BROOKLYN FOLK FESTIVAL CARRIES ON SPIRIT OF EARLY NEWPORT FESTS WITH WORKSHOPS BY MASTERS, BANJO TOSS

SEVENTH ANNUAL FESTIVAL MOVES TO LARGEST VENUE TO DATE AT ST. ANN'S CHURCH APRIL 17-19

The seventh annual Brooklyn Folk Festival—held this year at St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church, its largest venue to date—is set to educate as well as entertain when it returns April 17-19. In the spirit of the original Newport Folk Festivals, the BFF celebrates the legacy and music of a variety of cultures and communities through performances, instruction, panels, film screenings, contests, and more. Central to the festival's mission of perpetuating vernacular music from around the world is an impressive slate of interactive workshops, which honor the folk tradition of passing on songs, stories, and techniques from generation to generation. Check out more information on the festival, which has sold out every year, in the New York Times.

Saturday's workshops include an old time jam session; a discussion and performance of the Irish revolutionary songs of rebel leader James Connolly by Matt Callahan and Yvonne Moore; a presentation about the history of folk music in New York by the Museum of the City Of New York's Stephen Petrus; and vocal harmony instruction for all levels of singers from Don Friedman and Phyllis Elkind, who regularly teach at Brooklyn's own Jalopy Theater and School of Music.

Sunday afternoon's activities kick off with the famous Banjo Toss, which honors players' love/hate relationship with the 5-stringed instrument as they vie to hurl it furthest into the Gowanus Canal. It's followed by a fiddle workshop with the renowned fiddler Bruce Molsky, who, in addition to becoming one of the country's most celebrated Appalachian players and instructors, has collaborated with everyone from the GRAMMY-nominated Fiddlers 4 to the Irish/Hungarian/Dutch supergroup Mozaik to Norwegian hardingfele player Annbjorg Lien. Art Rosenbaum, who won a GRAMMY for his Smithsonian-Folkways box set 'The Art of Field Recording: Fifty Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum' and has authored several books on the African-American folk tradition in Georgia, will lead an old time banjo workshop later in the day.

"The workshops not only allow people to learn or improve on an instrument or as singers, but also give important background to the music that makes it come alive as a force for understanding cultural history and social change," says founder and co-host Eli Smith. "Music is an important form of storytelling, and with our workshops, films and lectures, we hope to offer people a way to understand the backstory and social function of the music."

In addition to the workshops and panels, this year's performance lineup features 30 bands, including Daptone gospel group Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens, country blues multi-instrumentalist Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton, folk legend and songwriter Michael Hurley, old-time fiddle and banjo player Bruce Molsky, fiddle player Frank Fairfield, and intergenerational anti-folk collaborators Peter Stampfel & Jeffrey Lewis.