Three Singer Songwriters on Saturday, April 28

Rayna Gellert grew up in a musical family, and has spent most of her life immersed in the sounds of rural stringband music, heartfelt gospel songs, and old ballads. After honing her fiddle skills playing at jam sessions and square dances, Rayna fell into a life of traveling and performing. Her fiddle albums are widely celebrated in the old-time music community, and she has recorded with a host of musicians in a variety of styles – including Robyn Hitchcock, Tyler Ramsey, Sara Watkins, Loudon Wainwright III, John Paul Jones, and Abigail Washburn. From 2003 through 2008, Rayna was a member of the acclaimed stringband Uncle Earl, with whom she released two albums on Rounder Records and toured like mad. These days she can be found on stage with Scott Miller, Toubab Krewe, or her father, Dan Gellert. She lives in Swannanoa, North Carolina.

Cassandra Jenkins also grew up in a musical family and has often performed as an opening act at the Jenkins House Concerts. She plays acoustic and electric guitar, banjo and keyboard and has been successfully experimenting with songwriting over the past five years. Recently she formed a band with a pianist and drummer both of whom will be performing with her on April 28. Cassandra has toured with several groups including The Jenkins Sisters and Uncle Earl on their Australian tour in 2010. She is in the process of recording her original songs and will perform several of them at the April concert.

Kristin Andreassen is a musician and dancer. She grew up in Portland, Oregon but has most recently made Brooklyn her home. Kristen, along with the Jolly Bankers, performed at our very first house concert in 2002. She is a singer song-writer and is a multi-instrumentalist who performs mostly on the guitar. From 1999 onwards she worked as a principal dancer, teaching & performing various related forms of percussive dance: clogging, tap, Irish & Canadian step dance with the Footworks Dance Ensemble. In December 2003 she joined the group Uncle Earl along with band-mate Rayna Gellert. With the song Crayola Doesn't Make A Color For Your Eyes, that she wrote together with Megan Downes, Kristin has won the 2006 the John Lennon Songwriting Contest in the "Children's" category.

For more information and a reservation for this Manhattan based concert, please contact Sandilion49@gmail.com

Miss Tess on Sat., March 3rd, & special guests, The Calamity Janes

Miss Tess is a Brooklyn based songwriter and performing musician, who tours regularly with her band, The Bon Ton Parade, including Will Graefe on guitar, Jared Engel on upright bass, and Matt Meyer on drums. Inspired by styles of vintage swing, blues, country, and folk, Miss Tess draws comparisons to artists such as Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, Peggy Lee, and Chuck Berry, but maintains a style all of her own.

Miss Tess has just released “Live Across the Mason Dixon Line”, a true documentation the group's extensive tour history. The album features two live shows – one from the Regatta Bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts and one from Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia. This release proves to be a valiant effort by the band, Miss Tess & The Bon Ton Parade, to blur the lines that once clearly dictated style, genre, and location. Stemming from the truest meaning of “Americana”, the band pushes their influences into the current music scene with something totally fresh and soulfully timeless. The skilled musicianship of the quartet combined with Tess’s heartfelt songwriting and powerful stage presence creates a live experience that is more interesting and engaging then most by popular musicians today. It’s quality music you can’t define in one sentence.

The Calamity Janes, a stringband of four ladies, will warm up the house with some old time tunes at the start of each musical set.

For more information and reservations for this concert, please contact Sandy Jenkins at;Sandilion49@gmail.com. If this is your first visit to our blog, our concert location is in Manhattan. More information will be provided by email.

Sara Caswell, Jazz Violinist, on February 11 with Special Guest, Poet Bill Zavatsky

Sara Caswell is fast becoming one of today’s foremost jazz violinists through her technical facility and gift for lyricism. Originally from Bloomington, Indiana, and now living in New York City, she began playing violin at age 5, made her orchestral debut at 15, earned degrees from Indiana University and Manhattan School of Music, and amassed over 100 awards in the jazz and classical competition worlds. Currently she gives concerts nationwide with her two groups, the Sara Caswell Quartet and the Caswell Sisters Quintet, and has soloed numerous times in Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops Orchestra. Sara has released two highly-acclaimed CDs ~ First Song and But Beautiful ~ and is working on a new CD project with her sister, jazz vocalist Rachel Caswell, and jazz pianist Fred Hersch.

Currently, Sara tours with vocalist Roseanna Vitro as part of Vitro’s 2012 Grammy- nominated album The Music of Randy Newman. During 2010-11, she toured internationally with bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding (2011 Grammy winner for “Best New Artist”) in support of Spalding’s CD Chamber Music Society. Sara has also toured with violinist Mark O’Connor‘s American String Celebration and violinist Darol Anger’s Four Generations of Jazz Violin, and performed and/or recorded with such artists as Gene Bertoncini, Charlie Byrd, Skitch Henderson, Bucky Pizzarelli, Lynne Arriale, and John Clayton, as well as Jon Gordon, Ike Sturm, and the Alan Ferber Nonet and Strings.

Sara’s formidable teaching experience includes the Mark O’Connor String Camps, the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops, the Indiana University String Academy, the Manhattan School of Music College and Precollege Divisions, and a private studio. In addition, she has given numerous jazz string improvisation workshops and masterclasses and is involved with MENC (National Association of Music Education), JEN (Jazz Education Network), and ASTA (American String Teachers Association).

The Sara will perform at the Jenkins House Concert Series on February 11 Her quartet consists of Sara:violin, Ike Sturm:bass, Jesse Lewis:guitar and Ziv Ravitz:percussion.

Poet Bill Zavatsky, will be reading poems from his collection, "X Marks the Spot" preceding each musical set.

For reserved seats and information please contact Sandy at; Sandilion49@gmail.com. If this is your first visit to our blog, the concert location is in Manhattan.

This concert is sold out as of 2/6/12. See you next time

Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem on Saturday, January 21st

"A tart, smart meld of American folk melody with buoyant splashes of jazz, pop, bluegrass, and blues." -The Boston Globe

The Jenkins House Concert series is pleased to welcome Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem to the Upper West Side. All of roots music is a stage for daisy mayhem, and this four-piece string band loves nothing more than choreographing a jubilant mix of traditional, original, and contemporary sounds. With Arbo's bewitching alto at the helm, stunning vocal harmonies, a 100% recycled drum set, fiddle, guitar, and bass, daisy mayhem "has a grand knack for pumping new blood into old music" (The Boston Globe). Imagine, for example, a pre-civil war song from the Georgia Sea Islands sung over a New Orleans-style groove. Or, an old Irish fiddle tune with new lyrics, capped with a solo on a South American box drum. A Sondheim tune done jug band style? An original Unitarian funk gospel song? You begin to get the idea. With influences from Doc Watson to Django Reinhardt, from Ghanaian drumming to the funky Meters, and from Fiddlin' John Carson to Bob Dylan, Daisy Mayhem celebrates America's rich musical past and brings it into the present with good humor, impeccable musicianship, powerful songwriting, and a clear love of playing together. Here are four musicians who pick up what's lying around—from tin cans to old songs and wry observations of modern life—and create something new.

For reservations and information please contact Sandilion49@gmail.com.

The Brittany Haas and Dan Trueman Band CD Release Concert on Friday, December 9th

What happens when the grittiness of American Old Time fiddle music meets the ethereal sounds of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle? In this CD release concert, Brittany Haas and Dan Trueman will share tunes that they've made over the last few years while trying to answer this question. Joining Britt and Dan in this performance are cellist Natalie Haas, guitarist Jordan Tice, and bassist Corey DiMario. In the end, this isn't "cross-over" music, in spite of the initial premise; this is simply what happens when two radically different but adventurous musicians come together to see what they can do, no holds barred, and ask their friends to join in.

Please email;Sandilion49@gmail.com, for information and details. This is a private house concert on the Upper West Side of NYC.

Brittany Haas is a 5-string fiddle player from the Bay Area, currently residing in Nashville. She grew up honing her craft in fiddle camps nationwide and came to her unique sound through the old-time fiddling of Bruce Molsky and the innovative styling of Darol Anger. A prodigious youth, she began touring with Darol's Republic of Strings at the age of 14. She simultaneously studied baboons in the evolutionary biology department of Princeton University and joined seminal chamber-grass band Crooked Still. She has toured with them since, and also performed with Yonder Mountain String Band, Tony Trischka, Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas (her cellist sister), Abigail Washburn and the Waybacks, She played fiddle on Steve Martin's Grammy Award winning CD, "The row" and performed in his band on Letterman and SNL. She released her debut self-titled solo album at 17, produced by Darol Anger and featuring Bruce Molsky, Mike Marshall, Alison Brown and others.

Dan Trueman is a composer and performer, primarily with the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle and the laptop, sometimes together, sometimes not. His ensembles include QQQ, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk, which he co-founded and directs), Trollstilt, post-Post, and interface. He has performed his music with numerous other ensembles, including So Percussion, the Brentano and Daedelus string quartets, and the American Composers Orchestra. As a fiddler, he has performed at folk festivals across the US and in Norway, and he teaches traditional Norwegian fiddle music. Upcoming projects include a laptop-percussion quartet for So Percussion, a record with Old Time fiddler extraordinaire Brittany Haas, and more music for PLOrk and QQQ. Dan has received grants from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, among others, and he teaches composition at Princeton University.

John Doyle on November 19

The Jenkins House Concert series is pleased to welcome John Doyle to the Upper West Side while he is on tour of the Northeast. John is one of the most influential and important musicians in Irish music today. He was a founding member of Irish American super-group Solas in the 1990s and recently served as band leader for the Joan Baez band. As a guitarist, he is unparalleled for his harmonic and rhythmic genius. His instrumental prowess contributed to his 2010 GRAMMY nomination for Best Traditional World Music album for his collaboration with fiddler Liz Carroll on Double Play. In recent years Doyle has emerged as an important singer of Irish music as well; his 2010 collaboration, Exiles Return, with Karan Casey won him critical acclaim and solidified his reputation as a world class interpreter of traditional songs.

Please join us on November 19th at 8:00. You can reserve a seat for this performance by emailing Sandilion49@gmail.com for all the details.

The Tres Amigos on October 22

Quickly becoming a beloved mainstay of the New York folk scene, The Tres Amigos present high-energy original music and forgotten gems in bold, acrobatic performances. Behind those matching mariachi shirts are virtuosic musicians and songwriters, delivering the goods in sunny three-part harmony with all the vibe of your uncle’s old ‘45’s. Every Tres Amigos performance careens from bluegrass to blues, from wild-man jazz to honky-tonk, with a "latin tinge," — a testament to the diverse but interconnected origins of American music. Recent highlights include a 3-night run at The Blue Note in NYC, The Blue Plate Special Radio show in Knoxville TN, the Mountain Meltdown in Olean, NY, Ashkenaz in Berkeley CA, and numerous outreach, education, and college performances across America.

Hailing from the rolling hills of North Carolina, vocalist/guitarist Justin Poindexter is the descendent of a long line of southern storytellers. His songs and guitar pickin’ have been featured in award-winning films and albums, and in hundreds of venues from Georgia roadhouses to Lincoln Center in New York City. Justin is the recipient of numerous grants for his music research and composition, including grants from the Semans’ Art Fund and the Howard Hanson Institute for American Music.

Recently graduated from Columbia Univeristy vocalist/accordionist Sam Reider is to The Tres Amigos what the green chile is to the tamale. An avid scholar of 30's music, his wild and constantly surprising playing has been lighting up stages all across the country. Originally from San Francisco, in 2007 Sam's voice and keyboard stylings were featured on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz on National Public Radio. Since then he has toured extensively with his own band and released two critically acclaimed recordings.

A former resident of Oaxaca, Mexico and an alumnus of the Juilliard School,vocalist/saxophonist/percussionist Eddie Ray Barbash is the virtuosic fuel of The Tres Amigos machine. Winner of numerous awards for saxophone performance, Eddie Ray has performed in festivals all over the world including New Orleans’ Jazz Fest and the Monterey Jazz Festival and worked alongside artists ranging from drummer Chico Hamilton to New Orleans piano giant Dr. John. In his role as percussionist in The Tres Amigos, Eddie wields the Stradivarius of washboards, the Zinc King.

The Tres Amigos are gearing up to release their first radio broadcast. The show, which explores a different American cultural and musical theme each month, will be available first online and then over the good old fashion airwaves.

Please visit http://thetresamigos.bandcamp.com for audio samples.

For information please contact sandilion49@gmail.com

All seats for this show are now reserved. See you next time.