Rachel Sumner

• Acoustic
• Americana
• Folk
• Guitar
• Singer/Songwriter

With songs as sweet and biting as the nectar and venom in her voice, Rachel Sumner has been captivating audiences throughout the northeast with her exciting new band Traveling Light. While their instrumentation and textures show roots deep in bluegrass and traditional folk music, Sumner’s lyric-forward writing and penchant for snaking chord progressions demand something beyond folk conventions, highlighting the acrobatic range of her brilliant bandmates Kat Wallace (fiddle/harmonies) and Mike Siegel (upright bass).

Sumner is no stranger to the stage. She spent her early career on the bluegrass circuit, singing and writing with the genre-bending Boston group Twisted Pine. Since setting out on her own, Sumner’s songs have been critically acclaimed, winning the Lennon Award in the folk category of the 2021 John Lennon Songwriting Contest for her song “Radium Girls (Curie Eleison);” earning her a spot in the Kerrville New Folk Competition; and being chosen two consecutive years by WBUR/NPR as one of the top Massachusetts entries in the Tiny Desk Competition.

Originally a classical flutist from the dusty Mojave desert, Sumner relocated from California to Boston a decade ago intending to study Composition and Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music. While at school, she found herself in the orbit of roots musicians like Molly Tuttle, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, and John Mailander who introduced her to a trove of traditional music, started her off with a few chords on the guitar, and encouraged her to write her own songs. In the short time since, Rachel has become one of the most vital voices in Boston’s thriving roots music scene. Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light will release their debut LP in the summer of 2022.

Emily Haviland

• Fiddle
• Folk

Emily Haviland has been a part of the Greater Boston music scene for nearly ten years. As a graduate of Berklee College of Music with concentrations in fiddle performance and music therapy, she studied everything from music and how it can alter the brain all the way to American Roots and its rocky history.

With her debut album Not Who You Think set to be released in February of 2024, Emily Haviland continues to push boundaries in both her performing style and songwriting, and is not an act that you’ll want to miss. World-renowned fiddler, Darol Anger says “Emily Haviland is the Realest Deal in a long time. Real voice, real thoughts, real songs that say – with pungent power – what everyone’s really thinking. Glad to welcome her work into the world.” Emily Haviland has shared the stage with some of the great contemporaries like Aoife O’Donovan, Margo Price, Twisted Pine, Darol Anger, the late Emy Phelps, Bruce Molsky, and has been showcased on records released by Alisa Amador, Kaiti Jones, and others.

Kimaya Diggs

• Jazz
• R&B
• Singer/Songwriter
• Soul

KIMAYA DIGGS is a musician and writer, born and based in the rolling hills of Western Massachusetts. The sounds of her childhood included Emily Dickinson, Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, 70’s soul, and songs around the table with her family.

A fourth-generation artist, Kimaya grew up singing with her sisters, and found her voice across the facets of neo-soul, jazz, and R&B. She’s crafted a genre-defying style that celebrates the power and dexterity of her voice. Slippery and acrobatic at times, earthy and urgency-filled at others, her voice has been called “smoothly captivating” by the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Her songwriting beautifully captures the spectrum of her vocal range, and the singular control she has over her instrument.

Her debut album Breastfed (2018) is a bittersweet chronicle of growth towards the light. Produced by LuxDeluxe bassist Jacob Rosazza, the LP features lush string arrangements and moving harmonies. The single How Am I Sposta Know placed in top 10 in 93.9 The River’s Best New Songs of 2018.

Her EP One More Holiday (2021) builds on her jazz roots for a classic Christmas sound. The title track, about the death of her mother, “captures the way that the season of joy can also intensify the feeling of loss… during the holiday season,” wrote the Greenfield Recorder. She launched the album with a Christmas-themed variety night in her native Northampton.

As a writer, Diggs’ personal essays, short fiction, and poetry has been published widely, earning her a Callaloo Fellowship in Poetry in 2017. In 2020, she headlined the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Tell It Slant poetry festival, performing live from Emily Dickinson’s historic bedroom.

More recently, to commemorate Black History Month in 2022, she released a cover of Solange’s “Cranes in the Sky,” a song that documents a journey towards self-love. Her single They Can Say What They Like, released in 2021 on A-Side B-Side Records, written to benefit Cancer Connection, Inc., raising over $2000 for the organization. It placed #6 in 93.9 The River’s Best New Songs of 2021. Her sophomore album is expected in early 2023.

Wallace Field

• Folk
• Singer/Songwriter

From the metaphorical ashes of a breakup to the literal ashes of a house fire, folk-rocker Wallace Field rises like a phoenix from the ashes with her debut album All Costs, out now. The album features nine original songs, took four years to make, and premiered on the fifth anniversary of the house fire. With her “powerful voice reminiscent of Joan Baez” (The Valley Advocate), Field stuns with her haunting, vulnerable songwriting and “crystalline voice” (The Recorder). The Boston Globe says “she always sounds like she means it.” Most of the album’s songs were written on baritone ukulele, always with the aim to transform them into a more powerful full-band sound.

No emotion is too sacred to explore for this late-blooming artist. Trained as a journalist in college, Field expertly unfolds her journey through heartbreak, house fire, and healing in All Costs. The Recorder writes that “Field emerges as a master storyteller who takes the listener on a journey through darkness to the light on the other side,” calling the album “a powerful, musically stunning debut about survival.” There are hints of Field’s influences in her range of voices, from the theatrical Kate Bush and Aldous Harding, to the folk roots of Joni Mitchell and Weyes Blood.

Field grew up in western Massachusetts. She’s performed in popular Massachusetts venues such as Cambridge’s Club Passim, The Parlor Room in Northampton, Holyoke’s Race Street Live (formerly Gateway City Arts), and Taffeta in Lowell. She’s opened for acts like Nellie McKay, Charlie Parr, Heather Maloney, and Elizabeth Moen. Field also took part in Signature Sounds’ 2023 Back Porch Fest and 2023 Arcadia Folk Festival.