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Connie Dover is an American singer-songwriter who primarily writes and performs Celtic music and American folk music. Born in Arkansas and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, she started her career playing bluegrass before joining Celtic band Scartaglen in the early 1980s. In the 1990s, she began a solo career and has released four solo albums since 1991's Somebody, all on the Taylor Park Music label, with noted Scottish musician Phil Cunningham of Silly Wizard serving as producer. She completed recording a CD of traditional Christmas songs and carols with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra, entitled The Holly and the Ivy, which was released in 2008.
Her broadcast performances include guest appearances and features on NPR's Weekend Edition (Saturday and Sunday), A Prairie Home Companion , The Thistle & Shamrock , Mountain Stage and E-Town.
Connie's work as a writer and composer has flourished alongside her performance career. She received a 2007 Emmy Award for her production of acoustic music for the KCPT public television production Bad Blood: The Border War that Triggered the Civil War. Her original music earned a Grand Prize in the 2007 Yellowstone & Teton Song Contest, sponsored by the Western Folklife Center (Elko, Nevada), and she is a recipient of the Speakeasy Prize in Poetry, sponsored by The Loft, America's largest independent literary center. Her book of poems, Winter Count, was published in 2007 by Unholy Day Press.
Connie has twice been a finalist for the AFIM Indie Award, and other accolades for her music include being named a Top Ten Folk Release by Tower Records' Pulse! Magazine, a Winning Favourite Folk Release by The Scotsman, Scotland's National Newspaper, a Boston Globe Top Ten Folk Release, a nomination for Scotland's Living Tradition Award Album of the Year and a Creative Achievement Award from Time Warner's Hollywood On-Line. She has been a finalist for two Native American Music Awards, and for two New Age Voice Music Awards for Best Vocalist and Best Celtic Release.
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Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer-songwriter from Penistone, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Sometimes called the "Barnsley Nightingale", she has headlined various British national folk festivals, and is one of the best known contemporary English folk singers. In 2001 The Guardian described her as "a superstar of the British acoustic scene." In 2007 the BBC website described her as "The first lady of young folkies". She is one of the few folk singers to have been nominated for the Mercury Prize.
Lara St. John is a Canadian violinist.
Mary Jane Lamond is a Canadian Celtic folk musician who performs traditional Canadian Gaelic folk songs from Cape Breton Island. Her music combines traditional and contemporary material. Lamond is known as the vocalist on Ashley MacIsaac's 1995 hit single "Sleepy Maggie", and for her solo Top 40 hit "Horo Ghoid thu Nighean", the first single from her 1997 album Suas e!. Her 2012 collaboration with fiddler Wendy MacIsaac, Seinn, was named one of the top 10 folk and americana albums of 2012 by National Public Radio in the United States.
Martyn Bennett was a Canadian-Scottish musician who was influential in the evolution of modern Celtic fusion, a blending of traditional Celtic and modern music. He was a piper, violinist, composer and producer. He was an innovator and his compositions crossed musical and cultural divides. Sporting dreadlocks at the height of his performing career, his energetic displays led to descriptions such as "the techno piper". Diagnosis of serious illness at the age of thirty curtailed his live performances, although he completed a further two albums in the studio. He died fifteen months after release of his fifth album Grit.
Fiona Karen Ritchie MBE is a Scottish radio broadcaster best known as the producer and host of The Thistle & Shamrock, an hour-long Celtic music program that airs weekly throughout the United States on National Public Radio (NPR). She also curates ThistleRadio, a 24/7 web-based music channel devoted to new and classic music from Celtic roots and is co-author of The New York Times Best Seller Wayfaring Strangers.
Chen Yi is a Chinese-American violinist and composer of contemporary classical music. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Chen was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji, and has received awards from the Koussevistky Music Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School and in 2012, she was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.
Fredell Lack was an American violinist. Noted as a concert soloist, recording artist, chamber musician, and teacher, she was the C. W. Moores Distinguished Professor of Violin at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas.
Cathie Ryan is an Irish American singer-songwriter, who has released five CDs and tours steadily with her band performing at festivals, folk clubs, performing arts centers and with symphony orchestras. Known for "her crystalline vocals and insightful songwriting," Cathie Ryan has been one of the leading singers in Celtic music since her start in the 1980s. She first came to prominence in 1987 as lead singer of the Celtic music group, Cherish the Ladies, with whom she recorded two CDs. In 1995, she began her solo career.
Aoife O'Donovan is an Irish-American singer and Grammy award-winning songwriter. She is best known as the lead singer for the string band Crooked Still and she also co-founded the Grammy Award-winning female folk trio I'm with Her. She has released three critically acclaimed studio albums: Fossils (2013), In the Magic Hour (2016), and Man in a Neon Coat: Live from Cambridge (2016), as well as multiple noteworthy EPs, including Blue Light (2010), Peachstone (2012), In the Magic Hour: Solo Sessions (2019), and Bull Frog's Croon (2020). She also spent a decade contributing to the radio variety shows Live from Here and A Prairie Home Companion. Her first professional engagement was singing lead for the folk group The Wayfaring Strangers.
Lydia Artymiw is native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and an American concert pianist and Emerita Distinguished McKnight Professor of Piano in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.
Denise Djokic is a cellist from Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Strad magazine has called her instantly recognizable for her "arrestingly beautiful tone colour".
Kate Targett-Adams is a singer, songwriter, MC and Celtic harpist. She has released 6 albums and has enjoyed most success singing in Chinese in China.
Karin Rehnqvist is a Swedish composer and conductor of classical music. She composes chamber music, orchestral works, music for the stage, and particularly vocal music, incorporating elements of folk music such as the vocal technique of Kulning. In 2009 she was appointed the first female professor of composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.
Holly & Ivy is a 1994 Christmas album and 16th overall studio album by American singer Natalie Cole. Released on October 4, 1994 by Elektra, it is Cole's first album featuring Christmas music and serves as a follow-up to Take a Look (1993). Cole co-produced the album with American music producer Tommy LiPuma, with whom she had worked on Unforgettable... with Love (1991). Holly & Ivy consists of 12 tracks, including 11 covers of Christmas standards and carols and one original song written by Gerry Goffin and Michael Masser. Cole promoted the album as non-traditional in interviews and live performances.
Mo Kenney is a Canadian singer/songwriter based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Catching the ear of noted Canadian rocker Joel Plaskett while still in school, Kenney released her first album in 2012, which Plaskett produced. Kenney is known for her lyrical prowess and engaging stage presence. Called "Nova Scotia's rising star" by The Scene magazine, she has toured with Plaskett as well as with Ron Sexsmith. In 2013, her song "Sucker" won the prestigious SOCAN Songwriting Prize.
Eileen McGann is an Irish-Canadian folk singer, songwriter and traditional Celtic musician. Her album, Beyond The Storm, was Juno Award-nominated in 2002. She has released seven solo CDs and has established an almost 30-year career touring across North America and Great Britain.
Sarah Hayes is a British folk musician and multi-instrumentalist. She is a member of the indie folk band Admiral Fallow and also a solo artist.
Jennifer Margaret Barker is a Scottish-American classical composer and pianist. Her compositional style is highly influenced by the landscape, culture and musical heritage of Scotland. She is Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Delaware. Her music has been recorded on the Naxos Records, Composers Recordings Inc., New World Records, Albany Records, Meyer Media and PnOVA Recordings labels. She is published by Boosey & Hawkes, Theodore Presser Company, Vanderbeek & Imrie Ltd., Southern Percussion and McKenna-Keddie Publishing.
Kenneth Broberg is an American classical pianist. In June 2017 he won the silver medal at the Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In June 2019 Broberg earned the third prize and bronze medal at The XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition. In June 2021 he received the American Pianists Association award.