Adult Group Class Staff
 | Steve Gardner Steve Gardner is a fiddle player, music educator, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has toured America and Europe many times, performed with Grammy Award winning band Blues Traveler, recorded for Grammy Award winning producer Bobby Ozuna, played with Decca/Sony artist Danni Leigh and is a founding member of Culann's Hounds. He studied Viola performance at SFSU with the Alexander String Quartet's Paul Yarbrough and at the Aaron Copeland School of Music with Danny Phllips of The Orion String Quartet. Steve has recorded for artists as diverse as Culann's Hounds, Freeway (Rockafella), Goapale (Skyblaze), Jake One and The Darktown Rounders. His experience in Irish, Country, Blues and Classical music has been earned on some of the biggest stages around. Steve is the artistic director and co-founder of Roots Music.
|
 | Robyn Mercurio An "obsessed" Irish Fiddler, Robyn Mercurio is a registered Suzuki Violin instructor. She grew up as a Suzuki kid, beginning violin instruction at the age of 4. She has a special interest in working with beginning adults, very young children and children with special needs. She offers individual private lessons as well as group lessons which blend Suzuki techniques with traditional fiddle styles. She is also a co-founder of Roots Music. Robyn is a member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas.
|
 | Kyle Alden Kyle Alden is a singer/songwriter and respected multi-instrumentalist (guitar, fiddle and mandolin) with roots in the San Francisco Irish music community. An experienced DADGAD guitarist, Kyle has accompanied top Irish musicians, including pipers Todd Denman and Paddy Keenan, fiddlers Tommy Peoples, Randal Bays and Athena Tergis, and concertina master, Gearoid O’ hAllmhurain. In the past five years he has recorded three collections of his songs—two full length CDs and one EP. He is a member of Folk Alliance West Region, a past member of West Coast Songwriters, and has studied with Steve Seskin. He is also an active performer in three Bay Area bands --The Reckless Flames (performing his original songs), the Gas Men (a traditional Irish band) and the Mild Colonial Boys (with Rory McNamara and John Caulfield). He currently co-hosts weekly sessions at the Sleeping Lady in Fairfax, and monthly sessions at the Plough and Stars in San Francisco.
|
 | John Pedersen John Pedersen is the grandson of a noted Heldeberg Mountain fiddler in Upstate New York and a multi-year winner of the Marin County Fair Fiddle Competition as well as the 2007 California Old-Time Banjo Champion. Over the years, John has been a member of the Fennigs All Stars, the Swamp Root String Band, the Arkansas Sheiks, and Highballers from Planet Hell. He is currently a founding member of the Roadoilers (an old-time string band) and he also performs with a local Irish Traditional music group. He has been a past participant of the Fairfax Fiddle Summit at the Sleeping Lady and he can be seen at numerous old-time music jams and Irish Traditional sessions around Marin County.
John is also a trained luthier and has worked at musical instrument repair in New York, Toronto, San Francisco, and now at his own store, Amazing Grace Music in San Anselmo.
|
 | Julie Egger Julie Egger teaches Klezmer music as well as classical and jazz to students of all ages in both private and group classes. Classically trained, she received a Bachelor of Music in Education from Crane School of Music, where she studied with the Carnegie String Quartet and Ruth Iogha. She has performed with artists such as Stuart Brotman (of Brave Old World) in Finif and Joshua Horowitz of Veretski Pass. She is co-founder of KlezCalifornia, and received a 2003 individual Artist Grant and a 2007 Community Grant from Marin Arts Council to create a “Yiddish Folk Festival” in West Marin. She currently performs with the Red Hot Chachkas and has numerous recording projects in other genres with other Bay Area groups as well. |
 | Matt Stephenson Matt Stephenson has been playing percussion for 17 years, and bodhran for 12 years. He played in a class 3 drumcorps after primarily studying timpani in high school and then studied ethnomusicology and classical guitar at the University of Texas at Dallas. He has studied bodhran/drums with Albert Alfonso, Doug Herrington and Randy Whotke (Scottish snare player) and his major Irish music influence has been John Williams.
|
 | Mark Bell
Grammy Award winner Mark Bell started playing Middle Eastern percussion in 1972 and got his first gig that same year playing for Bal Anat. Mark has traveled and studied percussion extensively throughout the Arab world and his list of teachers includes percussionists Mahmoud Hamouda in Egypt and Farhadman in Iran. Besides his 2005 Grammy for his work on Beautiful Dreamer – Songs of Stephen Foster, Mark has won acclaim as a member of several bands including Helm, Mirage, Light Rain, The Aegeans, and Tufan. He plays Arabic tabla (a hand drum also known as doumbek or darbukka), toumbak or zarb (a Persian hand drum), tabla beladi or davul (a type of bass drum usually played with sticks), and various instruments of the tambourine/ frame drum family. |
 | Ling Shien
Ling Shien's music studies began on piano at the age of five and she continued on to the Music Conservatory in Aix-en-Provence. Her interest in folkloric music, especially of Upper Egypt, led Ling Shien to pick up the mizmar (Arabic oboe), zumara (an ancient form of the clarinet), and kawala (a folkloric flute). She has traveled to Cairo and Istanbul to study Arabic and Turkish music and recently has added accordion into the mix following her interest in the music of the Turkish Roman, the Balkans and 20th Century Egyptian composers. Ling Shien is a member of the band Helm and is the primary composer and vocalist for the group. Her latest CD, Raqset al Sajat, instructs listeners on how to accompany Oriental rhythms with finger cymbals. |
 | Velvy Appleton Velvy Appleton has been in love with music for over 40 years. He started studying piano at age 5, and continued his classical keyboard & harmony training till the age of 17. Around the age of 12 he started playing guitar, to the exclusion of most everything else. So much so, that when his father came to Velvy’s college graduation and discovered that Velvy had graduated Summa Cum Laude, he fell into a profound state of shock. Upon regaining lucidity, his dad remarked, “I thought you were just playing guitar the whole time.” Velvy currently
plays acoustic, electric, and bass guitar with the indie-folk trio,
“Three At Last”. He also writes, sings, and produces the band's cd's.
Before Three At Last, Velvy was a founding member and electric guitar
player for
13 years (and 300+ shows!) in the Bay Area Brazilian/Samba
cross-cultural
supergroup, “Nobody From Ipanema”. |
 | Cormac Gannon A native of Co. Mayo, Ireland, Cormac was inspired to take up playing the bodhran by hearing the Irish group De Dannan, and the powerful bodhran playing of Johnny (Ringo) McDonagh. After immigrating to San Francisco in 1991, he found a vibrant Irish music scene
including sessions at The Plough & Stars Pub where he met Galway
musician, Vincy Keehan. A few years later The Gas Men were formed and Cormac
continues to perform with them around the Bay area. Cormac is often called on to accompany some of the leading Bay Area Irish
musicians including Lucia Comnes, Steve Gardner and Kyle Alden. He is the founder and organizer of the weekly Irish session at The Sleeping Lady Restaurant, Fairfax, on Sunday afternoons as well as leading a once a month singing session at the Plough and Stars in San Francisco. Making and repairing bodhrans is something that Cormac does in his spare time. |
 | Ted Anderson Ted was born into a musical family and was reading music before he was reading words. He started playing trumpet at age five, and became a percussionist at age twelve. He became a member of his home town symphony orchestra and concert band at fourteen, as well as singing in his church choir. Trading fireworks to a neighbor kid for a highland bagpipe, he began playing in a pipe band at age fifteen. This began a lifetime love of, and immersion in, Celtic music. At eighteen he took up playing five-string banjo. In 1976, Ted heard a friend's recordings
of Irish traditional music, Planxty and the Chieftains. Discovering
that the uilleann pipes had not died out, as he was told years
before, he sought out a set of them and began restoring them. His
friend gave him a penny whistle, which he taught himself to play. He
moved to the Bay area in 1977, to learn reed making and become part
of the Irish traditional music scene. He is one of the well-known mainstays of the Bay Area Irish music community.
|
