ELISE WITT
Singer-guitarist Elise Witt was born in Switzerland, raised in North Carolina, and since 1977 has made her home in Atlanta. She speaks 5 languages fluently and sings in at least a dozen more. Named the 2006 Critics Choice for “Best Traditional Folk Act” by Atlanta’s Creative Loafing, our Sing & Swing Week coordinator has sung everywhere from New York’s Carnegie Hall and the People’s Voice Café to festivals like Clearwater’s Hudson River Revival and Falcon Ridge; from Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe to the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change. Elise represented the State of Georgia at the Kennedy Center’s 25th Anniversary Celebration and has been featured at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival with her band. She has been a cultural ambassador to South Africa, Nicaragua, Italy, and Switzerland, sharing her “Global, Local & Homemade Songs.” In addition to performing and recording (she has nine albums on the EMWorld label), Elise has established a reputation as a masterful singing teacher, both for adults and children, encouraging even the most shy singers to revel in their voices and join with others to create joyful choruses. Her “Singing For Fun” classes in Atlanta have become legendary, and her workshops around the country and abroad draw and inspire both professional singers and professed “non-singers.” This is Elise’s sixth year as Coordinator of Sing Swing & String week, and her eighth year at the Swannanoa Gathering. www.elisewitt.com

PEGGY SEEGER
You might say Peggy is an artist who needs no introduction. She can make a traditional song sound timeless, yet as current as if written yesterday. Born in 1935, Peggy is Pete Seeger’s half-sister and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s daughter; her life partner was the English songwriter Ewan MacColl, who wrote “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” for Peggy and with whom she raised three children. Now she is sometimes thought of as the mother of Neill and Calum MacColl but is very much her own woman. She is probably best known for her feminist song, “I’m Gonna Be an Engineer” and for “The Ballad of Springhill,” which is rapidly becoming regarded as a traditional song. After living 35 years in England, she returned to the USA in 1994 and after living in Asheville, North Carolina, for ten years, she now resides in Boston. She tours extensively in the US and abroad as a solo concert artist, singing and giving workshops. She has made 21 solo recordings and is featured on over 100 recordings with other artists. www.pegseeger.com

MOIRA SMILEY
Moira Smiley works internationally as a composer-vocalist, leading her fiery roots-vocal band, Moira Smiley & VOCO, travelling the world as a soloist in early and traditional music, and creating new work for dance, theatre and film. Raised in Vermont, now based in Los Angeles, she received a performance degree from Indiana University in Bloomington while beginning a touring career with her vocal quartet, VIDA. Her performing has taken her from Lincoln Center to CBGBs, UCLA Live to London’s Royal Festival Hall. Moira’s performing, teaching and composition make unique use of voice and physical theater, vocal traditions and improvisation – garnering numerous fellowships and collaborations in the US and Europe. She has taught at the University of Birmingham (UK), UC Santa Cruz, Toronto Royal Conservatory, several previous years at the Gathering and co-founded the Ooolation! Outdoor Singing Camps with Malcolm Dalglish – now in their 8th year. Moira’s been teaching voice for over ten years – in private lessons, workshops, music camps, clinics, classrooms and theatres throughout the U.S., Europe and the UK. She brings an enormous variety of dynamic, unusual repertoire to her teaching – from avant-garde to art-song, mountain music of the US Appalachians and the Balkans in Eastern Europe, old gospel to new folk, early jazz to late medieval. The emphasis is on voice as a flexible, utterly expressive instrument – and how to make it the most dynamic carrier of story and emotion. Her new recordings Rua (solo album) and Blink, with Moira Smiley & VOCO were released in 2006. www.moirasmiley.com

MASANKHO BANDA
Growing up in Malawi, in central Africa, Masankho learned about peace, diversity and community building from his elders in the village. He realized as a child that drums and dance had the power to bring communities together and heal any divisions. His father spent twelve years (1980 to 1992) as a political prisoner under the brutal and harsh dictatorship of the founding president of Malawi, and Masankho was inspired to work for peace and justice. Masankho moved to the United States in 1987 as a political refugee. He earned his BA in Theater with a minor in Dance from the College of Wooster in Ohio and then his MA in Culture and Spirituality from Holy Names University in Oakland. Since 1991, Masankho has worked in 46 states and all over the world and to bring about peace and justice, using his talents as a performing artist before intergenerational audiences of all cultures, sharing his message of peace, diversity and justice. Masankho has worked alongside Nobel Peace Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, world leaders, healers and entertainers for which he was awarded the title Unsung Hero of Compassion by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2001. Masankho is the co-founder of the Institute for PeaceBuilding (IPB), founder of UcanDanc’ African Healing Arts, is a member of Wing It! Performance Ensemble and a Certified InterPlay Leader. He also is an adjunct professor at John F. Kennedy University and Holy Names University in the Bay Area. www.ucandanc.org

VELMA FRYE
Garrison Keillor calls her a ”terrific piano player and a great delight,” and Leo Kottke says, “her beautiful voice really knocked me out.” Velma is a dynamic performer and a master teacher, and her students say she is a good time. She has been a frequent guest on public radio programs, most notably A Prairie Home Companion, and earlier this year, went on tour with Garrison Keillor to seven colleges in seven states to play the piano and sing with him during his artist series engagements. Velma just completed a commitment as the music director at a Unity church, and now turns to recording new CDs and writing about music education (two articles soon to be published in Clavier magazine). With Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in music from Florida State University and many CDs to her credit, she brings to the Gathering over 35 years experience, from piano recitals to piano bars, college teaching to coffeehouses, and soul bands to sacred chants. www.velmafrye.com

DAVID ROTH
Landslide top vote-getter at the Falcon Ridge (NY) Folk Festival’s “Most-Wanted” competition in 1996 and a NAIRD ‘Indie’ nominee, David Roth strikes many chords, hearts, and minds with his unique songs, offbeat observations, moving stories, and powerful singing and subject matter. Since 1987, when he was the New Folk Winner at the famed Kerrville Folk Festival, the Chicago native has garnered accolades for his performances, workshops, writing, and recordings, and, in a career highlight, twice sang the national anthem before a game of the NBA’s Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls. Featured on many of Christine Lavin’s Rounder compilations, the former artist-in-residence at New York’s Omega Institute has also been a songwriting judge at Kerrville, Napa Valley (CA), Tumbleweed (WA), and the South Florida Folk Festival. His song, “Earth,” was sung at the 40th Anniversary of the United Nations, and his “Rising in Love” was performed at the 100th Anniversary of Carnegie Hall in 1991. Two other songs, “Manuel Garcia,” and “Nine Gold Medals,” both appear in the international best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. Noel Paul Stookey (of Peter, Paul & Mary) performed David’s “Spacesuits” on the 1999/2000 PPM tours and recorded “If You Can’t Fly” for his 2002 children’s album, World Around Song. David has recorded eight of his own CDs on the Wind River label and a ninth in Germany on Stockfisch Records. www.davidrothmusic.com

LEAH & CHLOE SMITH
Leah and Chloe are sisters from the south who have been singing together their whole lives. Raised by two Appalachian folk musicians, they have been introduced to a plethora of music-infused communities. Their style of singing includes vintage jazz, traditional ballads, contemporary folk, spoken word, hip hop, and gospel. Having recently been compared to such artists as Gillian Welch, The Be Good Tanyas and Ani DiFranco, they consider themselves a hybrid of Snoop Doggy Dogg and The Carter Family. Throughout their globe-trotting travels they have picked up songs from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Mexico, West Africa, Bulgaria, Russia, and throughout the U.S. They now tour in the U.S. and Europe with their band, Rising Appalachia, playing both cutting-edge traditionals and soulful, politically-infused, home grown, post-appocalyptic, neo-folk, roots groove music. www.risingappalachia.com

ABBY LADIN
Abby Ladin grew up immersed in a community of traditional music and dance; her mother was a charismatic international folk dance instructor, her father a faithful supporter of the American folk music revival. As a dancer, Abby devoted eleven years to touring nationally with Rhythm In Shoes, a company reinventing traditionally based percussive dance and live music. She has taught at camps, in schools, and workshops to thousands of people of all ages and abilities. Abby plays bass fiddle in the old-time dance band, The Monks, with her husband Sam Bartlett. She has won top honors with numerous bands in the major southern fiddle contests. Whether dancing or playing, Abby is well known for her rhythmic precision and muscle.

SAM BARTLETT
Sam Bartlett is a rabid, irrepressable mandolin, banjo, and guitar player known to dancers across the country for his fine musicianship and philosophy of Stuntology, recently published in a book of the same name. His original music has been profiled on NPR’s All Things Considered, and he has been featured on Salon.com, and Fiona Richie’s Thistle and Shamrock. A recipient of a Lilly Foundation Creative Renewal Fellowship in 2005-2006, Singout! magazine has declared him a member of “The Rhythm Players Hall of Fame.” www.sambartlett.com

MAURICE TURNER
Maurice is co-founder of Turner World Around Productions, Inc., and one-third of the group MUGABEE(Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction). Through MUGABEE, Maurice works with people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds facilitating workshops which vary in focus from music production to civil rights. When not performing with MUGABEE, Maurice is a trumpet-for-hire. He has shared the musical stage with many great musicians, including Wynton & Ellis Marsalis, Cassandra Wilson, Mulgrew Miller, Randy Brecker, Jon Faddis, Danny Barker, Wallace Roney, Stranger Malone, Donald Byrd, Keeter Betts, Elise Witt, Jimmy Heath, Ray Drummond, Chris “Daddy” Dave, Bobby Rush, B. B. King, The North Mississippi All Stars, and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. www.turnerworldaround.org

BRUCE LANG
Bruce Lang began his career as a professional musician more than thirty years ago in New York City. A singer and multi-instrumentalist, Bruce led the western swing band, The Dixie Doughboys, in the New York area for 12 years, and produced two recordings with the band. Bruce moved to western NC in 1991, and he now makes his home in Barnardsville, just north of Asheville. The Bruce Lang Band has become one of the top bands in Asheville, packing dance floors with their unique mix of swing, western swing, classic rock and R&B. The band features a top-notch horn section and swinging rhythm section as well as Bruce’s vocals, guitar and electric mandolin. He and his wife, Colleen, also operate Big Creek Music, a full-service recording facility. Bruce has previously been a staff member at Swannanoa’s Dance Week, Ashokan Fiddle & Dance, Augusta Heritage Center, Atlanta Dance Week, and Split Tree Farm. Since 1995, Bruce has become involved with musical theater as an actor, musician and/or musical director of productions such as Always...Patsy Cline, The Honky Tonk Angels, Lost Highway: The Music and Legend of Hank Williams, Radio Gals, Woody Guthrie’s American Song and Spitfire Grill. www.bigcreekmusic.com

LEAH SMITH & JESSE EDGERTON
Whether you’re an avid swing dancer or a beginner, Jesse and Leah will send your dance shoes soaring with their sensational swing moves. They have both been dancing since early childhood, and together, they have trained in lindy hop, swing, salsa, merengue, contra, clogging, tango, West African, jazz, modern and ballet. Most recently, they were invited to be Swing Dance Ambassadors to the Asheville Lindy Hop Focus. Leah has studied at the Atlanta School of Ballet, Georgia State University, and City Lights Dance. She has worked with Supermurgatroid Productions, the Asheville Swing Society, and recently returned from a six-month dance program in Havana, Cuba. She fell in love with lindy hop and swing at 19 when she began studying and training with a group of avid young dancers in Asheville, N.C. Jesse has studied dance at the New Studio of Dance and Warren Wilson College. He was involved in a dance group designed to train leads for the Asheville dance community, and he has served on the Board of Directors of the Old Farmer’s Ball, a local Asheville dance organization, for five years. Jesse and Leah’s guiding dance philosophy is to learn by doing and to have as much fun as possible. They are back by popular demand for their second year at Sing & Swing Week.