2006 Performers
Christine Lavin will be our Friday night headline concert performer, at Valhalla in the Cartwright Center on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus. Lavin’s songs can range from the beautiful to the goofy. The New York-based artist closed our Saturday night concert with a wild show that include baton twirling and a rousing rendition of her song, “Sensitive New Age Guy,” with appropriately sensitive male audience members singing backup.
Ann Reed - Singer, songwriter, composer, arranger, storyteller, playwright and screenwriter wanna-be, do-gooder, nice person, lifetime Girl Scout, friend to all park rangers.
Beginning as an aspiring preteen poet and budding teenage songwriter, Ann has honed her talent and, along the way, has captured every major Minnesota music award.
Jazz violinist Randy Sabien will be showing his folk side with a trio performance that will close the Sunday night concert, held outdoors on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus. The Hayward, Wis.-based performer was described on the VH1 Web site as a “jazz violinist with folk and fusion inclinations.”
Guy Mendilow's globe-trotting career began at age 10 when he joined the American Boychoir. At 15, he set off on a solo career that has taken him to five countries. He speaks and sings in English, Hebrew, Spanish, and Portuguese. As a composer and arranger, he draws on Israeli, Hindustani, South African, jazz, blues, and folk influences.
As distinctive a performer as he is a writer, David Massengill accompanies himself mainly on the Appalachian dulcimer. The sound of the dulcimer has an intimate, detailed quality that complements the easy graciousness of Massengill's stage presence. He has achieved a virtuousity on the traditional instrument that enables him to wring from its few strings music of a complexity and richness far beyond anything it was ever meant to produce, drawing the listener in to his lyrical imagery and the close-up focus on human foibles and experience that is the substance of his best songs.
Natalia Zukerman, comes from a family of noted classical musicians (her mother, Eugenia, is a flutist; her father, Pinchas, is a violinist; and her sister, Arianna, is an opera singer), but she has chosen to forsake grand performance halls for a dusty resophonic slide guitar in small clubs. She has nimble fingers capable of picking upward of thirty notes per measure, and when she sings she can switch from scat to swoon in the course of a glissando.
Singer/songwriter, joke-telling Hamell On Trial defies all musical categories. “Punk acoustic” and “anti-folk” come close. Warbling, super-sensitive folk singer he definitely is not. If you’re looking for cum-bye-yah by some soft-strumming, tearful folkie, Hamell On Trial is going to offend you.
For almost a decade, Mike and Amy Finders (say finn-ders) have been traveling the Midwest, playing the music they love, music that echoes the tall grass prairies and Mississippi river valleys that raised them, a “refreshing brand of frontier prairie blues.” They blend acoustic bluegrass, folk and country styles with their award-winning original songs and superb singing. Radio formats have taken to calling this “Americana” music in recent years. Most have said, “It don’t need no label. I just like it.” Fair enough.
Lil Rev is the Jewish Pete Seeger: a voice that just pulls you in, a raconteur, and a folksinger in the classic tradition of songs of justice, dignity, and Jewish heritage - A Ukulele & Harmonica Wizard
Red-headed Renaissance woman, Celia is a singer-songwriter, musician, actress, storyteller and dancer. Her uplifting performances entertain, captivate and provide plenty of humor leaving the audience easily won over by her magical spell.
Iowa bluesman Joe Price will make his first appearance at the Great River Folk Fest this year. Price, who lives in Lansing Iowa, plays slide guitar and sings the blues. He recently appeared on Michael Feldman’s “What Do You Know” public radio show in La Crosse, and also had recent performances in St. Louis and on Beale Street in Memphis.
Great River Folk Festival
PO Box 1434 La Crosse, WI 54602-1434
Phone: 608-784-3033
Email: grff@juno.com
PO Box 1434 La Crosse, WI 54602-1434
Phone: 608-784-3033
Email: grff@juno.com