Folk Music Society Opens 41st Season with Irish Traditional Group

The Woods Hole Folk Music Society's 41st season will begin on Sunday, October 7 with a performance by the Irish band Long Time Courting.  The concert takes place at 7:30 PM in Community Hall. 

Admission is $15 with discounts for members, seniors, youth and children. Community Hall is handicapped accessible, and there is no charge for street parking after 6 PM.

Long Time Courting is a Boston-based Irish music group featuring four young women: Sarah Blair on fiddle; Liz Simmons on guitar; Shannon Heaton on flute; and Valerie Thompson on cello. Together since 2008, they share a deep affinity for both traditional and contemporary Irish, Scottish and American music. All four players also sing, creating harmonies and vocal accompaniments for ballads of love and longing, adventure and mystery. The songs complement the high-energy instrumentals which first vaulted Long Time Courting to prominence in the Irish music world. 

Sarah Blair has been praised by Fiddler magazine for her "combination of grit ... with lift, drive and a compelling earthiness." She began in Providence, Rhode Island, playing at sessions and dances while touring with her band, the Sevens. She is included in "Handy with the Stick," a forthcoming book by Brendan Taffe profiling top Irish fiddlers.

Liz Simmons is described by Dirty Linen magazine as "a honey-voiced singer ... with winsome ease and genuine feeling." She grew up listening to her mother's traditional singing and her father's New Orleans Dixieland brass, incorporating both into a unique and complex vocal and guitar style. She is the lead singer for Annalivia, a string-based Celtic-Americana fusion band, and has played with the Sevens and the John Whelan band. Her singing will be featured in Grammy and Emmy winner Ernest Thompson's upcoming film "Time and Charges."

Shannon Heaton is the veteran performer of the band, having toured as a flute and guitar duo with husband Matt Heaton for over a decade. She discovered traditional music while traveling and living in Nigeria and Thailand, and later immersed herself in the Chicago Irish music scene, learning flute at Comhaltas and pub sessions. Since then her discerning melodic style and talent for arranging has been featured in numerous Boston-area ensembles. 

Kansas City native Valerie Thompson grew up playing cello in a household filled with baroque, classical, rock, blues, and Irish music, whose influences become apparent when she shifts effortlessly from melody to drone, countermelody and percussive effects. She graduated with honors from Berklee College of Music and is pursuing a masters in contemporary improvisation at New England Conservatory. She has toured internationally. 

Doors open at 7 PM for the 7:30 concert.