Fiddle guru Darol Anger calls Bruce Molsky “the Rembrandt of the Appalachian fiddle.” Matt Glaser, director of the American Roots program at Berklee College of Music, calls him “America’s reigning old time fiddler.” 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 Möller. “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’s 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.

Cousins Arto and Antti Järvelä belong to an illustrious musical family whose tradition of fiddling at weddings in Finland goes back more than 300 years. They grew up immersed in the music of Othnobothnia, which, in case you didn’t know, is the eastern shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, at the northernmost reaches of the Baltic Sea. Grounded in this long-standing musical tradition, they also play their own stunning originals. “Both Antti and Arto are responsible for radical reinventions of Finnish roots music,” says Singout! in a review praising their new album, Os Fera Liluli. Arto also plays with the renowned folk fiddle orchestra JPP, Nordik Tree, Maria Kalaniemi, Erik Hokkanen & Lumisudet, and Kaivama, as well as performing solo. Antti is known for his work with Frigg, JPP, Baltic Crossing, Troka, and Kings of Polka. Bruce calls their music “far-reaching, soulful, and intimate. Each piece is bright and visual, a mini-journey to some interesting and far-away place. These are tunes worth listening to over and over again!"

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