Victoria Williams is an American singer, songwriter and musician, originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, United States, although she has resided in Southern California throughout her musical career. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the early 1990s, Williams was the catalyst for the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.
Jane Siberry is a Canadian singer-songwriter, known for such hits as "Mimi on the Beach", "I Muse Aloud", "One More Colour" and "Calling All Angels". She performed the theme song to the television series Maniac Mansion. She has released material under the name Issa – an identity which she used formally between 2006 and 2009.
Massachusetts is a U.S. state in New England. The music of Massachusetts has developed actively since it was first colonized by Britain. The city of Boston is an especially large part of the state's present music scene, which includes several genres of rock, as well as classical, folk, and hip hop music.
William Richard Frisell is an American jazz guitarist. He first came to prominence at ECM Records in the 1980s, as both a session player and a leader. He went on to work in a variety of contexts, notably as a participant in the Downtown Scene in New York City, where he formed a long working relationship with composer and saxophonist John Zorn. He was also a longtime member of veteran drummer Paul Motian's groups from the early 1980s until Motian's death in 2011. Since the late 1990s, Frisell's output as a bandleader has also integrated prominent elements of folk, country, rock ‘n’ roll and Americana. He has six Grammy nominations and one win.
Gary Burton is an American jazz vibraphonist, composer, and educator. Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the prevailing two-mallet technique. This approach caused him to be heralded as an innovator, and his sound and technique are widely imitated. He is also known for pioneering fusion jazz and popularizing the duet format in jazz, as well as being a major figure in music education from his 30 years teaching at the Berklee College of Music.
Jane Olivor is an American singer. After releasing five albums from the late 1970s through the early 1980s, her stage fright, anxiety over her rapid success, and her husband's illness and death caused her to take a 10-year hiatus. She released five more albums from 1995 through 2004. Since 2009, she has been retired from the public eye.
Tanya Donelly is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist based in New England. She came to prominence as a co-founder of the band Throwing Muses with her step-sister Kristin Hersh. Donelly went on to co-form the alternative rock band The Breeders alongside Kim Deal in 1989, before leaving to front her own band Belly in 1991. By the late 1990s, she settled into a solo recording career, working largely with musicians connected to the Boston music scene.
Emily Remler was an American jazz guitarist, active from the late 1970s until her death in 1990.
Thomas Walker Rush is an American folk and blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter who helped launch the careers of other singer-songwriters in the 1960s and has continued his own singing career for 60 years.
Kathleen Troccoli is an American contemporary Christian music singer, songwriter, author, and speaker.
Ellis Paul is an American singer-songwriter and folk musician. Born in Presque Isle, Aroostook County, Maine, Paul is a key figure in what has become known as the Boston school of songwriting, a literate, provocative, and urbanely romantic folk-pop style that helped ignite the folk revival of the 1990s. His pop music songs have appeared in movies and on television, bridging the gap between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
Laurie Geltman, is an American rock singer-songwriter-guitarist. She studied at the Berklee College of Music as a film score major, and began performing in the early 1990s with the experimental rock group Vasco da Gama. She was a Boston Music Awards winner in 1998 for Outstanding Female Vocalist. After that, she began her solo career. She released her first album, Departure, herself, then her second album, No Power Steering on her own label. A year after its release, No Power Steering was re-released by Eastern Front Records. She also released her third album Motion Pictures, on her own label. Her song "Ghost in the House" appeared on the Respond I compilation, a benefit CD for domestic violence groups, which includes also songs from Patty Larkin, Melissa Ferrick, Jenny Reynolds and Faith Soloway among others.
Michael Clement Irving Gibbs is a Rhodesian-born English jazz composer, conductor, arranger and producer as well as a trombonist and keyboardist.
Bonnie Hayes is an American singer-songwriter, musician and record producer, born in San Francisco, California, United States, and currently lives between Los Angeles and New York City. Her songs have been recorded by Cher, Bette Midler, Bonnie Raitt, Natalie Cole, Robert Cray, David Crosby, Adam Ant and Booker T and the MGs.
Maggie Simpson is an American singer-songwriter, acoustic guitarist and actress, from the Mountain West of the United States. She studied in Boston University's Professional Theater Training Program. Her musical style varies from straightforward acoustic folk music to indie folk to bluegrass and blues and roots. She has released two studio albums to date, OK Cafe (1999) and Angel of Thunder (2004), as well as contributing individual tracks to a number of compilation CDs and offering backup support to a number of similar artists.
"The strength of her play is that, without cliché or histrionics, she brings to life extremely dark experiences with wit, humour and wisdom. A singer-songwriter with a voice that recalls both Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez, Simpson impresses as an actress too." - The Scotsman
Esperanza Emily Spalding is an American bassist, singer, songwriter, and composer. Her accolades include five Grammy Awards, a Boston Music Award, a Soul Train Music Award, and two honorary doctorates: one from her alma mater Berklee College of Music and one from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).
Victoria Davitt, better known by stage name Victoria Vox, is a singer, songwriter and musician specialising in the ukulele. A native of Green Bay, Wisconsin, Vox now resides in Costa Mesa, California when not on tour.
Windham Hill Records was an independent record label that specialized in instrumental acoustic music. It was founded by guitarist William Ackerman and Anne Robinson in 1976 and was popular in the 1980s and 1990s.
Erana Clark is an Australian singer and vocal coach originally from Auckland, New Zealand.
Sofia Eugenia Koutsovitis, known professionally as Sofia Rei, is an Argentine vocalist, songwriter, producer, and educator. A classically trained mezzo-soprano, Rei's influences include South American folk styles, jazz, pop, new classical and electronic music. Singing in Spanish, English and Portuguese, her voice was described by The Boston Globe as "possessing a voluptuously full voice, comprehensive command of Latin American rhythms, and encyclopedic knowledge of folkloric forms from Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Uruguay." She was born and raised in Buenos Aires and has been based in New York since 2005.
