CONCERTINA

Catrióna Fee is a concertina player from Cold Spring, New York, who is currently based in Washington, D.C. Raised in a family of set and step dancers, including her two sisters, Angela and Mairead Fee, playing in groups and for dancers was always a central part of of Catrióna’s musical upbringing. She grew up playing ceilis alongside her father, Michael Fee, in the Catskills and other parts of the New York area. Catrióna is a multiple Mid Atlantic Fleadh champion on the concertina and has competed several times in the All Ireland Fleadh. As a youth she played in ceili band and grupa cheoil competitions in the US and Ireland with the Pearl River School of Irish Music.

Catrióna has taught concertina at the Catskills Irish Arts Week, the Baltimore Trad Fest, and and to individuals of all ages. She also had the privilege of teaching the concertina to and recording with Steve Martin for the first season of the hit TV show 'Only Murders in the Building.'

GUITAR (DROP D/STANDARD TUNING)

Richard Osban is a driving and dynamic guitarist based in Baltimore, Maryland. He cut his teeth on Irish music while living in Europe, and toured internationally with several Irish and Scottish music projects before returning to the US. Most recently, he has performed with Scottish trad duo Jocelyn Pettit and Ellen Gira, and also tours actively with his trio, the East Coasters.

Richard has instructed at several international workshops, including Folksounds Elmstein, Celtic Folk Weekend Regensburg, and the annual Irish weekend in Ismaning. He is also director of the Baltimore Irish Music School and, organizer of the Baltimore Irish Tenor Banjo Summit, and assistant director of the Baltimore Irish Trad Fest.

FIDDLE

Sarah Collins is a fiddle player based in the Baltimore/DC area, with deep ties to the Boston traditional music community. She plays mostly Irish music these days (and is newly exploring old-time stringband music) but grew up steeped in the Scottish music community having lived in Edinburgh as a kid. You can find her on staff at various fiddle camps throughout the year (Pure Dead Brilliant Fiddle Weekend, Boston States) or at regular Irish sessions in DC and Baltimore. Sarah has collaborated with many talented musicians over the years, including Jonathan Vocke, David McKinley Ward, Eamon Sefton, Marty Frye, Conor Hearn, Maura Shawn Scanlin, and Kate Gregory. Sarah is also a co-founder of the pandemic project, Ministry of Folk, and is a passionate community member and builder within the folk music scene. She is currently working with Richard Osban to co-produce monthly concerts for the Baltimore Folk Club.

FIDDLE

Brendan Callahan is an Irish fiddle player from Philadelphia. A four-time All Ireland medalist, Brendan learned his music from legendary fiddle player Brendan Mulvihill in Washington DC. Brendan's style blends regional fiddle styles of the north and west of Ireland, with distinctly American influences from Appalachia, cajun/zydeco and big-city blues. A teacher for more than 25 years, Brendan has worked with hundreds of students from around the globe and developed a curriculum of more than 1,500 common Irish melodies. Also a noted composer, Brendan has written numerous tunes that have been adopted into the Irish idiom, by casual musicians and recording artists alike.

GUITAR (DADGAD)

Josh Dukes is an All Ireland champion accompanist and a highly sought-after music teacher in the Baltimore/Washington DC area. A multi-instrumentalist whose talents embrace the ceili drums, guitar, bouzouki, bodhran, flute, and tin whistle, Josh has established a reputation for providing sensitive, tasteful support for traditional Irish music.

As a young high school student, Josh studied the oboe, tenor/alto saxophone, drum set, and baritone horn. Outside of the classroom, he learned the art of ancient rudimental drumming under the tutelage of Dominick Cuccia, a widely respected instructor/performer in the fife and drum community. In 1997, Josh enlisted in the Army and has since earned the rank of Master Sergeant, currently serving as one of three Drum Majors for the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps, “The Official Escort to the President,” the only military unit of its kind.

Josh continues to perform Irish music, having shared the stage with such renowned musicians including John Doyle, Paddy Keenan, Billy and Sean McComiskey, Brendan Mulvihill, Kevin Crawford, Zan McLeod, and Myron Bretholz, and he can be seen playing ceili drums regularly with The Old Bay Ceili Band. Josh lives in the greater D.C. area with his wife Judy and two daughters, Mya and Olivia.

SEAN NOS DANCING

Kate Spanos is a dancer and dance scholar from the DC area with a Ph.D. in dance and performance studies from the University of Maryland and an M.A. in traditional Irish dance performance from the University of Limerick (UL). She started dancing at the CCÉ céilís in Fairfax in 1990 and the O’Neill-James School of Irish Dance in 1992, going on to dance at the World Championships in 2000. She has studied a wide variety of Irish dance styles, including competition/feis style, sean nós, old-style step dance, Molyneaux style from North Kerry, and festival style from Northern Ireland. Notable teachers include Laureen O’Neill-James, Carmel O’Rourke-Tighe, Catherine Foley, Michael Ryan, Breandán de Gallaí, Jonathan Kelliher, Jimmy Smith, Padraig O hOibicin, Máire Áine Ní Iarnáin, Ruth Long, and Lauren Smyth. She teaches Irish and Brazilian dance in the DC area and also calls céilí dances regularly. In 2021, she received a Folklife Apprenticeship Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council to teach Irish dance to percussive dancer Becky Hill. She is co-founder and director of operations of EducArte, an arts education non-profit in College Park. For more about Kate, visit www.thekatespanos.com.

BUTTON ACCORDION

Diarmuid Ó Meachair is an accordion player and sean nós singer from Cúil Aodha, Co. Cork. As one of the most exciting accordion players of his generation, he was recently awarded the prestigious Young Musician of the Year award from TG4 for 2022. His latest solo album "Melodeon Medleys" was released in July 2023 and his debut album "Siúl na Slí" was released under the Raelach Records label in December 2022 with support from the Arts Council of Ireland and Ealaín na Gaeltachta.

In 2023 he was commissioned by "Féile John Dwyer" supported by the Arts Council to compose a suite of music in memory of the great Dwyer family from Beara. In 2016, Diarmuid won the Senior All Ireland melodeon title at the Fleadh in Ennis at 19 years of age, and in 2023, he was invited to join the latest De Dannan lineup by Frankie Gavin. The group has played at multiple festivals in Ireland, the UK, and Europe, as well as appearing on The Late Late Show.

Diarmuid is part of the teaching staff at the Department of Music at UCC, teaching accordion and melodeon. As a native Irish speaker, he has also won many sean nós singing competitions at the competitive Oireachtas na Samhna, Corn Darach Ó Catháin and Corn Seosamh Ó hÉanaigh.

TENOR BANJO

Simon Lace is a guitar, banjo, and mandolin player from Northern California. He found his love for Irish traditional music at music camps such as Alasdair Fraser’s Sierra Fiddle Camp and Lark Camp. While studying composition and jazz at San Francisco State University, Simon honed his guitar and banjo skills in the SF Bay Area trad community. Since moving to Boston, his sophisticated banjo and guitar playing has made him a fixture in the Irish music scene and can be regularly heard playing at pubs such as The Burren, The Druid, Emmet’s, and more. In addition, he has taught at programs such as CCÉ Boston Music School and Lark Camp Online, and got 1st place at the 2023 Mid Atlantic Fleadh on banjo, mandolin, and accompaniment.

PIANO (KEYBOARD)

Matt Mulqueen is a sought-after accompanist from Baltimore, Maryland. He grew up in a musical family and was immersed in the local Irish music scene. He started learning piano at a young age from Donna Long. Matt and Donna were awarded a Teacher Apprentice Grant through the Maryland Arts Council in 2008. Other major piano influences include Charlie Lennon, Josephine Keegan, Seamus Quinn and Brendan Dolan.

Matt competed in the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil in 2008 and 2009 with the Old Bay Ceili Band.

Matt has performed at venues throughout the United States including The Kennedy Center, Richmond Folk Festival, Lowell Folk Festival, Bangor Folk Festival, Catskills Irish Arts Weeks, Baltimore Irish Trad Fest, Maryland Irish Festival, Washington DC Irish Festival, Dublin Irish Festival, Chicago Gaelic Park Irish Festival and The Ark.

Matt’s playing can be heard on many recordings including, “At Home” with Rosie, Peter, and Trevor Shipley, The Old Bay Ceili’s Band’s “Crabs in the Skillet,” “The New York Connection” and “Deliriously Happy” with Dylan Foley and Josh Dukes, “Cover the Buckle” with Kieran Jordan, Sean McComiskey, Sean Clohessy and Josh Dukes and “To Keep the Candle Burning” with Joanna Clare.

He regularly leads sessions and plays for ceilis in the greater Baltimore area. Recently, Matt collaborated with Baltimore sing-songwriters and instrumentalists rooted in the Bluegrass, Irish and Old Time traditions to create a collaborative concert called “Across the Harbor.”

Matt is also an aspiring button accordion player who according to his teacher, Billy McComiskey, plays “like an old farmer.”

TIN WHISTLE

Kevin Elam is a multi-instrumentalist and All-Ireland Champion in Men's Singing. Although he boasts a strong background in classical piano and choral singing, and a degree in Jazz studies, Kevin is rooted in Irish traditional music. In August of 2019, he was awarded first place in Men's English Singing at the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, held in Drogheda, Ireland, and took home the coveted “Dalaigh Shield”, an award only won by one other American in its 65-year history.

Kevin has also won more than a dozen other awards in Irish music, including second place medals in Accompaniment and in Newly Composed Songs at the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, and nine first-place awards in multiple categories at the CCE Mid-Atlantic Fleadh. In 2020, Kevin was awarded a grant from George Mason University’s Young Artist Commissioning Project, and consequently recorded his debut album of traditional ballads, If I Were A Small Bird, released in September 2021.

Kevin enjoys a busy performance schedule in the US and abroad, appearing both as a soloist and with several ensembles at many of the top Irish and Scottish festivals and concert series. Kevin also teaches students in multiple instruments and styles, and in 2020 joined the prestigious faculty of DC's premiere Irish traditional music camp, MAD Week. Kevin was honored to be selected as one of six Artists in Residence at Strathmore Music Hall in Bethesda, MD for the 2023 season.

Kevin stays quite busy with other musical pursuits outside of the Irish traditional music scene. Holding a BM in Jazz Piano from George Mason University, Kevin performs regularly as a keyboardist in jazz and popular styles in the DC area. He has also developed a reputation as a skilled chamber singer, and enjoys singing Renaissance polyphony (as well as other choral works) with several professional choirs, as well as directing his own a cappella chamber group, Ars Gratia Populi.

http://www.kevinelammusic.com http://patreon.com/kevinelammusic

FLUTE

It’s hard to think of an artist in traditional Irish music more influential than Seamus Egan. From his beginnings as a teen prodigy, to his groundbreaking solo work with Shanachie Records, to his founding of Irish-American powerhouse band Solas, to his current work as one of the leading composers and interpreters of the tradition, Egan has inspired multiple generations of musicians and helped define the sound of Irish music today. As a multi-instrumentalist, he’s put his mark on the sound of the Irish flute, tenor banjo, guitar, mandolin, tin whistle, and low whistle, among others. As a composer, he was behind the soundtrack for the award-winning film The Brothers McMullen, co-wrote Sarah McLachlan’s breakout hit, “Weep Not for the Memories,” and has scored numerous documentaries and indie films since. As a bandleader, Solas has been the pre-eminent Irish-American band of their generation for the past 20 years, continuously renewing Irish music with fresh ideas, including a collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens on their 2015 album. As a performer, few others can make so many instruments or such wickedly complex ornaments seem so effortless. Music comes as naturally to Seamus Egan as breath, but his mastery of the tradition is only one facet of his plans to move the music forward.

In 2018, Seamus Egan began touring as a solo performer, bringing along friends and musical guests, and making music as Seamus Egan Projectthat points towards the origins of Solas in the 1990s. Originally a band of friends who gathered to enjoy the late night craic of the Irish sessions in Philadelphia and New York, Solas was able to meld the breakneck speed and fun of these late night jams with a more sensitive feel for complex arrangements and composition that came from Egan’s love of other music genres like jazz, classical, bluegrass or rock. Revisiting this period in his music, focusing on the three solo albums he cut before Solas, Egan’s looking back to that initial burst of creativity that followed the breathtaking four All-Ireland Championships he won on four different instruments by the young age of 14 and his turns as a star soloist in his later teens with Mick Moloney’s The Green Fields of America.

Growing up under the wing of powerful elder musicians, Egan’s always paid homage to his roots, but he’s thought of these roots less as a heritage and more as a universal language to be shared. Just as classical or jazz cuts across all ethnicities and unites communities around the world, Egan saw Irish music the same way, and the ensuing decades only served to support this idea. Today, musicians play Irish music all over the world, and part of this comes from the constant evolution the tradition has seen in the past century. Certainly this idea of musical evolution has kept Egan centered through the twenty years he’s spent as founding member of Solas, but the first real inkling of this came from his groundbreaking 1996 album, When Juniper Sleeps. Here, Egan began to explore the further reaches of the Irish tradition, blazing his way at spectacular speed through Irish reels, but also bringing in rich compositions and arrangements, and crafting soundscapes to enrich the melodies. This album dropped nearly the same year as Solas’ debut, self-titled album, so it’s no surprise that Egan would reach back to this time period to create new music for new generations.

BODHRAN

Jesse Winch was born in the Bronx in 1943. He’s the son of Bridie Flynn (RIP) of Loughrea, Co. Galway, and Patrick Winch, (RIP), born in London and raised by his Co. Clare-born mother in Castlebar, Co. Mayo. Jesse’s parents met and married in New York City in the early 1930's. Paddy, as he was known, played the tenor banjo and encouraged all five of his children to play the Irish music he loved so well. As a ten-year-old, Jesse took up the drums and two years later started playing with his father and button-accordion player P.J. Conway for house parties and parish dances. He played in his first ceili band in the late 1950's under the tutelage of the legendary Felix Dolan. The bands Felix organized won many first-place prizes at New York feiseanna. While still in High School, Jesse became the regular drummer for the Tenafly/Englewood, New Jersey Ceili Club with his dad, P.J. Conway and Walter Walsh, accordions and Jackie and Peggy Riordan (later Thompson), fiddles. Jesse went on to play drums with the Joe Nellany Band, Paddy Noonan, Paulie Ryan, and several other Irish dance bands in New York in the early 1960s, playing such historic venues as the New York City Center, The Yorkville Casino, The Jaeger House, and others.

In the late 1960's Jesse was introduced to the bodhran at an Irish Northern Aid benefit by Brian Heron, grandson of James Connolly, the great Irish patriot. In succeeding years, Jesse started playing the bodhran with encouragement and inspiration from such players as Peadar Mercier, Robin Morton, Seamus Begley (while visiting Washington on the 1976 Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann [CCE] tour) and DeDanann's Johnny McDonagh. Jesse played with James Keane's Ellis Island Band at the National Folk Festival in 1986 and 1987 as part of an all-star line-up that included Jack Coen, Mike Preston, Andy McGann, Paddy Reynolds, and Mattie Connolly, with Seamus Connolly joining the group in the second year.

Jesse is a founding member, with his brother Terry, of the award-winning band Celtic Thunder, and also plays regularly in the DC area with Narrowbacks, the Bog Wanderers Ceili Band, and the Irish Inn Mates. Jesse has recorded with Celtic Thunder, Jerry O'Sullivan, The Clancy Brothers and Robbie O'Connell, Johnny Cunningham, Linda Hickman, and many others.

Jesse has served on the teaching staff at the Augusta Heritage Center’s Irish Week in Elkins, WV, teaching bodhran and ceili band, a class he created; at the Swannanoa Gathering’s Celtic Week in Asheville, NC; at the Annual Convention of the North American Province of CCE; and regularly for the Washington Conservatory of Music at Glen Echo Park, Maryland.

In 2004, Jesse was elected Cathaoirleach (Chair) of the O’Neill Malcom Branch of CCE and served in that position until 2011. He brought many innovative programs to the Branch and built on the strong foundation established by his predecessor and Branch founder, Bob Hickey. At the 2000 CCE Convention, held in Washington, Jesse and Bob were honored for their contributions to the promotion and preservation of traditional Irish music and dance. Jesse subsequently chaired the 2013 Annual CCE Convention, in the Washington, DC area and was honored with a Blian na Cruinne Award for his contributions to Irish culture in America. In 2012 Jesse was inducted in to the CCE Hall of Fame for the US Mid-Atlantic Region.

SINGING

Award winning musician and singer, David McKindley-Ward, grew up in the DC area steeped in folk, traditional music, and protest music from all over the world. From his solid folk foundation of Pete Segeer and Stan Rogers, he found a love for Irish music from cassette tape recordings of the old folk revival balladeers from the 50s and 60s; the Clancy brothers and Tommy Makem, the Dubliners, The Wolftones, and many more. His interest in traditional singing grew when exposed to such greats as Paul Brady, Dolores Keane, and Donal Maguire, and much of his style and repertoire is based on these three. David has collaborated with Irish singers and instrumentalists Billy McComiskey, Eimear Arkins, Liz Hanley, and with Joey Abarta and Brenda Castles as The Sheep Stealers. He has recorded three albums with singer-songwriter Letitia VanSant, their latest release due this fall.

Over the last few years, he has made a name for himself as a touring artist across the US, Ireland and the UK and a regular performer and instructor at festivals including Catskills Irish Arts Week, Baltimore TradFest and The Philadelphia Céilí Group. He recently moved to the Boston area and has found a musical home amongst the fine traditional Irish musicians based there.