Holly Near
Holly Near brings to the stage a unique combination of highly trained vocal power, delightful humor and poetic reflection. For over 40 years, Holly has fused cabaret, folk and spoken word in to a sound track for progressive thinking. Her powerful voice has creatively articulated the complexities of social change activism since the early seventies. With critical thinking as a major element in her songwriting, she has been a unifying force connecting the issues that so challenge the lives of activists, educators and community. Holly says, “Now that Pete Seeger, Odetta, Mary Travers, Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee and so many other elders have left us, artists of my generation are no longer elders in training. We are the elders.”
Terry Garthwaite
Singer, songwriter, teacher
Laurie Lewis
Not only has the International Bluegrass Music Association twice named Laurie the Female Vocalist of the Year – not only did she win a Grammy for her contribution to True Life Blues: the Songs of Bill Monroe – but she also graduated from Berkeley High. Since graduation, she’s recorded more than 20 albums – with the Good Ol’ Persons, Grant Street, Kathy Kallick, and her current band Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, as well as several solo projects – and is now working with many talented new artists, helping them find their way in the recording business.
Kathy Kallick
Kathy Kallick has been leading bluegrass bands since co-founding the internationally-acclaimed Good Ol' Persons in 1975. She continues to evolve as one of the music’s extraordinary composers and vocalists, having recorded over 100 of her original songs. Along the way she has performed and recorded with the Frank Wakefield Band, won a Grammy and two IBMA Awards for her part on True Life Blues: The Songs Of Bill Monroe, and received a Lifetime Membership award from the California Bluegrass Association.
Jennifer Berezan
Canadian activist, singer, songwriter, and producer. Originally from Alberta, Canada, she now resides in Berkley, California.
Tammy Hall
Tammy Hall has performed extensively in Japan, Europe, and Mexico, including a 30-city tour with Queen Esther Marrow and the Harlem Gospel Singers throughout Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Other venues and festivals of note include The Kennedy Center (Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival), Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Monterey Jazz, San Jose Jazz, SF Jazz Center, and many others.
Robin Flower
Robin Flower is a wildly creative musician. Her technical expertise on mandolin, guitar, and fiddle results in great romps through her own original instrumental compositions, songs and traditional fiddle music. Robin has been an innovator, moving convincingly through a myriad of styles resulting in music that is hauntingly beautiful as well as intellectually challenging. Always with an ear towards Irish music, Robin has visited and revisited Ireland and is thoroughly moved to explore this time-beyond-time traditional fiddle music. With this amazing music as inspiration, Robin and duo partner, Libby McLaren wrote 24 instrumental tunes for the CD, Steelhead in the Riffles. Robin and Libby's 5th CD, Twenty Years - Twenty Rivers is a brilliant mix of their powerful vocals showcased in original and Irish songs as well as outstanding original and Irish tunes. Before her partnership with Libby McLaren, Robin recorded 4 albums, 3 for Flying Fish Records. These albums garnered consistent airplay on college radio stations and on folk programs throughout the US, Canada, and Germany. Babies With Glasses, 1st Dibs, Green Sneakers, and More Than Friends appeared in Critic's Poll's of top 10 albums in the years they were released. The Robin Flower Band toured constantly throughout the US and Canada, performing at major folk venues and festivals. Her passionate performances, both in concert and on records, earned her such awards as California Arts Council Touring Grants, Frets Magazine's Best New Artist Award, 2 National Association of Independent Recording Society Awards and many others.
Libby McLaren
American pianist and accordionist
Deidre McCalla
Deidre McCalla came of age in the fiery blaze of NYC's folk heyday - a time when Greenwich Village clubs were filled with the likes of Dylan, Baez, and Ochs; a time when Motown ruled the top of the charts and the streets of America screamed with anger and civil unrest. Her first album, Fur Coats and Blue Jeans, was released when Deidre was 19 and a student at Vassar College. With a theater degree tucked under her belt and an acoustic guitar tossed in the back of a battered Buick station wagon, Deidre McCalla hit the proverbial road and never looked back. Deidre later majored in jazz guitar at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and released three albums with the pioneering women's music label Olivia Records.
The Miami Herald affectionately dubs her a "dreadlocked troubadour." From Maui to Maine, college coffeehouses to Carnegie Hall, Deidre McCalla is a much beloved performer in both folk and women's music circles and has shared the stage with a long list of notables that includes Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Holly Near, Odetta, Cris Williamson, and Sweet Honey in the Rock. With five critically acclaimed albums to her credit, Deidre McCalla remains the ever seeking road warrior, her words and music chronicling our strengths and weaknesses and celebrating the power and diversity of the human spirit.
A single parent residing in Georgia with her son, Deidre has taught Performance at Warren Wilson College's Swannanoa Gathering. Deidre's work has been published in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, The Original Coming Out Stories, and Chrysalis: A Feminist Quarterly, and she is featured in The Power of Words: A Transformative Language Arts Reader. Deidre is a proud member of AFM Local 1000 and the North American Folk Alliance.
Jami Sieber
"Electric & Acoustic Cellist, Vocalist and Composer".
Ms. Sieber has gone awry from classical to folk, to rock/pop and, as part of the Rumors of the Big Wave band, earned an award as "Best Rock Instrumentalist".
Debut solo recording "Lush Mechanique" was released in 1994.
Shelley Doty
Berkeley’s Shelley Doty is a talented singer and a powerhouse on electric and acoustic guitar. Guitar Player Magazine has praised the “energy, funk, and surprise” of her guitar playing as well as her “smoky, soulful voice.”
Laura Klein
Soprano vocalist.
Ruth Davies
Jazz and Blues bassist.
Debbie Fier
American vocalist, drummer, pianist, composer, percussionist and teacher of over 25 years experience.
Holly Near
Holly Near brings to the stage a unique combination of highly trained vocal power, delightful humor and poetic reflection. For over 40 years, Holly has fused cabaret, folk and spoken word in to a sound track for progressive thinking. Her powerful voice has creatively articulated the complexities of social change activism since the early seventies. With critical thinking as a major element in her songwriting, she has been a unifying force connecting the issues that so challenge the lives of activists, educators and community. Holly says, “Now that Pete Seeger, Odetta, Mary Travers, Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee and so many other elders have left us, artists of my generation are no longer elders in training. We are the elders.”
Terry Garthwaite
Singer, songwriter, teacher
Laurie Lewis
Not only has the International Bluegrass Music Association twice named Laurie the Female Vocalist of the Year – not only did she win a Grammy for her contribution to True Life Blues: the Songs of Bill Monroe – but she also graduated from Berkeley High. Since graduation, she’s recorded more than 20 albums – with the Good Ol’ Persons, Grant Street, Kathy Kallick, and her current band Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, as well as several solo projects – and is now working with many talented new artists, helping them find their way in the recording business.
Kathy Kallick
Kathy Kallick has been leading bluegrass bands since co-founding the internationally-acclaimed Good Ol' Persons in 1975. She continues to evolve as one of the music’s extraordinary composers and vocalists, having recorded over 100 of her original songs. Along the way she has performed and recorded with the Frank Wakefield Band, won a Grammy and two IBMA Awards for her part on True Life Blues: The Songs Of Bill Monroe, and received a Lifetime Membership award from the California Bluegrass Association.
Jennifer Berezan
Canadian activist, singer, songwriter, and producer. Originally from Alberta, Canada, she now resides in Berkley, California.
Tammy Hall
Tammy Hall has performed extensively in Japan, Europe, and Mexico, including a 30-city tour with Queen Esther Marrow and the Harlem Gospel Singers throughout Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Other venues and festivals of note include The Kennedy Center (Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival), Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Monterey Jazz, San Jose Jazz, SF Jazz Center, and many others.
Robin Flower
Robin Flower is a wildly creative musician. Her technical expertise on mandolin, guitar, and fiddle results in great romps through her own original instrumental compositions, songs and traditional fiddle music. Robin has been an innovator, moving convincingly through a myriad of styles resulting in music that is hauntingly beautiful as well as intellectually challenging. Always with an ear towards Irish music, Robin has visited and revisited Ireland and is thoroughly moved to explore this time-beyond-time traditional fiddle music. With this amazing music as inspiration, Robin and duo partner, Libby McLaren wrote 24 instrumental tunes for the CD, Steelhead in the Riffles. Robin and Libby's 5th CD, Twenty Years - Twenty Rivers is a brilliant mix of their powerful vocals showcased in original and Irish songs as well as outstanding original and Irish tunes. Before her partnership with Libby McLaren, Robin recorded 4 albums, 3 for Flying Fish Records. These albums garnered consistent airplay on college radio stations and on folk programs throughout the US, Canada, and Germany. Babies With Glasses, 1st Dibs, Green Sneakers, and More Than Friends appeared in Critic's Poll's of top 10 albums in the years they were released. The Robin Flower Band toured constantly throughout the US and Canada, performing at major folk venues and festivals. Her passionate performances, both in concert and on records, earned her such awards as California Arts Council Touring Grants, Frets Magazine's Best New Artist Award, 2 National Association of Independent Recording Society Awards and many others.
Libby McLaren
American pianist and accordionist
Deidre McCalla
Deidre McCalla came of age in the fiery blaze of NYC's folk heyday - a time when Greenwich Village clubs were filled with the likes of Dylan, Baez, and Ochs; a time when Motown ruled the top of the charts and the streets of America screamed with anger and civil unrest. Her first album, Fur Coats and Blue Jeans, was released when Deidre was 19 and a student at Vassar College. With a theater degree tucked under her belt and an acoustic guitar tossed in the back of a battered Buick station wagon, Deidre McCalla hit the proverbial road and never looked back. Deidre later majored in jazz guitar at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and released three albums with the pioneering women's music label Olivia Records.
The Miami Herald affectionately dubs her a "dreadlocked troubadour." From Maui to Maine, college coffeehouses to Carnegie Hall, Deidre McCalla is a much beloved performer in both folk and women's music circles and has shared the stage with a long list of notables that includes Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Holly Near, Odetta, Cris Williamson, and Sweet Honey in the Rock. With five critically acclaimed albums to her credit, Deidre McCalla remains the ever seeking road warrior, her words and music chronicling our strengths and weaknesses and celebrating the power and diversity of the human spirit.
A single parent residing in Georgia with her son, Deidre has taught Performance at Warren Wilson College's Swannanoa Gathering. Deidre's work has been published in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, The Original Coming Out Stories, and Chrysalis: A Feminist Quarterly, and she is featured in The Power of Words: A Transformative Language Arts Reader. Deidre is a proud member of AFM Local 1000 and the North American Folk Alliance.
Jami Sieber
"Electric & Acoustic Cellist, Vocalist and Composer".
Ms. Sieber has gone awry from classical to folk, to rock/pop and, as part of the Rumors of the Big Wave band, earned an award as "Best Rock Instrumentalist".
Debut solo recording "Lush Mechanique" was released in 1994.
Shelley Doty
Berkeley’s Shelley Doty is a talented singer and a powerhouse on electric and acoustic guitar. Guitar Player Magazine has praised the “energy, funk, and surprise” of her guitar playing as well as her “smoky, soulful voice.”
Laura Klein
Soprano vocalist.
Ruth Davies
Jazz and Blues bassist.
Debbie Fier
American vocalist, drummer, pianist, composer, percussionist and teacher of over 25 years experience.
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