Cindy Kallet and Grey Larsen

photo by Tom Stio

Click HERE to watch videos of Cindy Kallet and Grey Larsen!

Cindy Kallet and Grey Larsen, each well-known and loved for their decades of music making, have spent much of the last five years in a joyful musical collaboration. Cindy is a superb singer, guitarist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Grey is one of America's finest players of the Irish flute and tin whistle, as well as an accomplished singer and concertina, fiddle, piano and harmonium player. As composers each has contributed to the unique tapestry of contemporary folk and world music as it exists and flourishes in America today. Together, they weave songs and tunes of vibrant color and rich texture.

Scott Alarik of The Boston Globe calls Cindy "...one of folk music's most respected songwriters... provocative, heartwise, and original ...a brilliant guitarist... ". Mike Joyce of the Washington Post calls Grey "... a gifted multi-instrumentalist who consistently demonstrates his melodic finesse," while The New Mexico Daily describes his playing as "positively spellbinding". Cindy and Grey have also appeared with host Andrea Seabrook on National Public Radio's "Weekend All Things Considered."

The duo's repertoire includes Cindy's sparkling original songs, distinctive settings of traditional Irish music, Scandinavian fiddle duets, old-time fiddle and guitar tunes from southern Indiana, and new music that Cindy and Grey are inventing together. There is plenty of variety and breadth of musical territory here, all deeply rooted in folk traditions, and interwoven with the renaissance and baroque counterpoint in which both Cindy and Grey, coincidentally, were immersed while growing up. Included are vocal duets, guitar, Irish flute, Irish alto flute, tin whistle, concertina, harmonium, and duet fiddling, and plenty of stories that put the music into a personal context. In 2007, they released their widely-praised first duo recording, Cross the Water. For more on Cindy and Grey, please visit http://www.kalletlarsen.com/, http://www.cindykallet.com/ and http://www.greylarsen.com/.

More on Cindy Kallet and Grey Larsen

Cindy Kallet

Cindy Kallet has been writing music and playing the guitar since she was eleven years old, and has performed throughout the US for more than thirty years. She is a gifted songwriter, singer and guitarist with five solo albums to her credit. In the twenty-five years since the release of her first album, Cindy has built a devoted audience of all ages and from all walks of life. Her fans find many reasons to love her music, from her deep and intricate guitar playing to her clear and heartfelt singing to her honest and intelligent songwriting to her quietly outrageous humor. Her passion for folk tradition is deeply personal and challenges listeners to draw their own connections with the music.

Cindy's songs embody her love for the natural beauty of the New England coast. Through her years as a musician, traveler, teacher, naturalist, carpenter, and mother, she has honed and distilled unique insights and imagery. All of this she wraps in her songs, delivered with clarity, depth, and the realism of life understood and the poetry of dreams heartfelt.

Kallet's albums include Working on Wings to Fly and Cindy Kallet 2, which are on Folk-Legacy Records, and Dreaming Down a Quiet Line, This Way Home and Leave the Cake in the Mailbox (Songs for Parents and Kids Growing Up). In addition, Cindy has recorded three albums with Ellen Epstein and Michael Cicone, Angels in Daring, Only Human, and Heartwalk (Overall Music), as well as a duet album, Neighbors, with Gordon Bok. In 2003 she put together The Cindy Kallet Songbook - A Collection for Guitar and Voice (Stone's Throw Music), which contains words, music, chords, and guitar tablature for 32 original songs. Most recently, she recorded Cross the Water with Grey Larsen.

Kallet has performed in concert throughout the country and has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, WFMT's Folkstage, and National Public Radio's Weekend All Things Considered. Working on Wings to Fly was voted one of the "Top 100 Folk Albums of the Century" by WUMB Boston radio listeners, and Kallet's Leave the Cake in the Mailbox - Songs for Parents and Kids Growing Up, was chosen for a 2004 Parents' Choice Gold Award.

In addition to concert performances, Cindy teaches at music camps, and is available for guitar workshops, songwriting residencies and private guitar lessons.

Grey Larsen

Grey Larsen discovered Irish traditional music in the early '70s and pursues it with devotion to this day. Regarded as one of America's leading Irish flute players, Grey joins the silken grace of the East Galway flute style with the driving momentum found in Irish music at large. He has spent decades learning from elder masters, both in the US and in Ireland, and combines his traditional training with an academic background in composition and early music. Through the playing of many traditional musicians in Ireland and other Celtic lands, several of Grey's own tunes have been adopted into the common repertoire.

While he is best known for Irish music, Grey plays half a dozen instruments and is at home in several musical styles. He is a fine fiddler and has devoted a great deal of his musical life to the old-time fiddle music of his native southern Midwest, situated in the northern fringe of the Appalachian cultural region. In particular, Grey delights in sharing the lovely crooked-tune repertoire of southern Indiana fiddler Joe Dawson, and loves to tell stories about his musical mentors like Joe and Irishmen Michael Kennedy, Tom Byrne and Tom McCaffrey.

Grey has performed and recorded widely since the mid 1970s with Cindy Kallet, Malcolm Dalglish, Metamora (Grey, Malcolm, and Pete Sutherland), André Marchand, Paddy League and many others, throughout the US and in Canada, Europe and Australia. Virtuoso Irish fiddler and educator Séamus Connolly has said of Grey that he is "one of the few players who has mastered an older style of playing which has been heard in East County Galway, Ireland. … It is refreshing and gratifying to hear such a true understanding of the soul of traditional Irish music in the playing of an American-born musician." Grey has also appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, WFMT's Folkstage, National Public Radio's Weekend All Things Considered, and WUMB's The Connection.

His recordings include Cross the Water (with Cindy Kallet), Les Marionnettes and The Orange Tree (with André Marchand), Dark of the Moon and The Green House (with Paddy League), The Great Road, Morning Walk, and Metamora (with Metamora), Thunderhead, The First of Autumn, and Banish Misfortune (with Malcolm Dalglish), and The Gathering, a collection of original Larsen tunes performed with many musical friends.

Grey is also the author of two books, published by Mel Bay: The Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle and The Essential Tin Whistle Toolbox, the former being the most comprehensive book yet written on Irish flute and tin whistle. Matt Molloy, flute player with the Chieftains and the Bothy Band, wrote about this book, "Grey has, through his research, patience, and diligence, completed a work on Irish flute and tin whistle that I feel is essential reading for anybody interested in getting it right."

One of Irish music's most articulate teachers, Grey has taught at festivals, workshops, colleges and music camps in the US, Canada, Ireland, Australia and the Netherlands. He is also widely recognized for his work as a record producer, mastering engineer, and as the Music Editor of Sing Out! Magazine.

For more information about Grey and his recordings, books and other musical projects, or to hear samples of his music, please visit his website at www.greylarsen.com.