Zacharie Bachand is a pedal steel player and guitarist based out of Montréal, Québec. His musical voice lives near the intersection of experimental and folk music, and is rooted in his professional training as a jazz musician and improviser. He has had the pleasure of accompanying artists at some of the most illustrious venues and folk festivals across Canada, forging connections within the folk music industry and deepening his knowledge of folk music traditions. While his unique voice and professional attitude are sought after by many artists, it is with these that he seeks to infuse his own artistic projects. His own work seeks to creatively engage with the worlds of folk and experimental music, using compositional and improvisational practices to inform his artistic output. He is currently focused on writing music for small ensembles centered around the pedal steel.
Schools
Windborne
“A quartet the likes of which I haven’t seen since… Coope, Boyes and Simpson, the Watersons, or The Voice Squad. Just absolutely phenomenal!” -BBC Traveling Folk
Windborne combines bold and innovative harmonies, styles from a variety of cultures with traditions of harmony singing, and a vocal blend that comes from longtime friendship and years of singing together. They also carry on the alliance of folk music and social activism, breathing new life into songs of change from the past that still ring true in modern times.
“The best musical discovery of the year…Stunningly powerful vocal harmony… Windborne sets a new bar for folk harmony singing today” -Brian O’Donovan, WGBH-NPR
Hear Windborne in action:
Song of the Lower Classes – a protest song from the Chartists in England in the 1840s, a grassroots movement for voting rights
Stabat Mater (Corsica) live in Mont-Saint-Michel – a traditional setting of the Stabat Mater text from southern Corsica. A clip of this video went viral on TikTok in 2021, getting over 2 million views!
The Song of Hard Times – Windborne’s arrangement and expansion of a song from the 1930s, found in the archives at the Library of Congress
Instagram / TikTok: @WindborneSingers
MORE ABOUT WINDBORNE:
Internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble Windborne is a group of vocal chameleons who specialize in close harmony singing, shifting effortlessly between drastically different styles of traditional music within the same concert. Their musical knowledge spans many cultures, but they remain deeply rooted in American folk singing traditions – a typical concert program includes music ranging from American labor anthems and English ballads to ancient Corsican polyphony and traditional Quebecois tunes.
Hailed as “the most exciting vocal group in a generation,” Lynn Mahoney Rowan, Will Thomas Rowan, Lauren Breunig, and Jeremy Carter-Gordon share a vibrant energy onstage – their connection to each other and to the music clearly evident. They educate as they entertain, telling stories about the music and explaining the characteristics and stylistic elements of the traditions in which they sing.
But there’s another, crucial dimension to Windborne. They are adherents to folk music’s longtime association with social activism, in particular its ties to the labor and civil rights movements and others that champion the poor, the working class, and the disenfranchised. Breathing new life into old songs, they seek out music from movements over the past 400 years and sing them for the struggles of today’s world. They believe deeply in the power of music to change hearts.
In addition to performing in New England and around the world, Windborne has taught workshops in schools, community centers, singing camps, and universities. Seasoned teachers and song-leaders, they delight groups young and old with enthusiastic, clear, and nuanced instruction for musicians of all levels of experience. Singers not only learn the notes of a song, but also work on the varied vocal styles, language pronunciation, and gain an understanding of the song in its original cultural context.
In 2014, Windborne was one of 10 groups selected by American Music Abroad and the US Department of State to tour as cultural ambassadors through music. They traveled to Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Angola, touring with internationally known artists, performing at sold-out national theaters, and collaborating with traditional musicians in each country. They also taught music and dance workshops to schoolchildren, English-language learners, dance schools, choirs, and music conservatories.
Bonnie Lockhart
Singer, songwriter performing primarily for children and families. Perform and teach as artist in residence at schools, libraries, community centers and at private parties. Song leading at rallies and other political events, often with Occupella, a crew of singer/songleaders/songwiriters. Occasionally perform for adults, leftist events, usually unpaid. Play with women’s samba group, Sistah Boom. I’m 73 years old and semi-retired from paid work at this point.
Liv Cazzola [Tragedy Ann | The Lifers]
Liv Cazzola is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, educator, and avid collaborator. Though based in Guelph Ontario, Liv is typically seen performing in Tragedy Ann or The Lifers, in North America and Europe. She sings to seek understanding, question the current, relish in the goodness, and create necessary change.
Recently, Liv won the Folk Music Ontario Songs From the Heart Award for her Children’s Song Thomas’ Lullaby, was a CFMA award nominee for Emerging Artist of the Year (The Lifers), and has received an OAC Creation grant, OAC touring grant, and FACTOR Recording Grants for upcoming solo & band projects.
Chris Vallillo
Roots based singer songwriter/folk musician.
Erin Mae Lewis
Mountain Dulcimer Aficionado and Folk Music Educator
Erin Mae is a mountain dulcimer virtuosa who has taken an obscure American folk instrument, and with it has developed a high level of technical proficiency and musical expression. Erin has been playing traditional mountain dulcimer for over twenty years and chromatic mountain dulcimer for over ten years. In that time, she has developed a unique and progressive style. Carrying the rhythm section with her signature percussive chop and flat-picking fiddle tunes with impressive dexterity; audiences nationwide show amazement as they watch her fingers dance over her dulcimer strings.
Erin Mae is also a respected teacher who has taught at hundreds of dulcimer festivals and conferences around the world. She has pioneered online mountain dulcimer instruction and helped numerous festivals pivot to online events during the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, Erin Mae teaches kids folk music workshops at schools and libraries, and organizes kids camps at bluegrass and folk festivals.
Peter Alsop
PETER ALSOP is a nationally known singer/songwriter, lecturer and humorist from California. He has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and he is a Certified Experiential Therapist. His songs are used by thousands of parents, doctors, educators and other human service professionals to help families discuss sensitive issues such as sexual abuse, disabilities, loss and grief, codependency, self-worth, chemical dependency and family violence. Peter has worked as the Director of the Harbor Schools Residential Treatment Center for emotionally disturbed adolescents in Maine, and taught elementary school in the South Bronx ghetto. He’s lectured and performed at more than 400 colleges and universities and been on the faculty of many prestigious national conferences with such notable professionals as Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Benjamin Spock and Buckminster Fuller. He’s traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada, Southeast Asia, Australia, Central America, and Europe presenting and performing at conferences, festivals, rallies, and concerts. As a writer, producer and actor, he’s done a feature film, musical comedy, directed and edited music videos, and has completed twenty albums, four songbooks and six dvds. His children’s albums consistently win “Best Children’s Album” of the year awards from Parent’s Choice or the National Association of Independent Record Distributors. His songs are included on anthologies, in filmstrips, dvd’s, movies and television programs. Peter now lives with his wife, actress/director Ellen Geer in Topanga, California. For more information, check out his website at www.peteralsop.com
John O’Connor
John O’Connor
In 1983, while living in Seattle, John O’Connor sent a batch of his songs off to Flying Fish Records cold and–almost unheard of in the music business at that time–landed a contract to make an album of his powerful original songs. Songs For Our Times came out in 1984 and was named one of the best albums of the year by the Washington Post and several folk publications and radio stations.
Geoffrey Himes, in his Washington Post review said of John’s songs, “Mister, Slow It Down,” … is the best hitchhiking song since Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGree.” O’Connor’s “Missy and Me” is the best song about old age since John Prine’s “Hello in There.” “A Cold November,” an a cappella ballad about a poor man harassed by a Chicago cop, echoes Woody Guthrie’s hobo songs.
Almost 40 years later, having traveled the country, touring and working as a union organizer, John has gathered a treasure-trove of songs, stories and poems about the working class, war and peace, love and loss. Craig Harris has said, “…O’Connor has shaped his own acute observations of the working class into songs that beg to be sung along to…” Si Kahn calls his songs “wonderful: direct, simple, singable, powerful.” “Songwriting… right out of the same well that slaked Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger,” commented the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch.
John’s music has always been inseparable from his involvement in working class politics. He began his involvement in the labor movement right out of high school when he went to work in the factories of Waterloo, Iowa. His passion for American folk music led to a career as a folk singer and a cultural educator, performing in concerts, festivals, coffeehouses, schools and colleges, union education programs and political action events.
John recorded three albums with Flying Fish, one of them with the political quartet, ‘Shays Rebellion’, and a CD on the Chroma label. He also recorded a CD produced in conjunction with Collector Records called “We Ain’t Gonna Give It Back”, which is regarded by many as one of the best collections of original songs on the American labor movement. The late Joe Glazer said of John, “He writes the best songs about labor you are likely to hear.” Britain’s Southern Rag has said that “John O’Connor deserves to be numbered with the all-time greats of contemporary folk music.”
In 2017 John released his first CD in more than 20 years. Upon release, Rare Songs was ranked for several weeks in the top 50 albums on the US folk charts. John McCutcheon wrote, “John O’Connor’s wonderful new album, Rare Songs… is a welcome return of one of our best and most humane songwriters.”
Some 50 years after walking through the gates of his first factory job, John is still stalwart in his focus of fighting for the working class and inspiring them with his music and their music. John’s songs have been recorded by numerous singers from around the world. In 2009, the French topical singer, Renaud, adapted and recorded O’Connor’s song of deindustrialization, North by North, which went to number one on the French charts.
Also an accomplished poet, John has seen his poems published in dozens of literary magazines. He has won the Associated Writer’s Program’s Prague Prize and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. His book of poems, Half the Truth, won the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award in 2015.
Tom Rawson
Folksinger/Storyteller/Songleader
Chris Koldewey
Mainly focusing on Folk Music; he sings, plays guitar, concertina, banjo, fiddle, mandolin. Music of the sea, the land, work, and play, Chris loves to sing, and play with people from all around, in the first “do-it-yourself” music: folk!
Traditional – Singer of songs with a strong historic base. Composed long ago, by those whose names may be long since forgotten, but whose ideas are still relevant today.
Contemporary – Singer of songs that, although written today speak with a voice of timelessness.
Of The People – Singer of songs that “folks” can make their own, and carry on.
Susan Lewis
As a member of the women’s trio Belles of Hoboken in the early 80s (with Janet Stecher and Marcie Boyd), Susan performed throughout the New York City area and recorded numerous songs for the “Fast Folk” musician’s cooperative monthly musical “magazine.” When she moved to Seattle, Susan was a founding member of the quartet Shays’ Rebellion, along with fellow Local 1000 member John O’Connor (as well as Tim Hall and Janet Stecher). Their ‘songs of social movements past and present’ were shared with audiences across the United States and Canada. Their album “Daniel Shays’ Highway” was released on Flying Fish Records (FF427) in 1987.
Susan and Janet teamed up to form the duo Rebel Voices in 1989. They have released 3 albums together: “A Little Look Around”, “Warning: Women at Work”, and “A Piece of the Wall”. They have appeared in concert at coffeehouses, K-12 schoolrooms, colleges, festivals, living rooms, conventions, rallies, picket lines, and union halls across the U.S. and Canada, as well as in England and Portugal. The thousands of hours they’ve spent working together and the love of the material they sing are evident in their confident and inspiring performances. Their performances for organizations and events representing a broad spectrum of political and social causes have gained them enthusiastic fans wherever they go.
Most recently, Susan has begun to delve into musical theatre, as a cast member in the Vashon Repertory Theatre 2021 production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song.
Ken Giles
Ken Giles teaches violin/viola at D.C. Youth Orchestra Program and in private lessons. He also sings with the D.C. Labor Chorus. Longtime peace and civil rights activist, Ken was a member of the topical song group “Bright Morning Star” and played for peace demonstrations, environmental activists, and human rights groups. Ken teaches his students all kinds of music, including classical, folk, blues, labor songs, and civil rights songs.