Event Details
The Nutmeg Dulcimer Festival returns November 6–7, 2026, celebrating 23 years and bringing together dulcimer players, teachers, performers and music enthusiasts from around the country for two days of workshops, concerts and musical discovery at Mary Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church, 168 S. Broad Street, Milford, Connecticut.
Now in its 23rd year, the festival showcases two very different musical instruments, hammered dulcimers and mountain dulcimers, that usually are associated with folk music. The hammered dulcimer is a non-mechanical cousin of the piano, with several dozen strings stretched across a wooden box, so the player can hit the strings with special pencil-sized drumsticks. The mountain dulcimer is an elongated box with a fretboard on its top and typically has three or four strings, placed across the player’s lap, so the player can fret and strum it from above.
“Dulcimers, of both kinds, are among the world’s coolest musical instruments,” says festival chair and co-founder Sam Edelston, who is known in the mountain dulcimer community for his renditions of classic rock and pop songs. “The general public deserves to know dulcimers the way it knows ukuleles, harmonicas, and guitars. In fact, we deliberately keep our concert tickets inexpensive to encourage people to check it out. And for people who want to try a dulcimer for the weekend, we’ll have some on hand.”
For more info: nutmegdulcimer.com/to-register-2026/