10:30 am
Rio Garage
The Capitol Hill band Rio Garage is grounded in the soft subtle chords of the beach, the clubs, and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro; driven by the pulsing rhythms of the late Miles Davis; and founded on the desire for fun and good grooves. Pianist/singer/composer Mary Flannery's musical influences span several continents. She grew up in the Chicago suburbs, listening to everything from bossa nova and Ella Fitzgerald to the Beatles and the Monkees. Her serious study of classical music included a summer at Interlochen National Music Camp and a degree in piano performance from Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. In the early 80s, she fronted a band called Kyoto de Mondo Agogo which played clubs in Osaka and Kyoto, Japan. She studied sitar in Varansi, India with Ram Chakravarty and classical vocal music with Bhonlanath Misra. Later, she studied flamenco guitar with Miguel Perez in Seville, Spain. When she moved to Washington, she started composing and recording music for documentaries and corporate videos. She wrote The Bad Volunteer, with tales of her two years as a Peace Corp volunteer on a tiny island (one mile by one-fifth of a mile) called Oneop in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Her team won Best Original Score in the 2005 Washington DC 48 Hour Film Fest.
Website: www.maryflannery.com/riogarage.html

1:00 pm
Little Bit a Blues - Warner Williams/Jay Summerour
A D.C. favorite, Little Bit A Blues, which combines the warm vocals and Piedmont guitar picking of Warner Williams' with the virtuoso harmonica of Jay Summerour. Williams and Summerour began playing together during the early 1990s, and have been featured in concerts, on television and radio, and at festivals across the country. Appearances have included the National Public Radio series Folk Masters, at the National and Lowell folk festivals and on the National Mall during the American Roots Fourth of July celebration. According to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, "Guitarist and songster Warner Williams of Takoma Park, MD, is one of the greatest unsung heroes of the Piedmont blues. His Eastern seaboard style incorporates fiddle tunes, ballads, country and popular songs, ragtime, and gospel. With a jaunty rhythmic finger-picked guitar-style and an eclectic repertoire that ranges from blues to honky-tonk, jazz crooning to children's songs, Williams is an old-style community entertainer of national significance." In 2008, Warner Williams was nominated as best traditional blues vocalist and the duo's "Down and Dirty" CD was nominated for a 2007 Wammie for best blues recording by the Washington Area Music Association.
Website: www.littlebitablues.com