Fiddle guru Darol Anger calls Bruce Molsky “the Rembrandt of the Appalachian fiddle.” Matt Glaser, director of the American Roots program at the Berklee College of Music, calls him “America’s reigning old time fiddler.” Bruce is a master fiddler who also excels on banjo and guitar. Oh, and he sings, too. “Bruce has that ability to track deep emotion in his voice, without any unnecessary adornment,” says Linda Rondstadt, who knows a bit about singing herself. “There’s an incredible power of history and tradition in his vocals.” His latest album, Soon Be Time, is a solo effort that Bill Frisell calls “simply beautiful.”

Bruce grew up in the Bronx, studied engineering at Cornell, and worked as a mechanical engineer until he was 40, when he decided to devote himself full time to music. “I thought, well, maybe I’ll try it for one year,” he says. “So I took the year off, and never went back.” Since then, he’s toured both as a solo artist and as a member of many collaborative projects, including his work with Darol Anger, Michael Doucet, and Rushad Eggleston as the Grammy-nominated band Fiddlers 4, his work with Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny as the band Mozaik, and his work with Swedish musician Ale Moller. “The more cultures I discover,” he says, “the more I realize that folk music performs the same function for everybody, and therefore is the same thing everywhere – just spoken with different accents.” Bruce serves up a veritable smorgasbord of musical traditions, from Sweden to Mississippi, Appalachia to Hungary, Scotland to where the buffalo once roamed. His deep musical roots, great technical skill, and tender regard for the songs make him a compelling performer and a wonderful ambassador for the power of music to create strong connections.

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