EVENT CANCELLED- Music from Maryland Traditions and Annapolis’ Tuesday Club

EVENT CANCELLED

Local celebrities in Irish music–Peter Brice on button accordion, Tess Hartis on fiddle, and guest pianist Donna Long– are featured in a concert of 18th and 19th century music from Maryland and Ireland. The concert will highlight minuets from the manuscripts of Annapolis dancing master John Ormsby who taught dancing here in the 1750s. Also featured is music from Annapolis’ Tuesday Club, a colonial gentleman’s club. Though dance had always been a popular form of entertainment in America and Europe, dance masters like Ormsby heightened the trend through private and public instruction.  This evening’s program is inspired by the research of former United States Naval Academy musician John Barry Tally who wrote Secular Music in Colonial Annapolis: The Tuesday Club 1745-56.

Peter and Tess perform regularly as “The Livebox,” and focus on the revival of traditional music from Maryland, restoring its links to ancient traditions in Ireland and Scotland, while identifying and demonstrating the mutations in popular American music movements.

Artist Spotlight:

Peter Brice

Peter Brice sings old songs in a traditional style and plays Irish traditional music on the button accordion. A native Annapolitan and a member of Baltimore’s Irish traditional music community, Peter’s work blends musicology and history, humor, colorful design, and a vision for traditional culture as the foundation for an intellectual life. He has collected and collated the compositions of Lisa Null and Billy McComiskey and is a collector of Irish and American traditional music.

Tess Hartis

Tess Hartis, a South Carolina native, plays fiddle and is a classically trained violinist. She has degrees in Violin Performance and Music Education from the University of South Carolina.  While at university, Tess fell in love with Irish traditional music. Bringing together her classical background, deep self-taught understanding of traditional styles, and experience as an educator, Tess offers a thoughtful and well-rounded approach to teaching beginning fiddle students.

Donna Long

Donna Long was born in Los Angeles and began her piano studies at the age of five with her father, Byron Long, a jazz/classical pianist. As a child, Donna was exposed to many different genres of music, including players from the old and new Jazz eras, Classical, Scottish, Indian, and African. Donna moved to the Baltimore/Washington, DC area in 1978, and after hearing Brendan Mulvihill play Irish music, she was inspired to pick up the fiddle. Mulvihill provided her a solid foundation in style and playing. She then began to accompany him on the piano; today Donna is considered one of the finest Irish music pianists. She has recorded two duet albums with Mulvihill, The Steeplechase and The Morning Dew. Her solo CD, Handprints, was released in June 2003