Bios

 

Alan Friend (banjo, guitar, concertina, spoons, vocals) started singing as a child and has not stopped since. His repertoire includes traditional songs from America and the British Isles, and old-time and contra-dance tunes. He founded the old-time band “Steal the Donut” and was delighted to help create the Chelsea String Band. He also plays contra music with the Contrapolitans. Alan has performed with many bands as well as solo at the NJ Folk Festival, West Virginia’s Pipestem Festival, the Park Slope Old-Time/Bluegrass Jamboree, the Kings County Opry, and the New England Folk Festival, coffee houses from Montreal to Washington, D.C., on local radio and at numerous community events. He has also given many banjo, ballad and old-time string band workshops. Alan is an Executive Board member and past President of the New York Pinewoods Folk Music Club.

 

Michaela Hamilton (guitar, 5-string banjo) traces her love of old-time and bluegrass music to her family roots in South Central Pennsylvania, where friends and relatives often gather to sing, laugh and tell stories. During her high school years, her mother reports, “She disappeared into her room one day and a year later came out playing the guitar.” Her other instruments include autoharp, bowed psaltry, harmonica, and Appalachian dulcimer. She is among the musicians who play contra music at Country Dance NY workshops, and recently accompanied bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb in a reading and musical performance at the North Carolina Festival of Books in Raleigh. An avid fan of Doc Watson and Jack Lawrence, she has attended music festivals and camps throughout the country.

 

Julianne Carney (fiddle) began playing violin at age five and grew up listening to classical music and Motown at the dinner table. She studied violin performance and graduated summa cum laude from Lawrence University. Upon graduation, she was awarded a Thomas J. Watson fellowship, with which she studied violin pedagogy and the process of creativity in several European cities. She has performed at numerous venues in different cities, including the Knitting Factory, Café Lena, and the Beachland Ballroom, with a variety of cross-genre acts, including Jenny Scheinman, Bill Frisell, Adam Matta (beatbox), Ambitious Orchestra, Luminescent Orchestra, My Brightest Diamond (formerly AwRY), Pilotram, and the One World Symphony. She recently recorded with Sufjan Stevens on his latest album, Illinois. Julianne’s embarkation into fiddle music began in 2004, and old-time music has become a favorite new facet of her musical life.

 

Dotty Moore (fiddle, vocals) comes from a background of classical violin, but after hearing old-time music, she was hooked on the fiddle. Dotty plays regularly for Country Dance NY’s (CDNY) contra dance workshops as well as with the Contrapolitans, CDNY’s contra dance band. She recently won first prize in the Intermediate division at the New England Fiddle Festival. More than an old-time fiddler, she loves western swing, bluegrass, blues, celtic and country music as well. Dotty hails from that hotbed of old-time fiddling, Nassau County.

 

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Last revised: December 28, 2005