Baltimore family tradition-bearers showcase a wealth of talent held deep in our community.

The last time we checked in with the Kolodners, Gilmores, and McComiskeys, all together, it was 2011 when they performed here. 5 years later, we get to see just how far they have come as artists. Expect exceptional solo sets and collaborations from six of the finest artists in Charm City.

About Ken & Brad Kolodner
Regarded as one of the most influential hammered dulcimer players and old-time fiddlers in the US, Baltimore’s Ken Kolodner has joined forces with his son Brad Kolodner, a rising star in the clawhammer banjo world to perform tight and musical arrangements of original and traditional old-time music. Ken and Brad released Skipping Rocks, their second album, in September 2013. In its first month, it became the 4th most played recording on the Folk-DJ Charts. Their latest project “is both technically impressive and musically tasteful, a lovely exploration of both tradition and creativity (and of a warm musical relationship)." (CD Hotlist).

About Lea & Jonathan Gilmore
A Baltimore treasure, Lea Gilmore is a blues, gospel and jazz singer of great power and conviction. Over the past thirteen years, Gilmore has lent her voice to rid developing countries in Africa of leprosy and TB by headlining gospel concerts in Europe sponsored by the Damien Foundation, a Belgium-based nonprofit, while maintaining a vast career as an international blues and jazz performer. Over 300,000 have attended Lea's concerts in Belgium alone. Her son Jonathan possesses a voice of great power and emotion, and shares his mother’s understanding of the social power of music. He performed background vocals for national recording artist Donnie, Jazmyn Sullivan, Keshia Cole, Jahiem, and Navasha Daya. Jonathan has performed at Artscape, Afram, Baltimore Book Festival, and headlined his own set at the Common Ground on the Hill festival in 2012.

About Billy & Sean McComiskey
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Billy McComiskey grew up in a family steeped in traditional Irish heritage and music. He was inspired to learn the button accordion when he first saw “the great box player” Joe Derrane and sought mentorship in East-Galway style Irish music from Sean McGlynn at the foothills of the Catskills Mountains. Billy performed at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1976 and won the All-Ireland Senior title in 1986. Now living in Parkville, Maryland, Billy received an Apprenticeship Award in 2006 to work with his son, Sean McComiskey, to further the tradition of Irish-American accordion music in the family. Anyone who has seen Sean play, knows that he has mastered this difficult instrument. His sound and style is distinctly that of a McComiskey.

“The culture is alive,” says Billy. “It’s not just the music has been there forever, it’s not that it’s some old thing. We’re not playing Irish music now the way they played it four or five hundred years ago. All the instruments are different. Everything about it is different…The music itself is still what it has always been.”

8pm | $25, $22 mbrs. | +$3 at the door