Celtic Duo Concert at St. Peter’s set for March 3

The Music at St. Peter’s Concert Series will welcome musicians Maggie Sansone and Andrea Hoag as performers for the 3rd Annual Celtic Duo Concert. This year marks Sansone’s third appearance in the series, joined for the first time by Grammy-nominated fiddler Andrea Hoag.

The program, in celebration of upcoming St. Patrick's Day, will feature toe-tapping jigs, heartfelt Irish airs and a few sing-along selections.

The concert will take place at 7 p.m., Saturday, March 3,  at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on Second Street in Lewes. A suggested donation of $15 per person will be received at the door; there are no advance ticket sales.

Maggie Sansone is America's premier hammered dulcimer player.  She brings a unique beauty and vision to the ancient music of the Celts. A Washington Post review said, "Few recordings span the gap of generations so gracefully...She manages to balance art and accessibility, past and present, with unusual care and deftness."

At the center of it all are the percussive yet melodious sounds of Sansone's wooden mallets dancing across the dulcimer's 75 strings. Featured on CBS-TV "Sunday Morning," and NPR's "All Things Considered," "Performance Today" and "The Thistle & Shamrock," Sansone is known throughout the United States as a performer, producer, hammered dulcimer teacher and founder of Maggie's Music record label, which distributes more than 50 recordings worldwide.

She has received numerous nominations and WAMMIE awards including Best Celtic Instrumentalist and Best Record Label from the Washington Area Music Association. Her CDs include "Mystic Dance," "Celtic Meditations," "A Traveler's Dream," and many more with noted colleagues.  

Andrea Hoag is a Grammy nominee and winner of the Washington Area Music Awards' Best Traditional Folk Instrumentalist Award.  Hoag is a legendary performer of Swedish folk fiddling in America. Her music has been featured on NPR’s "All Things Considered" and "Performance Today" and performed at the Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, and at numerous venues around the United States and in Sweden. With a particular interest in in-depth musical conversations, Hoag has collaborated across genres with many respected artists, from pianist Jacqueline Schwab to southern old-time master Bruce Molsky.

For more than 30 years, Hoag has devoted herself to traditional fiddling. Immersing herself first in southern Appalachian music and culture in the early 1980s, she was overtaken by a love of Swedish fiddling’s unusual scales and rhythms. Awarded a fellowship from the Skandia Music Foundation, she studied at Sweden’s respected Malungs Folkhögskola, earning the certificate in Folk Violin Pedagogy in 1984. She also studied in-depth with elder tradition-bearers Pekkos Gustaf and Nils Agenmark, masters of the complex, demanding Bingsjö fiddling dialect. Hoag has taught Swedish music in many settings, including The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Weeks, Swannanoa Gathering and Värmland Folk Music School.

Throughout the 1980s and '90s, she toured with bands known for their improvisation and rich arrangements, including Footloose and Future Geezers. Since 2000, Hoag has focused on collaborations and studio work with a variety of performers, including recording the Grammy-nominated album "Hambo in the Snow" with Hardanger-fiddle virtuoso Loretta Kelley and innovative bassist Charlie Pilzer, and a recording with The Berntsons, a tradition-bearing family from Wisconsin.

Her latest venture is the Old Doors/New Worlds project, an extended collaboration between musicians and dancers from deep in a variety of traditions. The project includes a documentary film about the collaborative process, as the artists work together to create a performance suite, recordings and an ongoing educational program.

Founded approximately 10 years ago, the Music at St. Peter’s Concert Series is an outreach of the music ministry of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Lewes. The series presents a wide variety of sacred and secular music spanning many centuries, genres and cultures. Artists come from around the world to perform in the series. In addition, local ensembles, including those of the music program at St. Peter’s Church, are featured. Further information about the series may be found at www.musicatstpeters.org.