The Young Tradition Touring Group performs on Saturday, April 15, 2023 starting at 7pm at the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph. Featured will be the 24 teen members of the Touring Group. Also appearing will be adult artist leaders Andrea Beaton and Dominique Dodge, youth artist leaders
Owen Kennedy and Hadley Stockwell, and the 2022/2023 Youth Commission led by Fiona Stowell.

The Touring Group consists of teens who focus on learning and performing traditional music and dance over the course of a 9-month, early September through early May season, including a late-April performance tour. Group members learn from and are supported by artist leaders, visiting and guest master musicians and dancers/dance leaders, and participate in musical exchanges with master artists and other young musicians and dancers.

The Touring Group has traveled to Scotland, Cape Breton, England, Ireland, Japan, and New York/New Jersey. Because of COVID-19 related travel restrictions in 2020, 2021 and 2022, the group gathered and traveled virtually, visiting with master artists and other youth in Ireland, Cape Breton, Japan, Quebec, England, New Brunswick, Scotland and Sweden.

Members rehearse, fundraise, and perform regionally in anticipation of the April tour. Most group members are from Vermont, but this year also includes members from Maine and Massachusetts.

Here is a video the group prepared for a virtual tour in 2020:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3goyqqj7Kk&feature=emb_logo

The 2022/2023 Touring Group is organized by Manager Christina Kennedy and Young Tradition Vermont founder Mark Sustic. The performance will be the group’s final Vermont appearance before leaving for Cape Breton the following Friday, and is presentation of the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph.

The performance is designed to feature what has been learned, taught, presented, and exchanged, demonstrating how traditional tunes, songs and
dances can help bridge social, cultural, geographic, economic and pandemic divides.

For more information about the Touring Group, a Young Tradition Vermont program at Vermont Folklife, visit: https://www.vtfolklife.org/touring-group