumph.
With its unique mix of driving cello, 12-string guitar, and a hell of a lot of foot percussion, Calico brings a fiery twist to the fiddle music of Québec and New England. Whether they’re playing archival crooked tunes or new compositions, Casey Murray, Jesse Ball, and Eric Boodman create a joyous sound all their own. They’re bound to make you want to get up and dance!
Boston based Uilleann piper Joey Abarta and fiddler Nathan Gourley are two of America’s great young trad musicians, who have been playing music together daily since 2013. Their debut duo album, Copley Street, featuring Owen Marshall on Greek bouzouki, has an undeniable chemistry and demonstrates a nuanced understanding of each other’s playing. Their music includes offbeat settings of well-known tunes and beautiful pieces that seem to languish in obscurity. “Copley Street” is a wonderful album from two stunning young players that adds to Boston’s rich history of traditional Irish music.
Born in the small town of Marton, New Zealand, Catherine “BB” Bowness spent her early years working and living in her family’s Fish-and-Chip shop. Although an unlikely origin for a bluegrass banjo player, New Zealand would offer BB her first introduction to the instrument, sparking a lifelong love and fascination. A world away from the heart of bluegrass, BB spent much of her childhood teaching herself the instrument, and through dedication and tenacity became New Zealand School of Music’s first banjo student. Inspired by her New Zealand predecessors, The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band, BB was always drawn to the five-piece full band, and after heading to America in 2012 she co-founded her current group, Mile Twelve.
Immersing herself in the traditions of bluegrass and having studied jazz performance at university, BB’s banjo playing is an exciting synthesis of new and old ideas. “She demonstrates a command of the instrument, and plays with great rhythmic clarity both in the traditional and progressive realms. J.D. Crowe co-mingles with the future,” says Tony Trischka. Her euphoric energy and love of the genre are readily apparent in any of her live performances.
Currently, BB lives in Cambridge, MA. Mile Twelve has won numerous IBMA awards, including 2020 New Artists of the Year and 2017 Momentum Band of the Year. BB won the 2015 Freshgrass Banjo contest and was a winner of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize in 2020.
KARDEMIMMIT – The Sound of The Finnish Forest
Kardemimmit takes you to a journey into the Finnish Midsummer’s magical night where the sun doesn’t set at all. The air is filled with the ancient mystery of time standing still and the nature is heartbreakingly beautiful at the peak of its bloom.
Kardemimmit is a band of four awesome women playing the Finnish national instrument, kantele. The band members are Maija Pokela, Jutta Rahmel, Anna Wegelius and Leeni Wegelius. Kardemimmit is in charge of their own music – they compose, as well as arrange, write lyrics and produce. Alongside 15 and 38 stringed kanteles, singing has a big part in Kardemimmit’s musical universe where original pieces with a modern approach still have a strong foundation in Finnish, Eastern European and Scandinavian traditions. The Finnish reki-singing style, 19th century dancing music and Perhonjokilaakso kantele playing style, Eastern Finnish archaic improvisation and ancient runo singing are all present in Kardemimmit’s music.
Fern Maddie is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and experimental folk artist based in Central Vermont (N’Dakinna). Her debut EP, North Branch River, was named one of the 10 best Vermont records of 2020 by Seven Days. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, her debut album, Ghost Story, was released in 2022, and was named The Guardian’s Folk Album of the Month in July 2022, gaining a five-star review.
Blending driving, trancey instrumentals with crisp vocals and the simple lyrical rhythms of old folk songs, Fern’s unique sound is the child of many influences: Old-Time string band music, the revivalist balladeers of the 60s and 70s, dark country, experimental folk-rock, and the modern trad renaissance(s). Her sensibilities have been compared to the music of June Tabor, Kate Rusby, Sharon Van Etten, and Joni Mitchell.
Fern’s first two records were co-produced with Colin McCaffrey, a Central Vermont legend, who contributes exceptional musicianship and a traditional, pared- down aesthetic to the work.
DoYeon Kim is a Gayageum player who is making her own genre of music by incorporating Korean Music, World Music, Free Jazz, Jazz, and Improvisation. She makes an effort to share and bring a new and broader approach to music, focusing in the context of Korean music, improvisation, and unique technique development. Experienced in traditional Korean music and modern works alike, DoYeon has performed several of her own solo recitals and concerts in Asia, America, South America and Europe.
In 2018, DoYeon released improvisational music album which is called “Macrocosm” with Joe Morris. Her album is reviewed as “ an impressive and captivating example of incredible skill and a diversity of approaches from players…. Highly recommended.” In 2017, DoYeon released her album (GaPi), followed by a sold out release concert in Korea. GaPi was later nominated in 2018 for a Korean Music Award, Korea’s version of the Grammys, in the crossover album category. Furthermore, she was selected as an 2018 Emerging Artist Award at St. Botolph Club Foundation.
She has performed alongside the distinguished improvisors: Joe Morris, Agusti Fernandez, Barry Guy and Anthony Coleman. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts regularly invites her to play in the ‘Lunar New Year Music Performance’ and she has performed several times at New York City’s The Stone. DoYeon was chosen by the Korean Department of Culture as one of the few Gayageum musicians for the Seoul Youth Delegation tour of Japan. Her band ‘Kim Do Yeon Band’ was invited to perform Berlin and Budapest, where their new direction in music was well received. In Budapest, their performances were described as “everlasting, timeless, space-barred…unforgettable, overwhelming.” DoYeon also founded the ‘JaYu Quartet’, which was selected as an honors ensemble in 2015-2016 by the New England Conservatory.
Comprised of Lindsay Straw (guitar, bouzouki, vocals), Dan Accardi (accordion, concertina, fiddle), Armand Aromin (fiddle, English concertina, vocals) and Ben Gagliardi (concertina, harmonica, vocals), The Ivy Leaf sings rich, powerful songs and plays bouncy, danceable tunes, highlighting the best of traditional music from Ireland, England, Scotland, and America.
First formed to explore the interconnected streams of folk music that cross the northern Atlantic, the band interprets a thorough and diverse repertoire – often culled from print collections and field recordings of the 19th and early 20th centuries – through a lens of ringing voices, lyrical strings, and punchy free reeds.
