News from Michael Miles and Ken Perlman

Thanks to two of the supreme clawhammer-banjo maestros, Michael Miles and Ken Perlman (both of whom toured in Ireland in the spring of 2013), for their latest e-newsletters.

Michael's newsletter begins: 'This year was my time to reach out into the world and find collaborators who wanted to create and share musical visions with me.' The dozen examples listed include Chris Keenan (who arranged the tour of Ireland); music teacher Brunella Carlberg, who involved students from Beirut, Dublin, and Chicago in a joint musical project; and the Hal Leonard corporation, who will be publishing two new books by Michael in 2014, Folk songs for clawhammer banjo and Bob Dylan for clawhammer banjo.

Full details are in the newsletter, which ends with a gift - a downloadable pdf file of an arrangement of 'O Tannenbaum' for solo fingerstyle guitar. Our condolences go to Michael on the loss of his mother during 2013, at the age of 94.

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Ken Perlman's quarterly newsletter for winter 2014 includes new contact data and news of his performance schedule and of his forthcoming book on the fiddle music of Prince Edward Island, which will be published in the coming spring by Tennessee University Press as the inaugural volume in its Charles Wolfe series. A website on this music is likely to be launched soon.

Ken's performance and instructional schedule for the next three months includes a tour with the renowned fiddler and musicologist Alan Jabbour. Their joint CD Southern summits is an exemplary collection of fiddle-and-banjo duets on twenty-three fine tunes - a real listening pleasure.

In February in New York, Ken will also be the soloist in the premiere performance of Harold Schiffman's concerto in three movements for clawhammer banjo and orchestra. All this and much more news can be seen on Ken's newly refurbished website.