2016 Festival Artists

Clint Bear

Clint Bear

Clint Bear started building acoustic guitars in 2001 after almost 35 years of playing, repairing and tinkering with electric and acoustic guitars. His lutherie skills evolved from woodworking skills honed during several decades in homebuilding, remodeling, and cabinet...

Bruce Taggart

Bruce Taggart

Bruce Taggart is a mandolin builder, fiddle builder, banjo neck maker, and an instrument repairman. “I started as a musician interested in banjo but couldn’t afford a real fancy instrument,” he recalls, “so I built one. The Earl Scruggs book How to Play Bluegrass...

Bill Berg

Bill Berg

Bill Berg has been making musical instruments for over thirty years. He enjoys working in his Nashville shop, Mountain Made Music, where he specializes in instruments mountain dulcimers, hammered dulcimers, bowed psalteries, lap harps, and various other harp-like...

Baladino

Baladino

The Israeli band Baladino offers fresh, authentic interpretations of unique Mediterranean music and tradition rooted in Ladino culture, singing in a Spanish-Jewish dialect spoken by Sephardic Jews. Conceived by wind instrumentalist Yonnie Dror and string player Thomas...

A-Wa

A-Wa

Tair, Liron, and Tagel Haim grew up in a small southern Israeli village near the Egyptian border.  The family’s Yemeni Jewish roots -- and their love of the Yemenite language, an old and nearly extinct dialect of Arabic spoken by Yemeni Jews -- inspired the Haim...

Arts Village Live Demos

Arts Village Live Demos

The Festival Arts Village on E. 6th Street is free and open to the public from 6:00-10:00pm on Friday and Saturday evenings during the Festival. Plus, during the first venue break both evenings (8:30pm), we'll be featuring live demonstrations and bite-sized...

Ayaan Ali Bangash

Ayaan Ali Bangash

Ayaan Ali Bangash grew up learning the intricacies of the sarod – the four-stringed lute of classical Indian music.  He is the younger son of sarod master Amjad Ali Bangash (Amjad Ali Khan) and the seventh generation of a musical lineage known as the Senia Bangash...

Anna & Elizabeth

Anna & Elizabeth

*2016 LOTUS DICKEY ARTIST* Multi-instrumentalist Anna Roberts-Gevalt and ballad-singer Elizabeth LaPrelle honor Appalachian artistry with a repertoire collected from archives, elder musicians, and their contemporaries among the old-time renaissance in the U.S. In...

Anda Union

Anda Union

*2016 KAT DOMINGO MEMORIAL ARTIST* The 10 women and men of Anda Union express the ancient musical culture of Inner Mongolia’s grasslands, a culture passed from generation to generation through stories, music, and songs. The ensemble plays an array of traditional...

Altan

Altan

Altan emerged from the creative spontaneity of jam sessions in kitchens and pubs in their hometown of Donegal.  For more than three decades, the band has brought the living legacy of Irish traditional music to audiences around the world. Altan has always been a band...