Northeast Concertina Workshop

Allan Atlas teaches music history at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, where he is also head of the Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments. His not-so-secret musical passion, though, is the English concertina, on which he presents lecture/recitals and performs with the New York Victorian Consort (always on nineteenth-century instruments). He also writes about the instrument: The Wheatstone English Concertina in Victorian England (Clarendon Press, 1996), and Contemplating the Concertina: An Historically-Informed Tutor for the English Concertina (The Button Box, 2003), and edits the Papers of the International Concertina Association.

Florence is a native of north Co. Clare's Newquay, just up the road from Bellharbour, home to famed concertina player Chris Droney and the center of an unusually rich tradition of concertina playing in Ireland. One of Florence's biggest influences would be her father Martin Fahy, a concertina player also, who passed on the tradition and the rhythmic Clare style of playing. Florence has a strong commitment to playing with a traditional style. As musician and author Fintan Vallely points out, Florence is among those gifted young players who are helping to sustain the older dialects of Clare music. She has taught concertina extensively at home in Ireland and in the U.S.

Originally from Cincinnati, Rachel Hall grew up in a musical family, with her mother playing hammered dulcimer and her father on concertina and accordion. Rachel began piano lessons at age 6 and landed her first paying gig as a teenager in a contradance band. She started playing English concertina while in college and has become recognized for her excellent technique and the unusual styles she plays. After graduating from Haverford College, Rachel was awarded a Watson Fellowship to study and collect traditional music in Scandinavia and the British Isles. As part of that grant, she spent six months in the Shetland Islands and three months in Norway and visited Ireland and Scotland. She joined the folk trio Simple Gifts in 1995 and has recorded three albums with the band: Other Places, Other Times (1996), Time and Again (1999), and Crossing Borders (2005). Rachel is also active as a Sacred Harp singer and is a co-editor of the forthcoming shape note tunebook The Shenandoah Harmony.

From Montpelier, Vermont, Aaron Marcus can be found throughout the east playing Hayden duet concertina for contra and English dances with the bands Giant Robot Dance, Gift of the Marcii, Frost and Fire and The Turning Stile. Aaron's experience with both traditional dance and classical music began at age 5; as a classically trained pianist, he enjoys sharing the theory behind traditional music. Aaron plays and writes within and beyond the dance traditions of England, Scotland, Appalachia, Ireland and Quebec.

Brian Peters has played Anglo for twenty-five years, and, according to The Living Tradition magazine, is "second only to John Kirkpatrick" as an exponent of the English style of playing the instrument, based around melody and chorded accompaniment. His repertoire includes dance music, slow airs and ragtime pieces, but he's also well known as a song accompanist, performing mostly traditional material but also branching out into Music Hall and pop. Brian is a regular tutor at concertina workshops in England including Witney, Kilve and Swaledale, and in the course of his career as a professional folk musician has performed in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He also plays melodeon and guitar and has made eight solo CDs, plus other releases with various bands. In 2005 he released his first album devoted exclusively to the concertina, Anglophilia, which attracted much favourable comment in the concertina world and the folk music press.

Since first picking up the squeezebox in 1997, Christian "Junior" Stevens has become a fixture in the Irish Traditional Music scene in America. Performing on button accordion and anglo concertina, he has honed his craft at the feet of some of the finest musicians at home and abroad, as an active promoter of traditional music, a highly sought after dance musician, an experienced teacher, and as a natural performer, gracing stages across the country with some of the genre's most talented artists. He combines a deep respect for the raw energy inherent in centuries old traditions, with a constantly evolving appreciation for modern musical sensibilities of all shapes and sizes.