Annie Sumi is a mixed-race, ethereal-folk artist from Canada. Her music is intimate and expansive, inviting the listener into a familiar otherworld. Inspired by the mirrored relationship between physical and emotional landscapes, Sumi’s music speaks of the human experience through the language of the senses.

“Listening to Annie Sumi in concert is like taking a musical forest bath", says Carter Smith of Common Ground Concerts, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.

Since 2015, the Ontario-based songwriter has released two critically-acclaimed albums and toured her music across Canada, parts of the U.S. and Europe. Both Reflections And In the Unknown have been awarded with a number of nominations as ‘Emerging Artist’, ‘Female Vocalist’, and ‘Songwriter of the Year’, and received support from national and international radio.

Sumi’s third album, Solastalgia, was written at the foot of Sleeping Buffalo Mountain on Stoney Nakoda and Blackfoot territory at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The album digests terminology found in Dr. Glenn Albrecht’s Earth Emotions in hopes of creating conversation about the changes we are living through on this planet.

“Solastalgia is the ‘homesickness you have when you are still at home’. This word forced me to ruminate on what it means to be a human and feel a deep connection to the Earth as ‘Home’, and simultaneously participate in the structures we have created to destroy it. Now, it seems like we are slowly remembering to listen to the land and follow the lead of people that have been living traditions of connection and conservation for centuries. That space of humility, gratitude, and deep listening is where these songs have come from.”

Solastalgia was released in October, 2021, and is available on Bandcamp and multiple streaming platforms.

Named one of the greatest string quartets of the last 100 years by BBC Music Magazine, the GRAMMY® nominated Dover Quartet has followed a “practically meteoric” (Strings) trajectory to become one of the most in-demand chamber ensembles in the world. In addition to its faculty role as the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Dover Quartet holds residencies with the Kennedy Center, Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, Artosphere, and the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival. The group’s awards include a stunning sweep of all prizes at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, grand and first prizes at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition. Its prestigious honors include the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award, and Lincoln Center’s Hunt Family Award.

The Dover Quartet draws from the lineage of the distinguished Guarneri, Cleveland, and Vermeer quartets. Its members studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where they were mentored extensively by Shmuel Ashkenasi, James Dunham, Norman Fischer, Kenneth Goldsmith, Joseph Silverstein, Arnold Steinhardt, Michael Tree, and Peter Wiley. It was at Curtis that the Dover Quartet formed, and its name pays tribute to Dover Beach by fellow Curtis alumnus Samuel Barber.

The Dover Quartet is the Penelope P. Watkins Ensemble in Residence at Curtis. Their faculty residency integrates teaching and mentorship, a robust international performance career, and a cutting-edge digital presence. With this innovative residency, Curtis reinvigorates its tradition of maintaining a top professional string quartet on its faculty, while providing resources for the ensemble to experiment with new technologies and engage audiences through digital means. Working closely with students in the Nina von Maltzahn String Quartet Program, the resident ensemble will recruit the most promising young string quartets and foster their development in order to nurture a new generation of leading professional chamber ensembles.

The Dover Quartet plays on the following instruments and proudly endorses Thomastik-Infeld strings

Toronto-based folk duo, Basset, are full of timeless heart. Acoustic songwriters Sam Clark and Yasmine Shelton will take you through city streets in the hours before the world has woken, or to a corrugated steel home north of the treeline.

Basset bring a deep love of the natural world to their gorgeously meditative and assured debut album, In The Clay, set to release on September 30th, 2022. Produced by Joshua Van Tassel (Sarah Slean, David Myles), the ten songs on In The Clay explore various themes of life in change, Shelton and Clark’s travels around Northern Ontario, the Canadian and American prairies, their lives in Toronto, and the many characters who have crossed their paths. With comparisons to The Milk Carton Kids, Hozier, and Bon Iver, their inventiveness shines on fiddle and intricate harmonies, with Shelton and Clark’s voices wrapping around each other like twin flames in a warm fire.

In Spring/Summer 2022, Basset performed at NXNE in Toronto, and as Official Showcase Artists at Folk Alliance International. They took part in a 15-stop Canadian East coast tour and will be performing at the Winnipeg Folk Festival Youth Stage. In 2021 they performed at Boston-based Club Passim’s virtual Campfire Festival, as well as the Honey Jam developing artist showcase (Nelly Furtado, Jully Black, Haviah Mighty) in Toronto. They’ve performed across Ontario and Quebec promoting their self-titled EP and are looking forward to touring their Debut Album, In the Clay, in the Northeastern USA in Fall/Winter 2022.

The acoustic jazz ensemble, Rhythm Future Quartet has a straightforward agenda: to keep the spirit of Jazz Menouche alive and expanding in today’s musical universe. The virtuosic foursome, named for a Django Reinhardt tune, offers up a newly minted sound, influenced by the classic Hot Club of France, yet wholly contemporary. Founded by violinist Jason Anick, the quartet performs dynamic and lyrical arrangements of both Jazz Menouche standards and original compositions that draw upon diverse international rhythms and musical idioms. With Max O’Rourke, Henry Acker, and Greg Loughman rounding out the quartet, Rhythm Future is dedicated to expanding the boundaries of a vital musical genre.

Jake Blount, Nic Gareiss and Laurel Premo, award-winning folk performers, have joined forces in a bewitchment of rich tones, deft movements and stories long untold. Through traditional songs familiar and arcane, this new trio celebrates the deep rhythms and subtle harmonies of America’s eldest musics.

Blount, Gareiss and Premo are not only skilled performers, but researchers with degrees in ethnomusicology, ethnochoreology and performing arts technology. Their years of experience as performers, educators and scholars in their respective traditions have drawn them close to the creative force at the heart of music-making. The trio has brought the power of those deep bonds to bear in a new performance: a paean to their deepest roots written in wood, flesh, and lightning.

Pianist Diana Fanning has toured extensively as a solo performer and chamber musician throughout the U.S. and in England, France, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, the Czech Republic, Canada and Germany. She has performed at the Schloss Leopoldskron ("Sound of Music" castle) in Salzburg, and recently played a solo recital in Prague sponsored by the International Dvorak Society. In 2014, she and the outstanding Dutch cellist Dieuwke Davydov embarked on a month-long tour with concerts in Paris, Charlieu, Amsterdam, and other Dutch cities. A French critic wrote that "one could feel that Diana Fanning poured her heart and soul into her music-making." The Davydov-Fanning Duo returned to Europe for its 8th concert tour in March and April, 2017.

After a solo recital in Munich, a critic wrote that "Diana Fanning stunned her listeners with the rich spectrum of subtle colors and tonal nuances she revealed. Her recital seized the audience with a veritable deep magic." Ms. Fanning has performed on numerous occasions as a concerto soloist with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. She was featured as soloist in a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in the debut concert of the Champlain Philharmonic Orchestra, and was invited back for performances of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Vermont Public Television featured her in a program of works by Scarlatti, Ravel and Chopin. Radio audiences hear her frequently over Vermont Public Radio, and she was interviewed on Radio Prague. She has also performed live on "Morning Pro Musica" (WGBH-FM) Boston and on WNYC, New York City.

As a chamber musician, Ms. Fanning has been a guest artist with the Takacs, the Schumann, the Jupiter and the Alexander String Quartets, and with ensembles from Point Counter Point Music Camp, which she owned and directed for ten years with her husband Emory Fanning. As a member of the Davydov-Fanning Duo, she has undertaken concert tours in Europe which included recordings for Radio Netherlands.

Ms. Fanning’s CD of works by Janacek, Chopin, and Debussy received enthusiastic reviews in England and the U.S. She has also released a recording of live concert performances with cellist Dieuwke Davydov. Ms. Fanning's principal teacher was Ruth Geiger of New York City; she also studied with Marcelle Heuclin at the Paris Conservatory. She is an Affiliate Artist at Middlebury College in Vermont and a faculty member of Pianos on the Point, a summer program for adult pianists at Point Counterpoint on Lake Dunmore, Vermont.