Celtic/Christmas Concert in Germantown with PWYC Pricing - Wonderful Group!

The OCEAN Celtic Quartet will transport you to the Yuletide celebrations of yore in a program featuring time-honored carols, 19th century broadside songs, traditional Celtic tunes, original seasonal compositions, and even an appearance by Father Christmas of the old mummers plays! With their soaring vocals and stately Celtic instrumentals, OCEAN is known for marrying lighthearted exuberance with great spiritual depth in a program that appeals to all faiths and wisdom traditions. Come in good voice, as you’ll be invited to sing along! The group also features the stunning vocalist LISA MOSCATIELLO (also a WAMA “Musician of the Year”).

Even better, Ocean knows it's tough out there for folks in this region and for this concert has added Pay What You Can pricing. Go to this link and click on Pick Your Own Seats and you can get these tickets. (If you can afford regular tickets, always nice to do that.) It's a very cool gesture - kudos to this wonderful group.

It's a very special venue though a little further than the Metro will take you. Looks like there are still great seats to be had.

The group:
JENNIFER CUTTING (Artistic Director, Keyboard, Accordion) happily blends careers as a bandleader, composer, instrumentalist, ethnomusicologist, and record producer. In the early 80s, she became the last and youngest protégée of British folk revival leader A.L. Lloyd, who had previously mentored members of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. Cutting spent 10 years as leader of The New St. George, one of the most significant British folk-rock groups on this side of the Atlantic. She then created and produced the award-winning CDs OCEAN: Songs for the Night Sea Journey, Song of Solstice, and Waves, collaborating with international superstars such as Maddy Prior and Peter Knight (Steeleye Span), Annie Haslam (Renaissance), Dave Mattacks (Fairport Convention) Tony Cuffe (Ossian) and Troy Donockley (Iona [UK]). Cutting is a multiple award winner in all areas of her musical career. She has won over 20 WAMMIE awards, including “Musician of the Year,” “Songwriter of the Year,” and “Best New Artist,” as well as “Album of the Year,” “Best Traditional Folk Recording” and “Best Contemporary Folk Recording.” She has won two Maryland Governor’s Citations for composition, as well as prestigious national-level songwriting awards such as First Prize in songwriting at the Merle Watson Festival, and American Songwriter Magazine’s Song of the Year.

LISA MOSCATIELLO (Vocal, Guitar, Penny Whistle) is a smooth, sultry folk contralto from the Washington, DC area. She has won over two dozen Washington Area Music Awards, including two of the coveted Album of the Year awards for Second Avenue and Trouble from the Start. Although her first love is traditional Irish, Scottish, English and Anglo-American traditional folk music, her voracious appetite for beautiful melodies and mysterious, heart-rending lyrics has led her far afield from what is normally considered "folk music," into jazz, electronica, country, Italian pop music and even opera. In addition to singing with the OCEAN Celtic Quartet, she performs as a solo artist. As part of a duo with cellist Fred Lieder, she performed monthly at 49 West for many years, and also recorded for the electronica project Arthur Loves Plastic. She is the former lead singer for Celtic fusion band Whirligig and British folk-rock band The New St. George, and has recorded and toured with fiddler Rosie Shipley.

STEPHEN WINICK (vocals, percussion) specializes in traditional ballads and sea chanteys, and is both a performer and an expert lecturer and teacher, bringing a scholarly depth to OCEAN’s concerts and educational programs. Steve has been singing traditional songs in English and French since his childhood. In the early 1990s, he spent several summers under the tutelage of the late Dublin ballad singer Frank Harte, one of the foremost traditional ballad singers in Irish music. Steve is a member of Ship’s Company Chanteymen, in which he performs a repertoire of sea chanteys and historical songs. He was engaged as an expert scholar and researcher for the 2008 Washington Christmas Revels, which presented the music of Québec. He ended up also performing one of the lead roles in the show, for which he sang traditional songs in French to an audience of thousands. He reprised his role on the 2010 CD release Le Temps des Fêtes, and in the same year appeared on OCEAN’s CD Song of Solstice. He has a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied under song specialists Kenneth S. Goldstein and Roger Abrahams. He has taught courses in folklore and folksong at the University of Pennsylvania, George Washington University, and George Mason University.

JAY ANSILL (Violin, Celtic Harp, Hurdy Gurdy) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer based in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He has toured extensively and performed a wide variety of music with a wide variety of musicians including Anne Hills, Martin Carthy, Johnny Cunningham, Bill Keith, J. "Mo'ong" Santoso Pribadi and Maria Del Mar Bonet. Jay has written music for theater, most notably working with playwright/director Lee Breuer at Mabou Mines on a number of projects and with John Guare on his Lydia Breeze Trilogy. Jay has released several albums including A Lost World, a critically acclaimed collection of settings of poems by Robert Graves, and Fragile Gifts, with singer-songwriter Anne Hill.