This year, the festival features Marla Fibish, Will Patton, Matt Shipman, and David Surette, with special guests Bruce Victor and Susie Burke. This two-day event offers group lessons and workshops on a variety of topics, jam sessions, and an evening concert.
As in past years, the festival will present a March 2, Friday night concert featuring the same performers over on the seacoast; this year the show will be returning to the Stone Church in Newmarket, one of the Seacoast's premier venues for live roots music This is a separate ticket from the Concord events.
Register for the festival at the link at the bottom of this article or you can send a check for $150 made out to:
Concord Community Music School
23 Wall St.
Concord, NH 03301
Please include your address, phone number and email address with any form of payment.
Lodging is available at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Concord, New Hampshire, with a special festival rate. A limited number of rooms have been set aside, so if you are interested, please contact the hotel directly at (603) 225-0303.
2018 Guest Performer/Teachers
A San Francisco native, Marla Fibish has become one of the prominent voices of the mandolin in Irish music, bringing a musicality to the tradition that is not often heard on the instrument. Her dynamic playing is featured on the 2017 Noctambule release A Sweetish Tune, the 2010 recording with the band Three Mile Stone, and The Morning Star, a duo CD with Jimmy Crowley released in 2011, an all instrumental project that features Irish music on an array of mandolin-family instruments: mandolin, mandola, mandocello, bouzouki, and dordan. In addition to the mandolin, Marla plays mandola, tenor guitar, and button accordion. She sings and writes music and is known for her musical settings of works from a variety of poets. This work is featured in her current duo project Noctambule, with guitarist and husband Bruce Victor. Their earlier releases include Travel in the Shadows in 2013 and The Waking in 2015. An experienced and sought-after teacher, Marla teaches private students and classes, online at Peghead Nation, and has been a staff instructor at many music camps, including the Mandolin Symposium, the Swannanoa Gathering, California Coast Music Camp, Colorado Roots Music Camp, Lark Camp, Portal Irish Music Week, and O’Flaherty Irish Music Retreat. Her instructional DVD Irish Mandolin Basics: Tunes & Technique has been a popular self-learning tool, focused on acquiring the foundational technique for playing Irish music on the mandolin.
Will Patton has been playing music since the age of 6, starting on piano and taking up guitar at age 12. Mandolin and bass soon followed, and he's been leading bands since he was thirteen. Based in VT, his travels have taken him to Rio, Paris and the Caribbean as well as all over the U.S. and Canada, playing rock and roll, folk, bluegrass, Brazilian music, and jazz. His bands have opened for Van Morrison, Ray Charles, Bonnie Raitt, Earl Scruggs, Maynard Ferguson, John McLaughlin and Toots Thielemans. He has shared the stage with Roy Eldridge and Mose Allison and is featured on many recordings as a bassist and mandolinist. During the last twenty years he has been visiting and playing in Paris, and his collaborations with legendary gypsy guitarist Ninine Garcia as documented on his recordings have received critical acclaim both in the U.S. and abroad. His 6 recordings have all been very well reviewed nationally and have been heard on folk, World and jazz radio shows all across America. His most recent release is Time’s Arrow (2014). Will has taught mandolin at Ashokan Western and Swing week, Django in June Camp, and many others.
Matt Shipman currently resides in Portland, ME and is a performer and teacher of acoustic and traditional music. Although guitar and mandolin were his first love, he also plays bouzouki, and clawhammwer banjo. He attended the Hartt School of Music for a time, and eventually received his degree from Vermont College, majoring in a self designed major of Traditional Music Studies. For this study he traveled through Nova Scotia, North Carolina and Maine recording and compiling songs and stories from people he met, which later culminated as a radio documentary about traditional music in the 21st century. Matt performs with his wife Erica Brown in a duo called Darlin’ Corey, as well as with Erica Brown & The Bluegrass Connection, High Range bluegrass band, and Boghat, a traditional Irish band. Matt has put out recordings with High Range and Erica Brown and has also has released 2 recordings of his own; his most recent recording is When Evening Falls with Darlin' Corey. Matt and Erica have been music educators for over 12 years and recently opened a teaching studio in their Portland, ME home called Darlin' Corey Studios where they give lessons to people of all ages and abilities.
David Surette is highly regarded throughout New England and beyond for his work on the mandolin, guitar (both flatpick and fingerstyle), and bouzouki; Sing Out Magazine wrote that "Surette's playing is always inventive, and sets a new standard for traditional instrumentalists." As part of a duo with his wife, singer Susie Burke, they have performed regularly together for many years (30 years in 2018!), recording several albums and building a reputation as one of New England’s top folk duos. Surette was a founding member of the Airdance band with fiddler Rodney Miller, with whom he recorded four albums and toured nationally. He has also released five critically-acclaimed solo CDs; his most recent release, Waiting For The Sun, is a duo recording with Susie. He is also an experienced teacher, and coordinates folk music programming and teaches regularly at the Concord Community Music School, as well as at numerous summer music camps and festivals.
Concerts
Friday, March 2 - March Mandolin Festival concert featuring Marla Fibish, Will Patton, Matt Shipman, and David Surette, with special guests Bruce Victor and Susie Burke. Stone Church Music Club, Zion's Hill, Newmarket. 7:00 p.m., (603) 659-7700 or for more information. This is a separate ticket from Saturday and Sunday events at the Concord Community Music School
Saturday, March 3 - March Mandolin Festival concert featuring Marla Fibish, Will Patton, Matt Shipman, and David Surette, with special guests Susie Burke and Bruce Victor. Admission included for Festival participants; general admission tickets for others available through the Music School or (603) 228-1196.
Additional Information
- Festival web site
- Registration
- (207) 384-8151
- (603) 228-1196 (Music School)
- email soozendave@surfglobal.net
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