Alanna Jenish is an award-winning fiddle player, guitar accompanist, mandolin player, and accomplished classical musician with Bachelor of Music from the University of Toronto.  Alanna grew up in an Irish-Canadian family of traditional music lovers. Her musical journey began at the age of 6 when she started classical piano lessons, and soon expanded to include […]

A native of Northern Ontario, Adrianna Ciccone lives in Kjipuktuk / Halifax, Nova Scotia where she runs Merry Time Music Company – a community minded music school in the city’s historic Hydrostone neighbourhood. Raised in the Ottawa Valley fiddle tradition and greatly inspired by Québécois fiddling, Adrianna cut her teeth at fiddle camps across Ontario […]

A singer, a caller, and multi-instrumentalist, Hannah Naiman plays clawhammer banjo, fiddle, ukelele and guitar.  Her work as a singer/songwriter earned her the Canadian Folk Music Award for Traditional Singer of the Year (2017). Hannah has travelled coast to coast in Canada and the US promoting “Know the Mountain” and her debut album, “Tether My […]

Nathan Smith is a Toronto-based fiddle player and singer-songwriter, originally hailing from North Bay, ON. His upbeat and soulful original songs and fiddle tunes combine his bluegrass and old-time experience with his upbringing playing celtic and traditional Canadian fiddle music.He performs with a number of ensembles in the Toronto area, including bluegrass band The Barrel […]

James is known for his work both as a performer and producer/recording engineer.  In performance, he plays a multitude of stringed instruments with an emphasis on fiddling. He has an abiding interest in traditional forms and styles of various ethnic origins, but also works extensively with singer-songwriters and was the principal songwriter in critically acclaimed […]

Emilyn Stam (www.emilynstam.com) is a Toronto-based fiddler, pianist and accordionist who creates, performs, records and teaches in folk, trad, and neo-trad styles from Europe and Canada. Her unique style is largely influenced by her mentor, the late Oliver Schroer, but also by her 4 years touring with Eastern European party-punk-super-band Lemon Bucket Orkestra, playing for […]

Forced into learning the bagpipes at eight years old by his patriotic Scottish father, Spencer Murray grew up spending his summers among highland dancers and caber tossers at highland games across western Canada. By the time his teenage years rolled around, he was already an accomplished piper. He performed for the Queen on her royal […]

John David Williams is a Toronto based clarinetist. After studying classical music with the late world renowned clarinetist Avrahm Galper and at the University of Toronto, John began his own exploration of improvisation, composition, and various folk traditions of the clarinet: traditional jazz, klezmer, and a variety of different European music styles. He has played mostly […]

Robert Alan Mackie is a double bassist, violinist, and writer from Covehead Road, PEI, now living in Toronto, Ontario. Since 2013 he has been a prolific accompanist in trad, Americana, and jazz communities across Canada, Scandinavia, and Europe, but his many experiments in new music trace networks of trails through the grey space between these […]

Steáfán Hannigan is an Irish musician, author, composer, audio engineer, theatre technical director, musicologist and instrument maker. Some of the instruments he plays are the Uilleann pipes, Bodhrán, tin whistle, bouzouki, guitar, tenor banjo, flute, mandolin and various percussion instruments. Steáfán was born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland and moved to Canada 14 years […]

Lea Kirstein is a multi-instrumentalist (fiddle / violin, viola, and cello), educator, concert presenter, and Artistic Director of World on a String, and is currently based in Toronto, Ontario. Lea grew up in Victoria, BC, immersed in many different traditional and contemporary fiddle styles, studying with Daniel Lapp and with Oliver Schroer while in the […]

Shifra Cooper is a passionate educator, community artist and choral director with over ten years experience working with children, families and people of all ages. Shifra is committed to combining her artistic and educational practice in order to build community through story, song, movement, performance, creative technology and craft-making. In 2020, she completed a Masters […]

Johnny Suderman is a willow basketmaker and hand-craft enthusiast. In early 2018 he found basketry at the intersection of craft, tradition, resilience, horticulture, permaculture, earth connection, and creative self expression. Ever since then he can be found coppicing willow in ditches, along stream banks, collecting sticks, making baskets, and generally just being the keenest basketry […]

Andre Lemieux is a dry stone waller and stonemason. After completing diploma programs in both heritage carpentry and stonemasonry, he began his career working on federal restoration projects all the while taking any opportunity to practice the craft of dry stone walling. Travelling to Europe on several occasions to work alongside master craftsmen and attending […]

Sean Donnelly has been working professionally as an artist in the craft of dry stone walling since 2008. He has built walls and structures in the UK, the US and Canada with some of the world’s top craftsmen. Sean currently holds an advanced certification with the Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain and journeyman […]

I call myself a blacksmith because that is where my main focus has been for more than 40 years. I do enjoy and practice other forms of metalwork as well as traditional woodworking and pottery but the forge is always where I end up whenever I have any spare time. I grew up with a […]

Julie Schryer is a piano player and founder and co-Artistic Director of AlgomaTrad: Algoma Traditional Music and Dance Group.

Patrick O’Gorman is a piper and flute player and is co-founder and co-artistic director of AlgomaTrad.