2026 Featured Performers

Bounding Main



BOUNDING MAIN (Dean Calin, Christie Dalby, Gina Dalby, Patrick Knapp, Jr. and Jon Krivitzky) is an award-winning a cappella quintet formed in 2003 that sings richly harmonic versions of maritime songs, traditional sea shanties, nautical ballads, contemporary pieces and original compositions. This Great Lakes based group, passionate about preserving maritime music, performs at sea shanty, maritime and folk festivals, clubs, museums, and educational venues across the Midwest and internationally in locations such as Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, France, England, and Canada. They have been honored to be referenced in books focusing on maritime music and history, and their music has been included in maritime museum exhibits and used in film soundtracks. Additionally, their music has been recorded and preserved in the British Library’s Sound Archive.  

Moe Bowstern



MOE BOWSTERN is the editor since 1996 of Xtra Tuf, a zine that chronicles the experiences and adventures of commercial fisher folk in Alaska and beyond. Moe has worked on fishing boats since 1986, when as a miserable 18-year-old boat cook, she once inadvertently threatened the lives of the crew by serving pasta tossed with shards of glass. She has fished salmon, halibut, herring, tanner crab, and cod in Alaska, shad on the Hudson River, shrimp in Miami, and mackerel, crab, and lobster in the Moray Firth of Scotland. Since it began in 1998, Moe performs and emcees annually at the Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria, Oregon, and has also performed at the Working Waterfront Festival, the Mystic Sea Music Festival, the Cowboy Poetry Festival, the Cordova Salmon Jam, Kodiak’s Fishing Out Loud, and “Kodiak’s Biggest Navigational Hazard,” Tony’s Bar. Find her at Subversion Through Friendliness on Substack.      

Jerry Bryant



JERRY BRYANT is a singer and researcher devoted to sharing the musical artifacts of maritime culture. His repertoire includes hundreds of songs, ranging from chanteys to songs of fisherfolk to ancient ballads. He sings unaccompanied and with concertina and various chordophones. Jerry appeared regularly at Mystic Seaport over the 40 years of their sea music festival, and has performed from Maine to Cali-fornia. He has also been a mentor in the Southern New England Apprenticeship Program, sharing expertise about traditional sea chanteys, so that young singers can understand where the songs come from and what they mean.

Tom Callinan



TOM CALLINAN is a folksinger, songwriter, storyteller, and multi-instrumentalist from Norwich, CT. He has been a full-time performing artist since 1977, equally at home with a symphony orchestra, in a solo concert, or telling stories with his wife, Ann Shapiro. For 50 years, he was the business manager and a performing member of  The Morgans, one of Connecticut’s premier Irish, folk, and sea music ensembles. Tom has composed so many songs about Connecticut’s people, places, and events that he was designated Connecticut’s first Official State Troubadour in 1991. Excerpts from two of his original songs were included in an Emmy Award-winning documentary, A Connecticut Yankee In Red Square, produced by Connecticut Public Television. To date, he has released over twenty solo albums and has appeared on over a dozen others with various artists.

Cate Clifford



CATE CLIFFORD is a typically unaccompanied singer based in Rhode Island. With powerful vocals, sensitive harmonies, and engaging context gleaned from intensive study, Cate creates a vivid and accessible pathway to the songs she offers, the people and stories behind them, and the profound, timeless delight of sharing both. A proud member of AFM Local 1000, the Traveling Musicians Union, she has raised rafters and cracked hearts in homes, venues, festivals and recording studios on both coasts of the USA. She maintains that no set is immune to a dash of Sondheim or a sprinkle of Shakespeare.

David Coller and Diane Chodkowski



DAVID COLLER has been writing and performing in the folk/Americana genre since his teens. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from the University of Southern California before moving to the east coast and a career in the medical world. He has played in bands, duos, and as a solo performer, in both southern California and Connecticut, despite being waylaid by a wooden gaff-rigged schooner. A sailor from the age of nine, it isn’t surprising that the music of the sea, traditional and modern, has been one of his long term interests, both as a writer of songs and as a performer. 
DIANE CHODKOWSKI caught the chantey bug as a Sea Scout in high school, and has had many adventures with David on his gaff-rigged wooden schooner. She has been singing harmony in the folk world since the 1980’s in NYC, and has sung or recorded with many wonderful musicians, including Hugh Blumenfeld (former CT State Troubadour) and Peter Yarrow, and was a member of the acclaimed female trio, Madwoman in the Attic. 

Alex Cumming



ALEX CUMMING (they/them/she/her) is a traditional singer, accordionist, pianist, and dance caller originally from Somerset, England, now based in Brattleboro, VT. Alex has performed extensively across the UK and the US, bringing traditional songs and tunes to life with an engaging stage presence, strong voice, rhythmic dance-able accordion style, and deep knowledge of folk traditions. Alex plays in a duo with Audrey Jaber and is also known for their work with award winning a Capella band The Teacups, Celtic trio Bellwether (ft. Eric McDonald & Louise Bichan), and contra dance bands Crossover and Red Case Band. 

The Dreadnoughts



THE DREADNOUGHTS started out in 2006 with a single goal: to blend traditional European folk music with gut-crunching street punk. They soon found themselves singing traditional sea shanties like Roll the Woodpile Down and Eliza Lee in pubs and clubs all over their native Vancouver, Canada. Since then, they’ve spent 20 years touring the world, perfecting this strange cocktail of musical styles, while always trying to preserve the beauty and intricacy of the folk genres they draw from. They’ve now decided to return to their roots and form an acoustic version of the band, focusing on the old genre that started them down this long path in the first place: the nautical song. 

David Jones



DAVID JONES, an aged Londoner, and now a resident of New Jersey, is a singer of old songs, many of them associated with the sea. He has sung solo and with various groups, at festivals and venues throughout North America, Europe, and Australia. He played the part of the great sailor, Joshua Slocum, in a Dillon Bustin production of Slocum’s book, Sailing Alone Around the World. He has made some recordings and appeared in The Sea Revels in Cambridge, MA, along with a number of Maritime festivals.

Sally Rogers & Howie Bursen



SALLY ROGERS & HOWIE BURSEN have built a folk reputation together throughout the U.S.A. and Canada, since their 1981 Greenwich Village coffeehouse encounter. Sally has been awarded Master Teaching Artist and Connecticut State Troubador by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. She has spent years as a K-4 music teacher and taught as an adjunct professor at Lesley University. She wrote music for four Mennonite folk operas, has four award-winning recordings for young people on her label, Thrushwood Kids, has songs in the Quaker and Unitarian hymnals, two major national music textbooks, and a children’s picture book, Earthsong. Her latest album is Old Friends I’ve Never Met, featuring songs about bygone characters who loom large in Sally’s musical consciousness. Howie is known for his warm baritone voice, devilish sense of humor, red-hot banjo wizardry, and inventive guitar work. In his wild career, he has been a telephone lineman, a professor of philosophy, a winemaker, a grape grower, a designer of wineries, and an author, but his abiding love has been singing and playing folk music. Howie’s recordings include two solo albums on Smithsonian Folkways and one on Flying Fish. His latest is Volcano Lake.

Ken Schatz



KEN SCHATZ is a renowned acting coach and a powerful a cappella singer with a lifetime of experience in traditional music and an eclectic repertoire of sea songs and chanteys, gospel, blues, ballads, and work songs. His credits include performances and teaching workshops at major folk festivals, museums, clubs, and concert venues on both sides of the Atlantic, with many of America and Britain’s foremost interpreters of traditional song. He teaches Traditional/Folk/Roots Singing Styles and Performance Technique at Jalopy Theatre and School of Music in Brooklyn, and his monthly NYC pub singing session, Exceedingly Good Song Night, is a destination event.

Ship’s Company Chanteymen



SHIP’S COMPANY CHANTEYMEN hails from the Chesapeake Bay region and is excited to return to the Connecticut Sea Music Festival! Members of the historic reenactment group Ship’s Company established the Chanteymen in 1996, hence the “stepping out of time” look that they’re known for. The 1798-1815 period is their specialty, but they also travel up and down the timeline from the age of piracy to “modern schooner bums,” including the American War of Independence. As reenactors and experienced sailors, The Chanteymen share their knowledge of the lore and lure of the sea by hosting four monthly chantey sings in Baltimore, MD, Fairfax and Alexandria, VA, and Hillsborough, NC. 

Rick Spencer and Dawn Indermuehle



RICK SPENCER AND DAWN INDERMUEHLE develop and present theme-based music and history programs, from the Colonial era to the present day. They perform songs that give cultural insight into interesting times, places, and events in American history. They carefully craft their vocals and accompaniment to sound as true to a song’s era or style as possible. Rick worked for 20 years as a staff musician, researcher, and program developer at Mystic Seaport Museum. He toured widely in America and Europe as a member of the sea chantey quartet Forebitter. Dawn researches, develops, and creates program material and period-appropriate vocal accompaniment for a wide range of historical American songs. She is a proud host Mom for high school students from China.

The Vox Hunters



THE VOX HUNTERS – Armand Aromin, Benedict Gagliardi, and Flannery Brown – are musical symbionts that sprouted from a mutual loam. Soon after, they began to hum in sympathy, eventually buzz in synchrony, and now whomp with full-lunged abandon. Like a lively fungus on the branches of tradition, they nourish themselves on its ancient heartwood and burgeoning boughs-to-be. They are the Pope’s frown, a wagon of porcupines, that cup of tea next to the worm bin. They sing for you and each other. As for the birds? Especially so.

Anayis (A.J.) Wright



ANAYIS (A.J.) WRIGHT (they/them) is a distinctive voice in the traditional folk genre who captivates audiences and scholars alike with their connection to maritime music, English folk, shape note, and early music. Steeped in the musical arts from childhood, A.J. grew up teaching shape note singing with their family and graduated with a BA in cello performance from Clark University. A.J. has played English concertina and cello for over twenty years, and has incorporated ukelele, mountain dulcimer, whistle, and more into their solo performances, as well as their work in the duo Twa Corbies and the trio Skylark. 
A.J.’s apprenticeship on the square-rigged vessel U.S. Brig Niagara allowed them to fuse their lifelong passion for maritime history with hands-on sailing experience, resulting in the intimate familiarity with shipboard work that grounded their career as working chanteyman and chantey foreman at the Mystic Seaport Museum.