Category: About

☼ ☼ ☼ Mari Black Trio Concert | Nelson Town Hall | October 4, 2026

About, Concerts, Dance Music, Events, Songs

We are excited to welcome back the Mari Black Trio for a weekend of events in the first weekend of October. On Saturday night, October 3, the trio will play for the Peterborough Contradance in the Peterborough, NH Townhouse. Then on Sunday morning the trio will be offering workshops in musicianship, splitting into two groups, one for melody and one for accompaniment. On Sunday afternoon at 3:00 PM the trio will present a concert program titled ‘Fiddling Around the World’. The workshops and the concert will take place at the Nelson Town Hall.

 

Concert admission is ‘pay what you can’ $20 suggested/under 16 FREE with paying adult. Workshop is $35 and includes concert admission.

 

World champion fiddler MARI BLACK presents a joyous extravaganza of dance-inspired music from around the globe! With her virtuosic playing, sparkling stage presence, and fun-filled stories tying the whole journey together, Mari will have you tapping your toes and dancing along to fiddle music from around the world: Celtic, Canadian, and American fiddling, swing, tango, klezmer, and more. Family-friendly and full of fun, fiddling, and musical surprises! 

Called “one of the brightest fiddlers around today” (Brian O’Donovan, WGBH radio), multistyle violinist and champion fiddler MARI BLACK delights audiences around the world with her energetic playing, sparkling stage presence, and dazzlingly virtuosic fiddling. Raised on a rich blend of traditional musical styles, Mari burst onto the international stage when she became Scotland’s Glenfiddich Fiddle Champion, 2-time U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion, and 2-time Canadian Maritime Fiddle Champion, all within a three-year period. Ever since then, she has been spreading her love for dance-based music, performing as a featured artist at performing arts centers, Celtic festivals, Scottish Highland Games, celebrated folk venues, world music concert series, and acclaimed classical venues including Carnegie Hall. She can even be heard (and seen!) in the award-winning video game BioShock: Burial at Sea. Mari has appeared with such diverse artists as Irish fiddle master Liz Carroll, Americana master Mark O’Connor, and jazzman Willie Ruff, and been featured on the BBC Radio Scotland, Fox and CBS morning news, and NPR’s “Here and Now.” She has played concerts in Brazil, Scotland, Canada, China, Korea, Zimbabwe, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, and France…and she can’t wait for the next stop! Currently touring nationally with her trio, Mari’s favorite thing to do is sweep audiences away on a spirited musical adventure featuring dance music from around the globe: Celtic, American, and Canadian fiddling, jazz, tango, klezmer, folk, original works, and more!

https://vimeo.com/865612346/6ac88d64cf?fl=pl&fe=vl



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☼ ☼ ☼ Mari Black Trio Workshops | Nelson Town Hall | October 4, 2026

About, Concerts, Dance Music, Events, Songs, Workshops

 
 
Join a pre-concert Workshop with Mari Black and her trio on Sunday, October 4 from 11:00AM -12:30 PM at the Nelson Town Hall
 
 
Tuition is $35 and includes concert admission. Children under 16 FREE w/paying adult.
 
 
 
“Get Jammin’!” Workshops, with Mari Black & her trio
No matter what instrument you play, come join Mari and her band to learn some snazzy fiddle tunes AND how to put them together in a full ensemble!  To begin, all melody players (fiddle, flute, accordion, etc) will join Mari to learn some fun tunes, while all backing instrument players (guitar, bouzouki, mandolin, piano, ‘cello, bass, etc) will work with Adam and Noah to learn how to accompany the same tunes … then we’ll all join up in the second half of the workshop to put the whole ensemble together!  Melody players, you’ll explore how to learn melodies more quickly and comfortably by ear, and discover how to inject your tunes with stylistic flair and authenticity (phrasing and groove, bowings, ornaments, etc).  Backers, you’ll improve your fluency with picking up chords for tune melodies, and expand into ideas for different rhythmic and harmonic options to add variety and zest into your playing.  When we all come together at the end of the workshop, you’ll get a chance to put your new tunes and skills into practice as a part of one big, awesome band.  Come join in the fun!
 
Pack a picnic lunch or visit a local eatery and come back for the concert!


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☼ ☼ ☼ Tim Eriksen w/Peter Irvine | Nelson Town Hall | Friday, September 11, 2026

About

The Monadnock Folklore Society is excited to welcome back Tim Eriksen & Peter Irvine for a concert at the Nelson Town Hall on Friday, September 11 at 7:30 PM.

Admission is $25/$20(in advance). Children under 16 are admitted free with paying adult.

Tim Eriksen is an acclaimed singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, banjo, fiddle, bajo sexto, kaval, bansuri) from Amherst, Massachusetts. He is known for transforming American tradition with his startling interpretations of old ballads, love songs, shape-note gospel and dance tunes from New England and Southern Appalachia. He combines hair-raising vocals with inventive accompaniment on banjo, fiddle, guitar and bajo sexto – a twelve string Mexican acoustic bass – creating a distinctive hardcore Americana sound.

Peter Irvine is a founding member of legendary band Cordelia’s Dad. When he’s not playing drums and percussion or teaching, Peter runs his his successful Entertainment Law practice in Northampton, MA.

On their new album ‘Absence and her sister’ Tim Eriksen and Peter Irvine return to their roots in folk minimalism and gothic Americana- new and ancient songs of their native New England informed by the wide palette of their other collaborations. The two are probably best known for their musical contributions to films including the Oscar-winning Cold Mountain and cult horror phenomenon The Outwaters, and as founding members of the anomalous folk-noise outfit Cordelia’s Dad, “the only band to have performed with both Doc Watson and Nirvana.” But while echoes of punk-folk and “shapenote” music abound on Absence and her sister, so does the dissonance and rhythmic complexity of their Bosnian band Žabe I Babe, the deep groove they picked up from collaborators like banjo master Dwight Diller and East African gospel singers the Naamaara sisters, and the love of experimentation and power of repetition celebrated in Terry Riley’s “In C,” the first piece the two ever played together as teenagers.

This promises to be a night you won’t easily forget. One listener describes one of their concerts as sounding “like it could have come from any time in the last five thousand years, or the next five thousand. My son, the Ursula Le Guin fan, thinks they sound like a pair of bards from one of the more remote islands in Earthsea. I leave their shows with my senses fully activated in a way that rarely happens at my age.” Dr. Ethan Hein – ‘Ethan teaches you music’

“One of the best singers in music” 
-T Bone Burnett 

“otherworldly” 
-Barbara Kingsolver 

 



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☼ ☼ ☼ Cosy Sheridan & Sloan Wainwright w/Charlie Koch & Glen Roethel | Nelson Town Hall | September 18, 2026

About, Concerts, Events, Songs, Workshops

 

Cosy Sheridan & Sloan Wainwright will appear in concert at the Nelson Town Hall on Friday, September 18 at 7:30 PM. ‘Pay what you can’, suggested Admission is $20 and children under 16 are admitted free with a paying adult.

 

Join two master performers, singers and songwriters Cosy Sheridan and Sloan Wainwright for the opening night concert for The Song Sessions workshops. Add in Charlie Koch on bass and Glen Roethel on lead guitar and you have a night of uplifting and joyous songs. They will each be performing separately and together as a quartet.

Sloan Wainwright has played the great concert halls, the most storied listening rooms and top music festivals while also teaching at the nation’s leading music retreats. As a member of an acclaimed family of artists (brother Loudon Wainwright, sister-in-law Kate McGarrigle, nephew Rufus Wainwright and nieces Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche), Wainwright has charted an artistic path all her own. A unique hybrid of pop, folk, jazz and blues, Sloan’s music is unified by her melodious tone and rich, powerful contralto. She will be backed up by Glen Roethel on guitar and harmonies.

Cosy Sheridan has been called “a buddhist monk in a twelve-step program trapped in the body of a singer-songwriter” and also one of the era’s finest and most thoughtful songwriters. She has performed at Carnegie Hall and The Cowgirl Hall of Fame, as well as coffeehouses, festivals and concerts throughout the country.* “*An unapologetically tuneful writer with sticky lyrics,*” *wrote* Sing Out Magazine. *Backed by the rhythms and harmonies of bass player Charlie Koch, she is a top shelf guitarist with
a distinctive percussive right hand technique* .“*You can’t make it into double digits, and continue touring for twenty or so years, unless you know what you’re doing, and do it well*,”* wrote *The Chicago Examiner. *Cosy is the founder and director of The Song Sessions, and also Moab Folk Camp in Moab, Utah.



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☼ ☼ ☼ Aurora Nealand & the Royal Roses | Dublin School | July 3, 2026

About, Concerts, Events, Songs

 

 

Join us for a special evening of traditional New Orleans jazz with Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses at the Dublin School in Dublin, NH. This will be an outdoor event, weather permitting, Friday, July 3, 7:30 pm at the Fountain Arts Building on the Dublin School campus.

 

The concert is co-sponsored by The Walden School  and the Monadnock Folklore Society and is FREE and open to the public.

The Royal Roses grew out of the rich resurgence that traditional jazz is seeing in New Orleans amongst the younger generation of musicians today. Saxophonist/vocalist Aurora Nealand has been playing in various groups in New Orleans since 2005, and the Royal Roses, founded in 2010, is her first venture as a bandleader. The Royal Roses draw their repertoire heavily from Sidney Bechet, Django Reinhart and traditional jazz of New Orleans. Comprised of some of the finest young players on the New Orleans music scene today, the Royal Roses are seeking to breath new energy, arrangements and compositions into this genre of music while exploring and learning from its rich history and tradition. They’ve performed in New Orleans at the French Quarter Festival, Satchmo Festival and Preservation Hall, as well as in NYC at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. In the Spring of 2018 The Royal Roses were voted “Best Traditional Jazz Band”  at the Big Easy Awards!! Their first album “A Tribute to Sydney Bechet: Live at Preservation Hall” was released in 2011 to national acclaim. Their second album “The LookBack Transmission” was released in 2014 and includes original and traditional compositions including one Ms. Nealand wrote for the HBO series “Treme”. Inn 2016 they released a third album, “Comeback Children”.

This year’s line up: Aurora Nealand (Vocals, saxophone, clarinet), Dave Boswell (Trumpet), Aani Kisslinger (Trombone), Josh Dunn (Guitar), Jared Engel (Bass), and Tanner Gus s(drums).

This is the first in a series of FREE concerts that the Walden School offers. Click here for a complete look at their 2026 concert series.

☼ ☼ ☼ Summer Solstice Concert | Nelson Town Hall | June 20, 2026

About

 

The Solstice Sisters return for a celebration of the Summer Solstice on Saturday, June 20, 2026 at 7:30 PM at the Nelson Town Hall. Pay what you can afford; suggested admission is $15, children under 16 FREE w/adult.

Alouette Iselin, Kim Wallach, and Heather Bower have been mainstays of our Nelson Winter Solstice party for years, presenting a program of original and traditional and sometimes just wacky seasonal music. Margy Page Iselin completes the line up along with new sisters Patty Blanchard, Grace Johnson & Natalie Backes. Please join us for this biannual celebration of the seasons and come celebrate the Summer Solstice, Fathers Day, the end of black fly season, St. John’s Day, the longest day of the year, Midsummer, Ivan Kupala night, Wianki, Jani, the shortest night of the year, the Red Sox or whatever floats your boat with a selection of music that only the Solstice Sisters could pull together!

☼ ☼ ☼ Ishna “Slí Amach”: from There to Here | Nelson Town Hall | May 29, 2026

About, Concerts, Dance Music, Events, Songs

 

Ishna “Slí Amach”: from There to Here

A joyous exploration of the music & stories of Ireland

Friday, May 29 at 7:30 PM in the Nelson Town Hall.

Admission $30 ($25 in advance, under 16 free w/paying adult)

Ishna is a Boston-based contemporary Irish folk band, exploring the traditional repertoire of Ireland within the context of a global setting. It is fronted by husband-wife duo Ciaran Nagle and Tara Novak, and has been together as this lineup of 6 musicians for more than a decade. Over that time, the group has evolved, honing in specifically on the acoustic traditional music of Ireland, while finding ways to allow each band member to bring their unique musical vocabulary to the overall sound.
 
Their show, “From There to Here”, features the music from their debut album, “Slí Amach: Way Out”.  The album was recorded over a week in 2025, in a barn in Peterborough NH. It was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Oscar-and-Grammy-winning Robert L. Smith at Defy Recordings, and the artwork was designed by the legendary Steve Averill (creator of all the logos and artwork for U2).
 
Ishna is fronted by Irish Tenor Ciarán Nagle and fiddler/vocalist Tara Novak (both of Riverdance and the Three Irish Tenors). The husband-and-wife duo bring their humor and dynamic energy to the stage, and are accompanied by their stellar band of traditional musicians: Dan Meyers: uilleann pipes/whistles; Bjorn Wennas – guitar; David McGrory – piano/accordion/banjo; Brian O’Neill – bodhrán/percussion.
 
Ishna’s performance is energetic and uplifting, infusing new rhythms and harmonies into their traditional repertoire. For Ishna, music is about finding common connections. They invite the audience into the fold of their community and to experience the beloved music of Ireland in a new way.