A member of the Boston Symphony since 1987, Bonnie Bewick studied violin with Paul Makanowitzky and Ruggiero Ricci at the  University  of  Michigan  in  Ann Arbor

and with David Cerone and Aaron Rosandat the Curtis Institute of Music, where she received her bachelor's degree in music in 1986. Prior to joining the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Bewick won a position with the Columbus Symphony and participated in summer music festivals at Interlochen, Spoleto, the Colorado Philharmonic, and the Grand Tetons. Ms. Bewick has made solo appearances with the Boston Pops under John Williams and Keith Lockhart, the New England Philharmonic, and the Cape Ann Symphony, as well as with a number of West Coast orchestras. She performs frequently in the Boston area in recitals and with the Renard Quartet and also plays Irish and folk music with Childsplay and with other traditional artists. Ms Bewick conducts Orchestra Audition seminars all over the country, coaches privately, and is currently on the faculty of The Boston Conservatory.

"Exuberant and rhythmic, somehow both wild and innocent, delivered with captivating melodic clarity and an irresistible playfulness," says the Boston Globe about Hanneke Cassel's playing. Such charismatic fiddling has brought native Oregonian Hanneke Cassel many honors and awards. She is the 1997 U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion, she holds a Bachelors of Music in Violin Performance from Berklee College of Music, and she has performed and taught across the U.S., Scotland, Sweden, Austria, China, Italy, Hungary, New Zealand, France, and Canada.

Hanneke's most recent album Silver (May 2006) features several from the new crop of roots musicians, including Rushad Eggleston, Casey Driessen, Ryan McKasson, Jake Armerding, Corey DiMario, Jeremy Kittel, Keith Murphy, and Dave Wiesler. Influences from China to New Zealand, along with grooves and musical innovations from the hip Boston bluegrass/Americana scene, fuse together to create a uniquely American approach to Celtic music on this album. She creates sounds on the cutting edge of the acoustic tradition, while retaining the integrity and soul of traditional Scottish music. In addition to her solo act and Childsplay, Hanneke has played with the Cathie Ryan Band, Cherish the Ladies, Alasdair Fraser, Matt Glaser and the Wayfaring Strangers, Ensemble Galilei, Aine Minogue, and the Boston-based band Halali.  She teaches  regularly  at  Alasdair

Fraser's Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddle School, Mark O'Connor's Fiddle Camp, Boston Harbor Fiddle Camp, and the Club Passim School of Music. Hanneke has performed with Joey McIntyre, former member of New Kids on the Block, at Boston's Hatch Shell on the Charles River. Her fiddling has graced the stages of Boston's Symphony Hall (opening for Judy Collins) and Mountain Stage, The Plaza Hotel, and the Lincoln Center in NYC (with Cathie Ryan.) Hanneke and Casey Driessen appear on Darol Anger's "Diary of a Fiddler" as "two up-and-coming fiddlers.

Website: hannekecassel.com

Amanda began playing at age 8 and became immersed in the vibrant Irish and Scottish traditional music communities in the Boston area. She began playing sessions, concerts, and dances from a young age at venues such as Club Passim, Boston College, and WGBH’s A Christmas Celtic Sojourn. She studied with Hanneke Cassel, Tommy Peoples, and George Keith, and also considers Boston musicians Larry Reynolds and the Gannon family to be important musical influences. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University in 2012, majoring in music with a focus in music performance and ethnomusicology.

After spending many years performing and teaching in the Boston area, Amanda now makes her home in Dublin, Ireland. In Dublin she has completed a Master of Science degree in Creative Digital Media at the Dublin Institute of Technology where she has collaborated on Irish cultural and Traditional Music projects such as Fáinne, a mobile app featuring Irish language, music, and cultural activities from the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht, She continues to perform regularly in the Dublin area.

Bob Childs has been making violins for over 30 years. After being introduced to violinmaking by Ivie Mann in Maine, Bob did six years of apprenticeships with Mittenwald-trained violinmakers Anton Smith and Michael Weller before setting up his shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a fiddler, Bob was immersed for many years in the Maine fiddle tradition before becoming heavily influenced by Irish music. In addition to twenty years of performing with Childsplay, Bob was part of the Old Gray Goose and the Moosetones, two seminal bands in Maine (part of the great genre of animal-related traditional music bands that populate the United States).

Years ago in Ivie's shop, whenever they would finish a violin, they would take the instrument down to Otto Soper's house in Orland, Maine. Otto loved to talk, and two of the wisest things he told them were that music will take you places that money won't and that you will make all your great friends through music. "In that spirit let me say that no greater friendships could exist than those I have made with the members of Childsplay."

The son of Childsplay member Joe DeZarn, Graham grew up in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, where he received a steady infusion of traditional music at home and at contra dances. At age 11, he took his first fiddle lessons from Andrea Hoag and continued to learn tunes from his dad. Soon afterward, he began learning bodhran and percussion from Bhagwan Jesse Winch. As a youth, he was a regular at D.C.-area contra dances, ceilis and festivals, and spent several revelatory summers at the Augusta Heritage Festival's "Irish Week", under the influence of such fiddlers as Willy Kelly, Liz Carroll, James Kelly and Antoin Mac Gabhann.

Now 24 years old, Graham lives in Richmond, Virginia,  where  he  plays fiddle

and banjo on stages and porches, at dances and in living rooms and kitchens. Graham is a devotee of the music of John Hartford, and also loves improvised music, independent radio and old motorcycles.

Website: sheilafalls.com

Sheila Falls earned her Bachelor of Music degree in violin performance from New England Conservatory.  While attending N.E.C., she was awarded a Tanglewood fellowship. Upon graduation, she joined The New World Symphony and served as a rotating concertmaster for three years.

In addition to her accomplishments in classical music, Sheila is a three-time North American Champion in Irish fiddling.  At age fifteen she won the All Ireland Championship in Kilkenny, Ireland.

Presently, Sheila is a member of The National Lyric Opera Orchestra. She also freelances throughout New England. Sheila has been a member of the music faculty at Wheaton College for the past ten years and is the director of Wheaton’s World Music Ensemble.

Ellen Gawler is a celebrated fiddler from Maine conversant in many diverse styles, including Irish, Maritime, Québecois, Shetland, and New England.  While a teenager, she traveled to Scotland, Ireland, and the Shetland Islands to study and collect tunes. In 1977 she apprenticed for three months with master fiddler Tom Anderson of Shetland, while helping him teach children in the upper Islands. She was a member of the spirited Maine Country Dance Orchestra, who rocked the Bowdoinham Town Hall for 25 years. In 1978 as an original member of The Old Grey Goose, she toured the Northeast, Mid Atlantic, and Appalachian states. Ellen, Megan MacArthur, and Elisabeth Wolfe, comprise the highly acclaimed folk trio Trillium, who are known for their intricate, interweaving harmonies and have recorded two albums. Currently, she is joined by Maine's leading Celtic artists to form the group Ladies of the Lake with one CD to their credit. Also with one recording, Ellen, husband John Gawler, and daughters Molly, Edith, and Elsie, have warmed the hearts of audiences in their performances as the beloved Gawler Family.

Ellen is a Suzuki violin/fiddle teacher of two decades and teaches at fiddle workshops, music camps, and at her home

in Belgrade. She is founder and musical director of The Pineland Fiddlers, anaspiring group of 30 youngsters, ages 8-18. These young artists, who are dedicated to the continuation of Maine, Maritime, and French Canadian fiddling, have recorded twice and toured to Cape Breton and Québec. Throughout the year, accompanied by guitarist Maggie Ericson, Ellen frequents the stages of grange hall dance venues delighting dancers with her vivacious, driving sound.

Ralph Gordon is a uniquely versatile musician, who brings more than 35 years of musical experience to the bass and cello. He is equally at home in folk, old time, swing, jazz, blues, bluegrass, klezmer, and chamber group settings and plays all styles of music for dancers.

Classically trained, Ralph studied music at West Virginia University and the Manhattan School of Music. He left Manhattan to perform with the New Jersey

Symphony, then toured with Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. He eventually returned to West Virginia, where he joined the ground breaking folk ensemble Trapezoid. In 1986--nine years and four recordings later--he left the group to become a freelance musician.

Since then he has performed with many individuals and groups in a multitude of musical styles and settings and is a sought after freelance artist and session musician in the Washington/Baltimore metropolitan area. Ralph can be heard on more than 100 recordings and has contributed to arranging and producing many of these. He teaches bass and performance classes at summer camps across the country.

"His playing is more sophisticated and technically accomplished than the next 10 string players of any sort and he uses his instruments to subtly ground, stabilize, and inspire the rest of the ensemble as they pursue their experimentations." Charleston Post Courier

“[Ralph Gordon is a] cross-genre genius" Folklore Society of Greater Washington Newsletter

Kathleen Guilday performs traditional Irish music on the harp, both as a soloist and as a member of various New England area groups. An All-Ireland harp champion, Kathleen studied traditional style in Ireland with Noreen O'Donoghue and Máire Ní Chathasaigh. Her repertoire includes dance tunes, slow airs, and compositions of the 18th-century Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan.

Kathleen has appeared at Boston's Symphony Hall with the popular Irish band The Chieftains and entertained President and Mrs. Clinton and Prime Minister of Ireland Bertie Ahern at the White House on St. Patrick's Day 2000.

Irish flute player/singer Shannon Heaton began her musical life at the age of three with piano lessons from her mother. Four years later, she was living in Nigeria and learning flute and whistle from her Belgian neighbor. Throughout her early years, she was  exposed  to  a  number  of  traveling

musicians and folklorists who would stay with her family while passing through town. While obtaining a degree in ethnomusicology from Northwestern University, she became involved in the Irish music scene on the north side of Chicago. She spent nights at sessions in the city and summers in Ireland and has been playing tunes ever since. She is keenly active as a composer and arranger of traditional music and has performed with numerous ensembles throughout New England, including the Robbie O'Connell Band, Keith Murphy & Fair Play, Laura Cortese, and A Celtic Christmas Sojourn, in addition to Childsplay. Her tunes have been recorded by Siucra and The Battlefield Band among others.

Shannon tours extensively with her husband, Matt Heaton. For the duo, she crafts parts that move effortlessly between vocals and flute, one line spilling into the next. Sing Out Magazine called her work "richly orchestrated . . . an almost fugal multiplicity of voices."

In Boston, where she has lived since 2001, Shannon is active as a session player, teaches for the Hanafin-Cooley Comhaltas branch at Boston College and Harvard, and helped to found the Boston Celtic Music Festival.

Website: mattandshannonheaton.com

With his fine fiddling and stage presence, Steve Hickman has electrified audiences for close to 30 years. Besides playing for Childsplay and for numerous bands in the Washington, D.C. area, Steve has toured the world as a featured fiddler for the Fiddle Puppets and Evening Star. One of the world's leading authorities on the arcane art of hambone, Steve is renowned for his hambone antics (not to mention his handlebar mustache). Steve occasionally lives in King George, Virginia, but spends much of his time traveling to play at dance workshops, festivals, and camps throughout the United States and the world.

McKinley James is a cellist in the Boston area. Growing up in Vermont, she learned to play both traditional and classical music from young age. Her first band, the Irregulars, was formed when she was 12, and played through the Northeast for many years.

In 2011, the Irregulars won First Place in the Young Traditions Vermont competition. Performance highlights include playing Main Stage at the Dance Flurry weekend and at the New World Festival. She has also performed with Isabel Oliart on the national radio show Says You.

In 2016, she formed a band, Night Tree, that won the New England Conservatory’s Honors Ensemble. Together they have toured throughout the US, opened for Solas in Portsmouth Music Hall, and played in Jordan Hall and Rockwood Music Hall. They released their debut album in 2017.

McKinley has played with the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra, Middlebury College Orchestra, and the New England Conservatory Symphony, and soloed with the Champlain Philharmonic Orchestra. She now studies with Yeesun Kim at the New England Conservatory.

Laurel began playing the fiddle in 1980. Enchanted by the rhythmic lilt and soulful depth of the old regional fiddle styles of Ireland, she became a student of Irish fiddle master Seamus Connolly of County Clare. The music of Clare and East Galway has always been her greatest source of inspiration, and over the years she has woven together the influences of many wonderful musicians she has been fortunate to meet, and has developed a nuanced style of her own.

A native New Englander and resident of the Boston area, Laurel has performed and taught at festivals and venues around the country and close to home. She has taught Irish fiddle at Boston College, Wellesley College, Phillips Academy Andover, and currently at the Indian Hill School of Music in Littleton MA. In 2002 and again in 2010 she was awarded Traditional Arts Master Apprentice grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to work as a master teacher with talented young fiddlers. She has performed, toured and recorded with Childsplay since 1999. In collaboration with Seamus Connolly she published a book of traditional Irish tunes with accompanying CD, “Forget Me Not,” in 2002 with Mel Bay. Her first solo CD, “The Groves,” was released in 2006.

Website: www.laurelmartin.com

Recently Laurel's favorite musical projects have included her trio collaboration with flute and banjo player Mark Roberts and Irish dancer Kieran Jordan, her duet performances with harpist Kathleen Guilday, and singing with her daughter Sarah. She loves playing in small, intimate performance spaces and sessions. A recently trained Suzuki teacher, she is passionate about teaching traditional Irish fiddle music and encouraging young musicians to listen for the secrets that the old musicians wove into their recorded music.

19-year-old Katie McNally, 2009 New England Scottish Fiddle Champion and two-time runner-up Junior National Scottish Fiddle Champion, has performed with and opened for such notable musicians as Hanneke Cassel, Brittany Haas, and Laura Risk. She has played at such venues as the Cantab Lounge; the Boston Celtic Music Festival; the New Hampshire Highland Games; the ICONS Festival; and Club Passim. An active member of the Boston Celtic music scene, Katie is currently a sophomore at Tufts University where she is working toward degrees in music and English. Within the past few years, Katie has begun teaching her own students, passing on the Scottish and Cape Breton music traditions through private lessons, workshops, and, for the first time in the summer of 2009, at fiddle camp. Katie is also very involved in the Scottish Country Dance community and often plays for dances and events in the Boston area.

Naomi Morse, a native of Vermont, grew up surrounded by music and dance in the folk communities of New England. She has been  playing  for  contra  and  English

Country dancing for over 10 years and is known for her energetic and driving fiddle playing in many bands, including Night Watch and Housetop in addition to Childsplay.

Naomi has been on staff at CDSS music and dance weeks at Pinewoods, Ogontz, Buffalo Gap, and Christmas Country Dance School in Berea, Kentucky, as well as numerous dance weekends around the country.

Naomi lived in York, England, for over a year, where she studied and explored the traditional music of the British Isles and Sweden and became one of the most sought after fiddlers in Yorkshire. While living in England, she was a member of the Irish folk band The Kimberlite Pipes. Naomi has toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe with the world-music ensemble Northern Harmony, both singing and playing music from world harmony traditions. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she sings professionally.

Website: www.nightwatchacoustic.com

Newfoundland-born Keith Murphy began absorbing his native musical languages--folk songs, ballads and dance music--from an early age. Now residing in southern Vermont, Keith has variously called Ottawa and Toronto home. A proficient multi-instrumentalist, he has long applied much of his considerable energy to the rhythmic side, becoming a valued band member (Nightingale, Assembly) and sought-after sideman on guitar, mandolin, and foot percussion. At the same time, Murphy's natural and lyrical singing and piano playing add a complementary dimension to his music, a thoughtful, well-crafted, and ever-respectful take on tradition.

Whether it be for Irish ceilidhs, Scottish balls, Quebecois sets, or American contras, dance accompaniment was and continues to be a focus of Keith's career. Through many musical encounters with top players, he has developed both a harmonic sensitivity and the propulsive right hand that has become his signature sound. He is known for distinctive guitar playing in the popular DADGAD tuning, alternating with a driving chordal mandolin style and often underscored by his unerring French-Canadian style footwork. Keith has accompanied such noted players as Liz Carroll, Martin O'Connor, Winifred Horan, Oliver Schroer, both in the studio and on stages throughout North America and Europe.

Keith is also a noted composer of instrumental music based on traditional styles and has published a collection of his work as the book Black Isle Music. His music has been used widely by New England contra dance groups, and his tunes appear on many recordings, including  Childsplay's  Heaven and  Earth.

Most recently, Keith has been composing music for a theater piece with the internationally renowned Sandglass Theater, based in Putney, Vermont.


For years Keith has taught at music workshops and summer music programs around the country and abroad. He currently leads a Celtic music class for the Brattleboro Music Center and with them has founded the Northern Roots Festival in Brattleboro, Vermont, an event featuring local and regional talent. He appears on dozens of recordings, playing guitar, mandolin, piano, and foot percussion. His singing and arrangements are featured on his solo recording, Bound For Canaan, comprising songs of Eastern Canada and New England.

Website: blackislemusic.com

Mark Roberts has been playing traditional music for almost 30 years. He has recorded and toured extensively, playing 5 string banjo, flute, and bouzouki amongst other instruments. Some of the bands he has been associated with; Touchstone, The Red Clay Ramblers, The Sevens, The Clay Foot Strutters and Childsplay. His flute and whistle playing are on the soundtrack of the Jon Sayles film The Secret of Roan Inish. Mark got to realise his dream of playing the pennywhistle in large stadiums when he toured with Don Henley. The Gloup, his flute and whistle CD with Dan Compton was released last year.

for the best choreography by the Independent Reviewers Of New England in 2005. He has taught in the dance program of the Université du Québec à Montréal and is currently in the folk music program of Joliette College. He also produces shows for Dance Cadence, the company he started in 2000.

Website: www.danse.qc.ca

Shannon Dunne's dancing has been seen in theaters, festivals, and workshops all over North America and Ireland, including the Kennedy Center, Comhaltas Ceoltori Eirann North American Convention, ICONS Festival (Boston), Saline Celic Festival (MI), the University of Milwaulkee Sean-nos Festival (WI), Choilin Sean Dharach Festival (Ireland), Brennan's (Nova Scotia), Greyfox Music Festival (NY), the Institute of Musical Traditions (MD), the Rams Head (MD) and the Mainstay (MD).

She is a former principal dancer of Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, and continues to tour with The Wren Girls: American Women in Sean-nos Dance and Kitchen Quartet. She has appeared as guest artist with Solas, Flook, Karan Casey, Kevin Crawford, Killian Vallely, Tony DeMarco, Tim O'Brien, and Bruce Molsky. She has an extensive theater resume, including work with Award Winning Synetic Theater (Company, 2005-2007).

Ms. Dunne is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the 2008 Dance Fellowship and multiple Folk Arts Grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She is on the roster of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and was the recipient of a Performers Grant from the University of Milwaukee. She was a 2001 nominee for the WATCH Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

Website: shannondunne.com

Ariel Friedman is a multi-genre cellist, composer, and educator. A winner of ASTA’s Alternative Styles Award, she is steeped both in the music of American roots traditions and a broad range of classical repertoire. Ariel tours the U.S. and abroad with her sister as Ari & Mia, highly acclaimed as New England’s Americana sister act, and has performed with many other folk-based groups including Scottish National Fiddle champion Hanneke Cassel, the Sail Away Ladies, and the BSO’s Classical Tangent. An advocate of new music and a composer herself, she is the founding cellist of Cardamom Quartet and performs with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Ariel graduated from Northwestern University in 2008 and received a Masters of Music from New England Conservatory in 2011. In high demand as an educator, Ariel teaches at Brookline Music School and has her own private studio. She has taught at music camps and workshops from New England to New Zealand.

Website: ariandmiafriedman.com

Nic Gareiss is a performer, teacher and researcher examining the cultural employment of the human body as a musical instrument. Lauded by the Irish Times as, "the human epitome of the unbearable lightness of being," and, "the most inventive and expressive step dancer on the scene," by the Boston Herald, his work re-imagines aesthetic movement as a musical activity, morphing dance into a medium that appeals to both the eyes and the ears. He has an enduring fascination with sonic aesthetic movement phenomena, their role in different societies and the remarkable concurrent existence of percussive foot articulation in so many disparate cultures - this has lead him to a study shoe-sounds and grooves internationally, tracing the roots of American vernacular dance abroad in a rhythmical adventure using the body as the ethnographic tool and improvisational dance traditions as the lingua franca. He has performed in Ireland, Scotland, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, England, and Canada, on Irish national television and CMT, for Irish head of state Brian Cowen and American Energy Secretary Steven Chu. In addition, he holds degrees in Anthropology (Central Michigan Unviersity) and Ethnochoreology (University of Limerick).

Informed by fifteen years of study and performance, Nic's dancing reflects his love of improvisation, traditional footwork vocabulary, and musical collaboration.

 

Website: www.nicgareiss.com

"The human epitome of the unbearable lightness of being...Gareiss is more fleet of foot than an Olympian sprinter and more buoyant than a helium-filled balloon. He elevates Irish dance to a place where restraint is palpable and freeform flight is inevitable."
– Siobhán Long, The Irish Times

"Mesmerizing…a whirling dervish in tap shoes."
– Bay City Times

"A show-stopper...this Michigan native may be the most inventive and expressive step dancer on the scene. The nimble Gareiss called forth visions of Fred Astaire."
– Daniel Gewertz, The Boston Herald

He is a total joy to watch – music embodied in physique, gesture, movement and muscle; an eye-opener for the ear, as it were, such is the precision, detail and adventure of his sense of rhythm."
– Last Night's Fun

Mollie O'Brien sings jazz, R&B, blues, gospel, southern mountain traditional — you name it. And she approaches each with an ease that makes you think she was steeped in the style since the first time a note left her throat.

Growing up in Wheeling, West Virginia, one of five children, Mollie was exposed to music of every stripe, from performances by the Wheeling Symphony to concerts by Count Basie, Ray Charles, and the Beatles. She listened to singers — Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins, Bonnie Raitt and Dinah Washington, Streisand, Sinatra, and Betty Carter — and took voice lessons. Later, with her brother, Tim, she performed in church and at coffeehouses. All the while she dreamed of heading to New York to sing and act on Broadway and make a big splash in show business.

After her sophomore year of college, she set out for the Big Apple, but the auditions were discouraging and gigs were few. She stuck it out for four years — long enough to discover the irresistible pull of swing music and the stylistic stretches required for jazz. Eventually she moved to Colorado, where brother Tim O'Brien had already staked out territory in the booming music scene.

Mollie moved to Boulder in 1980, worked as a duo with Tim, and formed her own R&B band. Now, a couple of decades later, she's married with two teen-aged daughters and a firmly established singing career. She has been called one of roots music's best interpreters and singers, and her voice described as "smooth," "smoky," "powerful," and "bright and bold as sheet lightning."

Website: mollieobrien.com

Mollie's recordings are a tribute to the variety of her taste and the versatility of her performance. On her solo CDs — Every Night in the Week and I Never Move Too Soon (on Resounding Records) and Tell It True, Big Red Sun, and Things I Gave Away (on Sugar Hill) — she moves without hesitation from style to style, dipping into the songs of Lennon and McCartney, Percy Mayfield, Memphis Minnie, Chuck Berry, and the Subdudes.

There have been any number of collaborations, most notably the Grammy-winning True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe (Sugar Hill) with a stellar bunch of bluegrass greats. For the past few years, Mollie has worked with Garrison Keillor and Robin & Linda Williams as the Hopeful Gospel Quartet, with her own five-piece band, and as a duo with husband Rich Moore.

Mollie has earned rave notices at major festivals and venues throughout the U.S. and in the United Kingdom, Europe, and South America.

In addition to a superlative touring career with her previous bands Crooked Still, Goat Rodeo and Sometimes Why Aoife is currently enjoying a successful career as a solo artist (as a songwriter and singer), as well as with her group I'm with Her. Aoife can also frequently be heard on Chris Thiele's show Live from Here on NPR. We are thrilled to have her back for this final tour of Childsplay!

Websites: www.aoifeodonovan.com
and www.crookedstill.com

Matthew Olwell has been performing and teaching as a dancer and percussionist at festivals and theaters across North America and Europe since 1996. He began attending festivals and music events at an early age with the Olwell family flute business, and in 2005 recorded an album with his brother Aaron Olwell and their band Hell on the Nine Mile. He has studied with some of the finest teachers in percussive dance, including Donny Golden, Eileen Carson, The Fiddle Puppets, and Liam Harney. Matthew danced for nine years with the Maryland-based Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, with whom he performed in Riverdance. In 2006 he co-founded Good Foot Dance Company, and now teaches and performs often in community arts events in his native Charlottesville, VA. Matthew has performed with many excellent musicians, including Lunasa, Eileen Ivers, Tim O'Brien, Matapat, Corey Harris, Liz Carroll, and Bassekou Kouyate. He currently dances and plays percussion with James Leva and Purgatory Mountain. In 2007, Matthew appeared in a music video that mixed elements of clogging and kung fu by Rounder recording artists Uncle Earl.

Photo by R.L. Guyer