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Concerts and Events

2023-2024 Concert Season

If you have questions about events, send email to concerts@fssgb.org or call Lynn at (781) 227-7500.

Upcoming FSSGB Concerts and Events:

Here's a preview of next season:

Here's what we presented earlier this season:

Steve Turner

Steve Turner House Concert

Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023, 7pm
Newton, MA
General admission: $20
$5 for students
Reservations required: email HouseConcerts@fssgb.org for
reservations and directions.

Steve Turner is known as a pioneer of highly sophisticated English concertina song accompaniments, stretching the boundaries of traditional forms, with one of the best voices in the business. He is a multi-instrumentalist, who also accompanies himself on the cittern, and also plays mandolin and tenor banjo.

Steve began his career on the Manchester, UK folk scene at the end of the ‘60s, with the Geordie band "Canny Fettle", touring with them for eight years and making two albums with them.

In 1979 he won the UK Melody Maker’s national "Stars of the 80s" competition, which persuaded him to turn professional, and for the next 12 years he toured solo, nationally and internationally, releasing four albums with Fellside Records during this period (Out Stack, Jigging One Now, Eclogue and Braiding).

After 13 years away from the folk scene he made a welcome return in 2004 performing in folk clubs and festivals, and in 2008 producing his 5th album, the highly acclaimed "Whirligig of Time" which featured UK luminaries Martin Carthy, Nancy Kerr and Miranda Sykes.

Since then he has released further albums, "Rim of the Wheel" , "Spirit of the Game" and "Late Cut", and his latest much anticipated 9th album "Curious Times" featuring Martin Carthy will be released in Spring 2023.

COVID-19 rules:

  • All attendees must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. (We're using the honor system; no need to show vax card at the door.)
  • Masks are optional.
  • Please stay home if you feel unwell that day!

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Martha Burns

Martha Burns House Concert

Cancelled due to family emergency. We'll try again next year!

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Holiday Singing Party on Zoom

Sunday, December 10, 2023, 7pm

You can either:

Join us for a holiday themed singing party on Zoom! Some FSSGB song leaders will get us started, and then we'll open up the floor for anyone to do a song.

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FSSGB Members' Concert on Zoom

Saturday, January 27, 7pm

You can either:

Please join us for our annual Members' Concert! We’ll continue the relatively new tradition of having this event on Zoom and livestreamed to Facebook Live. This is a favorite event of the year for many of us — an opportunity to delight in the rich and diverse talents of FSSGB members, old and new.

All FSSGB members are invited to sign up to perform one song or tune. Contact Lori Fassman (lori.fassman@gmail.com, 978-264-9710) by January 15 to reserve a spot.

All performers will be in the Zoom meeting (muted during others' performances), and the show will be livestreamed to Facebook so everyone else can watch. (You don't need to have a Facebook account to watch the livestream.)

We will accept donations during the performance which will benefit FSSGB. Much of that money will go to scholarships which enable young Boston-area musicians to attend folk music camps.

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Mike Agranoff

Mike Agranoff House Concert

Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024, 7pm
Roslindale, MA
General admission: $20
$5 for students
Reservations required: email HouseConcerts@fssgb.org for
reservations and directions.

If you've been around the folk scene, you couldn't miss seeing Mike. Tall, ginger beard, and always around where the music is. He's been on the scene for many many years, listening to the fine details of what makes this genre of music so special to the soul, so able to make us laugh and cry and think. And lucky for us all, he got serious about having fun at it.

Less a singer-songwriter than a singer-songfinder, Mike takes great delight in discovering the little-known hidden gems, polishing them with his own distinctive style, and bringing them to the light of day where they sparkle. He will shift from beautifully contemplative, to uproariously funny, to instrumentally brilliant, to powerfully emotional in the space of a few minutes. Equally at home in the contemporary and traditional camps of the Folk world, he is a fine musician and storyteller. His prime instrument is the guitar, upon which he shines with intricate fingerstyle arrangements of anything from Tin Pan Alley tunes of the '20s to fiddle tunes to his own music. He also plays concertina, piano, banjo, or sings acapella. The man will capture your attention, and then your heart.

Not only a performer, Mike is involved in presenting folk music as well. He is one of the prime movers of The Folk Project, New Jersey's oldest and strongest folk music organization. For over two decades he has been chairman of that organization's Minstrel Coffeehouse, one of the longest lived and most respected folk venues in the country.

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Woody Guthrie

Bound for Glory (Woody Guthrie tribute show)

Note: time and location have changed since original announcement!
Sunday, March 3, 2024, 4pm ET
First Parish in Waltham
50 Church Street, Waltham, MA
$10 Admission for all at the door

FSSGB is pleased to present "Bound for Glory", our Woody Guthrie Tribute show - back after a five-year hiatus! The show features many FSSGB members and friends, many of whom have performed in past Woody shows going way back to the 60's.

"Bound for Glory" is a performance of songs and stories about the life of Woodrow Wilson ("Woody") Guthrie, considered by many to be the founder of modern American folk music. Many wonderful songs written by Woody and performed by members of FSSGB are interspersed with short recitations from his autobiography. It is a funny, cynical, earthy and tragic account of his life in an Oklahoma oil-boom town, of the Depression that followed, and of his subsequent travels in, on, and under trains, in stolen cars and on his feet, round an America going rotten from the top downwards.

Chorus sheets are made available and the audience is encouraged to sing along.

Refreshments will be served at intermission.

Parking: there are small lots on either side of the church, and there's some on-street parking in the neighborhood. We're allowed to park at the middle school next door (75 Church St), and there's a municipal lot at the intersection of Church St and Rt 20 (one block south of the church).

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Sara Grey and Kieron Means

Sara Grey and Kieron Means House Concert

Sunday, April 7, 1pm
Brookline, MA venue changed!
General admission: $20
$5 for students
Reservations required: email HouseConcerts@fssgb.org for
reservations and directions.

Sara Grey is one of the most gifted and knowledgeable artists working in the field of traditional music. Sara's singing is both powerful and sweet, with a distinctive and lovely tremolo. It is a voice well suited to native American songs and ballads of Ireland and Scotland.

It is not Sara's lovely voice alone that makes her one of the most popular singers on the folk scene; on many of her songs Sara accompanies herself by frailing a five string banjo and, when playing dance tunes, it is obvious why she is regarded as one of the foremost exponents of the clawhammer style. As well as singing and playing, Sara is well known for her storytelling - specialising in stories from New England where she grew up learning many of her stories from her father.

Sara grew up in New Hampshire but has lived in North Carolina, Ohio, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wales, Scotland and England. As a youngster in North Carolina she developed a love for old time songs and banjo music. She cites Kyle Creed as the chief influence on her understated, syncopated clawhammer banjo style. She has now been performing professionally for more than 30 years.

  • "She is one of a select band of performers who still breathe life into traditional ballads." Vic Smith, Folk Roots
  • "Sara Grey has quietly and powerfully taken over the mantle of premier interpreter of American traditional music." Tor Jonassen, WRDV

Kieron Means is a singer primarily of traditional songs but also of contemporary songs and guitar player of great merit. He has a great rapport with an audience and has an exceptional professionalism for a young performer. His voice is as smooth as silk, rich and mellow and he sings to his audience not in spite of them.

Kieron is the son of the traditional singer Sara Grey and music journalist Andrew Means, one time writer for Melody Maker. He was born in the United States and grew up in Britain gaining a great love of the music of both traditions as well as the contemporary scene. He has become a performer of traditional songs from the US and from the UK and many of the contemporary songs he sings he has written himself.

He has toured in the States and often performed with Sara Grey. In 2000 he has performed at Whitby and Wadebridge festivals where he was received with much acclaim. His first CD has received much praise with air play on Travelling Folk and Mr Anderson's Fine Tunes both on radio Scotland. An article on him will shortly be appearing in Folk Roots magazine.

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FSSGB Song Swap at NEFFA

Friday, April 19, 2024, 8pm
Best Western Royal Plaza, 181 Boston Post Rd W, Marlborough, MA
Admission included in the cost of Festival registration

FSSGB will be holding it's annual song swap at the 80th annual New England Folk Festival. Visit neffa.org for details!

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Happy Anniversary

FSSGB's 65th Anniversary Party

Sunday, May 5, 2024, 3-5pm
Theodore Parker Unitarian Church, 1859 Centre St, West Roxbury
Free admission
Please join us for a very special party to celebrate FSSGB’s 65th anniversary! This will be a song swap with refreshments, and some special guests who have graced our stages over the years.

More info to come!

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