MARTIN HAYES
Martin Hayes’ unique sound, his mastery of his instrument, his acknowledgement of the past and his shaping of the future of the music, combine to create an astonishing and formidable artistic intelligence. He is the recipient of several major awards, including Man of the Year from the American Irish Historical Society; Folk Instrumentalist of the Year from BBC Radio; a National Entertainment Award (the Irish ‘Grammy’), six All-Ireland fiddle championships before the age of nineteen, and most recently the prestigious Gradam Ceoil, Musician of the Year 2008 from the Irish language television station TG 4. Martin is interested in a wide range of music from Miles Davis to Finnish composer Arvo Pärt, but he remains grounded in the music he grew up with in Maghera, Feakle, east Co. Clare where the music learned from his father, P. Joe Hayes, profoundly influenced his musical accent and ideas forever. Recently he has composed scores for film, theatre, and modern dance, and has collaborated with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, the classical quartet, Brooklyn Rider, and Irish composer David Flynn in compositions recently performed with the RTE Concert Orchestra. These explorations present a challenge to any rigidity of thought and shed light on his fundamental artistic quest to go deeper within traditional Irish music and himself. We are pleased to welcome Martin back for his sixth Swannnanoa Gathering. www.martinhayes.com

KEVIN BURKE
Kevin Burke’s fiddle playing has been at the forefront of traditional music for over 30 years. His work during the 1970’s with Arlo Guthrie, Christy Moore, and the Bothy Band brought him international acclaim in both Europe and America. He also gained recognition as an exciting soloist with his milestone album, If the Cap Fits, a 30 year Anniversary Edition of which has recently been issued by Compass Records. His two albums with Bothy Band colleague Micheal O’Domhnaill, Promenade and Portland, continue to be highly influential resources for many traditional musicians. In 1985, Kevin was a founding member of the highly successful group Patrick Street, which has recently released its 10th album, On the Fly, on Kevin’s own Loftus Music label. Kevin spent much of the 90’s recording and performing in a series of acclaimed concert tours with Johnny Cunningham from Scotland and Christian Lemaitre from Brittany, as the trio, The Celtic Fiddle Festival. In 2005, Kevin and guitarist Ged Foley, his long time colleague from Patrick Street and The Celtic Fiddle Festival, released a highly acclaimed independent CD entitled In Tandem, which led to the formation of Loftus Music. The first release on the new label was an exciting collaboration between Kevin and guitarist Cal Scott entitled Across the Black River, after one of Kevin’s compositions, and was named one of the Top 10 Notable World Music releases by the New York Times. In 2002, The National Endowment for the Arts awarded Kevin a National Heritage Fellowship, the country’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. www.kevinburke.com

BRIAN CONWAY
New York-born fiddler Brian Conway is a leading exponent of the highly ornamented Sligo fiddling style made famous by the late Michael Coleman. The winner of two All-Ireland junior titles in 1973 and 1974, and the All-Ireland senior championship in 1986, Brian first studied fiddle with his father, Jim, of Plumbridge, Co. Tyrone, and with Limerick-born teacher/fiddler Martin Mulvihill. However, it was the legendary fiddler and composer Martin Wynne who taught him the nuances of the County Sligo style. Later, Brian met and befriended the great Andy McGann of New York, a direct student of Michael Coleman, who further shaped his precision and skill on the instrument, and he remains faithful to the rich tradition handed down to him. In 1979, Brian recorded a duet album, The Apple in Winter, with fellow New York fiddler Tony DeMarco. In July of 2002, Brian released his debut solo CD, First through the Gate, on the Smithsonian-Folkways label, which was subsequently chosen as Album of the Year by The Irish Echo. He is also featured on the CD, My Love is in America, recorded at the Boston College Irish Fiddle Festival, and on the documentary, Shore to Shore, which highlights traditional Irish music in New York. With the release in 2008 of his second solo CD, Consider the Source, The Irish Echo selected Brian as their Traditional Irish Artist of the Year. One of the musical ‘rocks’ of the New York area, Brian has also performed all over North America, Ireland and the rest of Europe, and is a noted instructor who has mentored many fine fiddle players, including several All-Ireland champions. www.brianconway.com

PATRICK MANGAN
Originally from Brooklyn, NY, Patrick is a two-time All-Ireland Champion who studied with renowned player and teacher, Brian Conway, and was also mentored by the late Sligo fiddle legends Andy McGann and Paddy Reynolds. At sixteen, Patrick appeared in Riverdance on Broadway, becoming the youngest fiddle player in the show’s history. Since then, he has performed with Riverdance at some of the most prestigious venues around the globe from Tokyo to Paris, as a featured soloist from 2006 through the present. Noted Irish Echo and Wall Street Journal music critic Earle Hitchner has written that Patrick “embodies all that is admirable and durable about the Irish tradition in America.” His teaching experience also includes various workshops, private lessons, and participation in the Catskills Irish Arts Week, and in 2002, he received first prize honors for Instrumental Composition in the BMG-sponsored World of Expression competition for his piece “September Sky.” He has a solo CD, Farewell to Ireland, and is thrilled to be returning for his third Swannanoa Gathering. www.patrickmangan.com

LAURA RISK
Now living in Montreal, Laura Risk grew up in the thriving San Francisco Scottish fiddle scene, learning her craft from master fiddler Alasdair Fraser. She has toured extensively, performing at Celtic Connections, Celtic Colours, and the Newport, Winnipeg, and Philadelphia Folk Festivals. In addition to her solo work, Laura performs with Paddy League and Kieran Jordan in the band Triptych. She is active as a record producer (Hanneke Cassel, Childsplay, Laurel Martin) and has toured with Sandy Silva, Ken Kolodner, Ensemble Galilei, Cordelia’s Dad, and the John Whelan Band. Laura has over ten albums to her credit, including her latest release 2000 Miles, on which she teams up with some of Quebec’s hottest traditional and jazz musicians for a new take on tunes from the great Scottish collections of the 18th and 19th centuries. Says Living Tradition, “Laura plays in a powerful, percussive style, with tight control and beautiful tone but bursting with energy and passion, turning reels into romps and slow airs into soul-searches.” She taught fiddling for five years at Wellesley College, where she founded the college’s first Celtic music ensemble. Laura has also taught at the Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling School, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp, Fiddlekids and five previous years at Swannanoa. Laura is currently a graduate student in Musicology at McGill University. www.laurarisk.com

BRIAN McNEILL
Our Scottish fiddle instructor from our very first Gathering twenty years ago, Brian McNeill celebrates the 40th year of a career that has established him as one of the most acclaimed forces in Scottish music. Described as “Scotland’s most meaningful contemporary songwriter” by The Scotsman, his work and influence as performer, composer, producer, teacher, musical director, band leader, novelist and interpreter of Scotland’s past, present and future describe a man who has never stood still. He has been a member of several of Scotland’s most influential bands, including Clan Alba and Battlefield Band, which he founded in 1969, and with whom he has performed around the globe. Brian plays fiddle, octave fiddle, guitar, mandocello, bouzouki, viola, mandolin, cittern, concertina, bass and hurdy gurdy, and his many songs about Scotland’s past and future, such as “The Yew Tree,” “The Lads O’ The Fair,” “The Snows of France and Holland,” to name a few, have established him as one of Scotland’s leading songwriters. His first novel, The Buskers, was published in 1989, and a year later he left Battlefield Band to concentrate more on writing and solo projects. Since then he has also toured with Dick Gaughan, Clan Alba, Kavana, McNeill, Lynch and Lupari, Martin Hayes, Natalie MacMaster and Feast of Fiddles. His audio visual shows, The Back O’ The North Wind, about Scottish emigration to America, and the sequel, with accompanying CD, The Baltic Tae Byzantium, which explores the influence of the Scots in Europe, have won wide critical acclaim. For six years he was Head of Scottish Music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and his continuing connection with America’s Lone Star State led to him being created an honorary Texan by then-Governor George W. Bush. We are delighted to have one of our original instructors with us again to celebrate our 20th Anniversary. www.brianmcneill.co.uk

ROSE FLANAGAN
Rose Flanagan is a traditional Irish fiddle teacher from Rockland County in New York who originally began music lessons as a child with Martin Mulvilhill while growing up in the Bronx. She further developed her Sligo-style of playing with the help of Martin Wynne and her older brother, Brian. She currently has a large fiddle school in her hometown of Pearl River, NY, where she is hard at work preparing the next generation of great fiddle players, which already includes several All-Ireland champions and medalists. Rose has been an instructor at the Catskills Irish Arts Week, Alaska Fiddle Camp, Irish Dance Camp in Harrison Hot Springs, BC, and the Fiddle and Pick camp in Tennessee. She has taught weekend workshops in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. She also runs various seisuns and plays with her group, the Green Gates Ceili band in the tri-state area.

ANDREW FINN MAGILL
Andrew has studied fiddle with such masters as Seamus Connolly, Liz Carroll, Tommy Peoples, Martin Hayes, Brendan McGlinchey, James Kelly, Brian Conway and Brendan Bulger. He is a four-time gold medalist at the New York Fleadh Cheoil, and has twice competed on fiddle and low whistle at the All-Ireland Championships in Ireland. He served as an instructor in Irish fiddle at the Swannanoa Gathering for two years, and at age 17, released his first CD of Irish fiddle music, Drive & Lift, featuring fellow SG staffers John Doyle and John Skelton, that Sing Out! magazine called “a stunning debut....the perfect balance of precision and intensity.” Cuts from that CD have been featured on several compilation CDs as well as on NPR’s Thistle & Shamrock. A recent honors graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill with a major in ethnomusicology, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to develop a multimedia fundraising project to benefit AIDS patients and their families in Malawi, east Africa. Working with noted Malawian musician Peter Mawanga, their CD, Mau a Malawi: Stories of AIDS, and a video documentary of the project are due for release in 2011. www.storiesofaids.com

GRÁINNE HAMBLY
Gráinne Hambly comes from County Mayo in the west of Ireland. She started to play Irish music on the tin whistle at an early age, before moving on to the concertina and later the harp. She lived in Belfast for six years, where she completed a Master’s Degree in Musicology, at Queen’s University. Her main research topic concerned folk music collections and the harp in 18th-century Ireland. In 1994, she was awarded first prize in the senior All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil competitions for harp and concertina. As well as being an established performer touring extensively throughout Europe and North America, she is also a qualified teacher of traditional Irish music and is in great demand at summer schools and festivals both in Ireland and abroad. Gráinne was awarded the T.T.C.T. (a certificate for teaching traditional Irish music at advanced level, credited by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and the Irish Department of Education), and has also received her Graduate Diploma in Education (Music) from the University of Limerick. She has released three widely-acclaimed solo harp CDs, as well as appearing on a number of other recordings. www.grainne.harp.net

KATHLEEN CONNEELY
Born in Bedford, England to a father from Errislannan, Co. Galway, and a mother from Newtown Forbes, Co. Longford, Kathleen first took lessons in her hometown at an early age from Clare whistle player Brendan Mulkere. She was also heavily influenced by her father, Michael, a well-known fiddle, accordion and tinwhistle player. The Conneely home was often filled with music from records, tapes and live sessions with such visitors as her uncle Willie Vernon, an accordionist who lived nearby, and Eddie Corcoran, a whistle player from Gurteen, Co. Sligo. In the mid-80’s Kathleen often visited Birmingham (England) to play in the thriving session scene there, and in 1991, she appeared with her father, Mick Sr., brother, Mick Jr., fiddle and banjo player John Carty and flutist Roger Sherlock on RTE’s, The Pure Drop. In 1993, she emigrated to Chicago, where she played with Liz Carroll, Martin Hayes and John Williams, among other Windy City musicians. Kathleen moved to Boston in 1997, and now lives in Rhode Island. She has taught for Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (parent organization of the All-Ireland Championships) in Dublin and Boston, at the Boston College Irish Studies Program, the Irish Arts Week in the Catskills. and five years at the Gathering.

BILLY JACKSON
Billy Jackson has been a major figure in traditional Scottish music for over twenty-five years, and was a founding member of the influential folk group, Ossian, whose outstanding recordings remain a benchmark for Scottish music. Acclaimed for his musicality on the Celtic harp, he is also a renowned composer whose work is inspired by the history and landscape of Scotland. In 1999, his song, “Land of Light” was selected as the winner of The Glasgow Herald’s year-long Song For Scotland competition, coinciding with the restoration of the Scottish Parliament, to select a “new anthem for a new era in Scotland.” As a solo performer, he has toured extensively throughout Europe and North America, and has taught harp at many festivals, including the Edinburgh International Harp Festival, Somerset Folk Harp Festival and Ohio Scottish Arts School (Oberlin). Billy is also a trained music therapist, and in 2004, he received our Master Music Maker Award for lifetime achievement. October 2007 saw the premier of a new composition for traditional and classical ensemble, Fantasia on Scottish Themes, by the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, which was commissioned to accompany the performance of Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony. www.wjharp.com

CATHIE RYAN
Cathie Ryan has been called a “thrilling traditional vocalist,” by the Boston Globe; Irish Music magazine recently wrote that she is “the best female singer in Irish music;” and The Irish Echo says her singing is “mature, masterful, at times magnificent.” In the fourteen years since her groundbreaking work as the original lead singer of Cherish the Ladies, Cathie has released four critically acclaimed CDs on Shanachie Records, is featured on over 50 compilations of Irish music, and tours internationally, headlining at performing arts centers, festivals, and guest starring with symphony orchestras. Her pure voice, a singing style that incorporates the ‘sean nos’ she learned as a child, her unerring taste in traditional song, and her fine songwriting are all the results of a deep and abiding love of traditional Irish song. Born in Detroit to Irish immigrants, she grew up in a home steeped in singing and storytelling and has spent her adult years searching out and singing the old songs. She has taught workshops on Irish song throughout the country. www.cathieryan.com