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, composer and arranger. Frisell 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 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.
Eliza Amy Forbes Carthy, MBE is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing the fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians singer/guitarist Martin Carthy and singer Norma Waterson.
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, lyricist, and civil rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she influenced many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. In 2011 Time magazine included her recording of "Take This Hammer" on its list of the 100 Greatest Popular Songs, stating that "Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music."
Tanya Donelly is an American Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter and guitarist based in New England who co-founded Throwing Muses with her step-sister Kristin Hersh. Donelly went on to co-form the alternative rock band The Breeders 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.
Susan Tedeschi is an American singer and guitarist. A multiple Grammy Award nominee, she is a member of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, a conglomeration of her band, her husband Derek Trucks’ band, and other musicians.
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.
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.
Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground is a book by Boston Globe journalist Scott Alarik with photographs by Robert Corwin. It was published in 2003 by Black Wolf Press. The book is a compilation of over 120 articles by the author that appeared in either The Boston Globe or Sing Out! between 1992 and 2002. The compilation includes interviews and stories about many of the key figures in contemporary folk music in America and the United Kingdom. Some of the writing is focused on the folk music scene in the Boston, Massachusetts area. The book is 416 pages and contains 96 photographs of the featured musicians.
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: in 2018 from her alma mater Berklee College of Music and in 2022 from 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 Argentinian 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.
