Midwinter Festival - 2018 - Performers

Bereket

The University of Texas Middle Eastern Ensemble “Bereket” is a group comprised of UT students, faculty, staff and community members. “Bereket” is a word with cognates in Turkish, Arabic and Persian that translates as “abundance”, “fruitfulness”, and “divine gift”. About half of our members are from the Middle East, and all are interested in learning about the culture, history, religions and languages from these areas. The ensemble has several goals: to gain experiential understanding of the music and cultures of the Near, Middle East, North Africa, and former Ottoman territories; to foster community outreach; to work with UT language and other classes; and to create a sense of community around musical performance.

Ensemble members learn to play basic melodic and rhythmic modes; to structure free-meter improvisations and semiimprovised heterophonic styles; vocal and instrumental compositions; how to organize repertoire into suite-like performance formats such as fasil, waslah and nawba. Members meet once a week for general rehearsals with occasional sectionals and/or individual coaching.

Bereket Web site

Chris Buckley

Irish fiddle master and instructor. Fiddler for the Irish groups Tea Merchants and Aidan

Ley Line

Ley Line is the musical merging of two duos. Austinites Kate Robberson and Emilie Basez met twin sisters Madeleine and Lydia Froncek at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2013. Since reuniting in Austin, Texas in 2015, Ley Line has been weaving together their individual journeys into a collective vision. Through intimate live performances and multilingual lyrics, Ley Line’s music inspires connection across the peaks and valleys of the human experience.

Ley Line partners with schools and grassroots organizations, offering workshops and interactive performances to promote cultural appreciation amongst diverse youth populations. They have partnered to support non-profits including Girls Impact the World, The Amala Foundation, Fuel our Fire, GirlForward, Casa Marianela, Creative Action and Livroteca Brincante do Pina.

Mazel Tov Kocktail Hour

Mazel Tov Kocktail Hour is a traditional Jewish music project, started in 2007 by Samantha Goldberg. Dylan M. Blackthorn, & Kronk (Sick).

The band has traveled the world in many formations, learning many different tunes and the history and context of the development of klezmer music and Yiddish folksongs. From Texas to Manhattan, Mexico, Poland, Cleveland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ireland, and Greece, Mazel Tov Kocktail Hour has played at sold out venues, busked for a living on the street, and shared Jewish music with many people.

The Stovetop Rangers

Old Time Appalachian, Early Country, Pre-War Blues.

Wache

The Caribbean coast of Colombia has a musical richness that goes far beyond cumbia and vallenato. The regional variety of rhythms- porro, puya, gaita, merengue, chalupa, bullerengue, tambora- tells stories that are unknown even to many Colombians. Wache is a new musical group where the members explore and share these stories with you.

Wilkinson’s Quartet

Wilkinson's Quartet is an ensemble of up to 6 musicians who play jazz, swing and traditional country music!

The core members:

Candler A. Wilkinson IV : band leader/ vocals/ electric guitar
Curtis Sigurd : upright bass / vocals
Matt Thomas : electric guitar / steel guitar / vocals

Rabia Ali

Rabia Ali has spent her life traveling around the globe, spending many formative years in Pakistan and across the Middle East, collecting artistic influences on the way. Influenced greatly by her own South Asian heritage and her deep ties to Middle Eastern and Central Asian cultures, Rabia sings chiefly in Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic, and Farsi. Rabia began to perform as a dancer with Ravaan Persian Dance Company in 2013, and has since branched out into choreographing and performing solo.

Mira Dickey

Although I play a variety of styles, at the moment I am focusing primarily on Scandinavian and American folk music, and especially, the Norwegian hardanger fiddle. I grew up in a musical family and spent my younger years playing classical violin. After taking a 6-year break from the instrument, I came back to it though Appalachian old-time fiddling, and after exploring a few other styles of traditional music, I fell in love with the ethereal, otherworldly sound of the hardanger fiddle.

This instrument is different from the violin in several ways: It is most commonly tuned to BEBF#, the bridge and fingerboard are almost flat, and there are 4-5 sympathetic strings which resonate with the main strings. The instrument is also traditionally highly decorated with painted designs, inlay, and a carved dragon or lion’s head at the scroll. I have been drawn in by the magical qualities of this instrument, and I love to share its music with other people, especially those who are not familiar with it. My goal is to spread the magic of the hardanger fiddle as far as possible and keep the tradition alive. I am hoping to schedule more local performances and dances in the future. You can also catch me playing the regular old fiddle with a local folk-rock band, The Blackboot Family Band.

Will Csorba and Cameron Knowler

From Houston, TX, Will Csorba and Cameron Knowler are an acoustic duo whose influences span the gamut from ragtime, bluegrass, old-time and blues. From original compositions, to re-envisioned chestnuts, each member’s contribution is evenly displayed. Csorba, an accomplished fingerstylist whose musical upbringing was fostered in the American primitive guitar tradition, including names such as John Fahey and Jack Rose, lends a spacial reverie by way of his highly syncopated manner. Knowler, who developed on the other side of the American musical pond, first became fascinated with acoustic music when he heard the works of players such as Norman Blake and Clarence White.

From this, he has established a manicured flat picking technique, creating a vehicle to weave together he and Csorba’s heterogenous textures. After a chance encounter at a local bluegrass jam hosted at a barbecue restaurant, the two quickly got to work and discovered that, through their shared love of fiddle music, they may begin to inhabit a space of oneness, while showcasing each other’s strong suits. Since releasing their debut record, “Who’s Been Giving You Corn?” in the summer of 2017, the two have toured the southeast in addition to maintaining a regular performance schedule in their hometown. Their time spent on the road, in the studio and on the stage has allowed them to develop a form of dialogue that quickly brings the listener into their world of musical alchemy. Their approach to playing is more concerned with exploring the larger frontier which gave birth to the many forms of traditional American music, as opposed to existing on either side of a dividing line. Embodying the notion that no tradition is stagnant, the two continue to travel down the unlit path of musical evolution with fun as their light.