ARTIST LINE UP
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A major new duo of two award-winning American masters of traditional Celtic music, Sue Richards and Robin Bullock blend the ancient and magical tones of the Celtic harp with the powerful resonance of the steel-string guitar, cittern and mandolin, drawing on Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Breton traditions to create something truly unique: beautiful and timeless, yet fresh and current.
Their individual achievements speak for themselves, with (among many other accomplishments) Sue being a four-time National Scottish Harp Champion and Robin being a longtime touring sideman with Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award winner Tom Paxton.
Sue and Robin have been friends and colleagues for decades, having both recorded WAMMIE Award-winning solo albums for the Maryland-based Maggie’s Music label and collaborated on many other projects over the years; now both transplants to the western North Carolina mountains, they’re delighted to be joining forces in a long-overdue chamber-Celtic duo. The magic of their combined artistic excellence and mastery of Celtic traditions is captured on their brilliant duo debut CD Highland Ramble.
SUE RICHARDS, four-time National Scottish Harp Champion, has performed numerous times for the Embassy of Ireland in Washington DC, as well as for President Bill Clinton (twice!) and Queen Elizabeth II. She has served as president and distinguished judge for the Scottish Harp Society of America (SHSA) and founded the Washington DC Folk Harp Society. She has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, sat in with The Chieftains, toured Norway and Scotland with the Harpa ensemble, and can be heard on dozens of award-winning recordings. Sue is a popular instructor at workshops around the country and has written several books of arrangements and original tunes. In addition to her solo work, Sue is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated Ensemble Galilei.
ROBIN BULLOCK has been hailed as a “Celtic guitar god” by Baltimore City Paper, “one of the best folk instrumentalists in the business” by Sing Out! Magazine and one of the 100 Greatest Acoustic Guitarists by DigitalDreamDoor.com. His honors include the Association for Independent Music’s prestigious INDIE Award (with the world-folk trio Helicon), Player’s Choice and Album of the Year Awards from Acoustic Guitar Magazine, and the Swannanoa Gathering’s Master Music Maker Award. Robin has played hundreds of concerts as touring sideman with Grammy Award-winning folk legend Tom Paxton, and was the sole support musician on four of Tom’s “Together at Last” tours with fellow Grammy winner Janis Ian. Writing about Robin in The NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Celtic Music, Thistle and Shamrock host Fiona Ritchie says “Bullock’s music accents the connections between Celtic and American traditional and acoustic music. That he is able to do so by playing almost any stringed instrument to perfection is his specialty.”
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With the release of their duo CD Highland Ramble joining their many critically-acclaimed solo albums, Sue and Robin prove that their individual talents together create a world-class combination, carrying Celtic tradition into new and transformative realms.
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Julyan Davis is a British-American painter and novelist. Since 1988 he has made the American South his subject, capturing vanishing architecture and forgotten folklore across the region. His series of large-scale narrative paintings setting Appalachian ballads in the contemporary South has toured museums and public spaces since 2012. Davis’s debut novel ‘A History of Saints’ (set in Asheville during the recession of 2008) was a 2021 Foreward Indies Gold winner and a semifinalist for the 2022 Thurber Prize.
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Bri Bliss Gardner is a queer multi-disciplinary artist and animist witch. Her performance work has always been informed by human relationships with land, time, living waterways, and ancestral memory. She lives with her partner in a little stone house here in Western North Carolina.
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Paula O’Brien is a local actor and singer. She, like half of those in Northern New Jersey, moved here with her partner 5 1/2 years ago when looking for a place to retire. She most recently appeared in ‘Happyland’ (an original rock opera) at The Magnetic Theatre and will also appear in their next production ‘Fish’. She was in Much Ado About Nothing at Montford Park Players and has also performed with NC Stage in Jeeves At Sea. She loves the mountains and volunteers at the Behavioral Rehabilitation Center with the ASPCA in Weaverville.
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Scriptwriter, storyteller, singer, performance artist, poet, podcaster, and clown — Mica Sun hails from southern Appalachia where a love of mythopoetic bioregional reverie melds with a love of permaculture futures and emergent story. Growing up on fable and verse in a cultivated forest, Mica works to bring truth through art to stir the hearts of humans and non-humans alike, bridging worlds and creating depth of knowledge through form and play, in order to better know ourselves and praise the divine in all things. May we always find ourselves blessed, working towards the world we most truly wish to live into. You can follow Mica’s arts and performance website at www.appalachianseason.com.