End your night right with live traditional American mountain music
Quartet featuring some of the best to ever do it:
Rhys Jones | Aaron Olwell | Kate Knudsvig | Richard Osban
Rhys Jones has been playing traditional Appalachian, French-Canadian and Irish fiddle music for 30 years. Born in Chicago, he began his fiddling at age 7 in the fertile environment of the Chicago Barn Dance Company. Soon after, his family moved to southern West Virginia where he learned from the older generation of fiddlers, including Ernie Carpenter, Melvin Wine, Glen Smith and Wilson Douglas. Rhys continued his musical education while living in Westport, County Mayo, Ireland, and has now played for concerts, dances, workshops and festivals across the United States and Europe.
He has won both fiddle and band contests at The Appalachian String Band Festival (Clifftop), and is regarded as "one of the bright lights of the current generation of traditional performers." Rhys has three albums with the Vigortone label, appears on numerous compiliations and recordings, and can be seen in the award-winning concert documentary Absolutely Irish. Rhys is also known as an accomplished banjo and guitar player, and is always in d and as an accompanist to both Irish and American musicians.
Aaron Olwell grew up in the workshop and started learning music at a young age, studying pennywhistle, flute, fiddle, and concertina. Eventually branching out to immerse himself in multiple forms of music including Irish, American old time, and early trad jazz, he is a voracious learner, a skilled artisan, and an all-around musician’s musician, and has played on such cult-classic recordings as the 2007 Light and Hitch.
Kate Knudsvig Classical violinist and Irish fiddler Kate Knudsvig was born in Hof, Germany, and currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts. Formative years spent in a household with two classical brass-musician parents laid the foundation for her musical interests. While studying at Eastman with Federico Agostini and later with Juliana Athayde, Kate’s artistic trajectory took an unexpected turn as she found herself drawn to styles of music apart from classical. During this time she explored a number of different genres, taking three independent studies in jazz and jazz theory, playing with a bluegrass band, and co-founding the alternative-folk and singer-songwriter group, Copper Hill. This interest in non-classical styles led to her attendance at the New England Conservatory, where she fell in love with Irish traditional music and obtained a Master’s degree in Contemporary Musical Arts under the guidance of renowned Irish fiddler and educator, Liz Knowles.
She is in the folk-supergroup forsyth and can regularly be found leading Irish sessions all over Boston. She has performed in Symphony Hall and New York’s Carnegie Hall with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, has been a guest artist and recorded with the grammy-nominated group Palaver Strings, and is the Principal 2nd Violinist for the Brockton Symphony Orchestra. Kate is in the and can regularly be found at Irish sessions around Boston. A touring musician, Kate is the fiddle player in the hit PBS-group Celtic Thunder, has performed at the Kennedy Center with the Shamrocks, and also regularly performs with world-renowned Irish tenor Emmet Cahill.
Richard Osban is a dynamic accompanist based in Baltimore, Maryland. He got his start with Irish traditional music while living in Europe, and toured internationally with several Irish and Scottish music projects before returning to the US. He regularly tours with his trio, the East Coasters. In addition, he has toured and performed with internationally acclaimed musicians, including Billy McComiskey, Steph Geremia, Sarah Collins, and duo Jocelyn Pettit and Ellen Gira.
Richard is the director of the Baltimore Irish Tenor Banjo Summit and the Baltimore Irish Trad Fest, and Executive Director of the Baltimore Irish Music School. He is the guitar and tenor banjo/mandolin teacher at the Baltimore Irish Music School, and has been on the instructional staff at MAD week in DC (guitar), Folksounds Elmstein in Elmstein, Germany (guitar), CelticFest Mississippi (banjo 2023, guitar 2024), The Irish Weekend in Ismaning, Germany (mandolin/banjo 2018, guitar 2023), Tune Junkie in Knoxille, TN (guitar) and the Celtic Folk Weekend in Waldmünchen, Germany (guitar 2018, banjo 2024 and 2025).