Music School Presents Annual Holiday Folk Concert, December 12

CONCORD, N.H.—Celebrate the season with an evening of holiday music and folk favorites! The Concord Community Music School invites you to take part in what has become a popular holiday tradition: the annual Holiday Folk Concert featuring Susie Burke and David Surette with Kent Allyn. The concert is scheduled for 7:30 pm, Saturday, December 12, in the Music School’s Recital Hall at 23 Wall Street in Concord.

The concert will feature a number of selections from their holiday CD release Wonderland, along with folk and acoustic fare from their standard repertoire. With influences and styles ranging from folk to jazz, Celtic to rock, blues to Broadway and beyond, this trio presents seasonal repertoire with heart, flair, and energy.

Of the trio’s holiday CD, Boston Globe music writer Scott Alarik says, “Wonderland is a wintry gem, elegant as a Manhattan midnight, bewitching as hot buttered rum, and as warm and folksy as your grandmother’s old quilt. The trio moves gracefully among pop chestnuts, new songs, and ancient carols. Surette’s playing on guitar, mandolin, and cittern, is a marvel of melodic purity and ribbon-candy chordal color, lightly augmented by Allyn’s quicksilver piano. Burke’s twilight mezzo always puts melody before mechanics and heart before dazzle.”

Surette and Allyn are members of the Concord Community Music School faculty. This year’s Folk Department concerts are sponsored by Sanborn, Head & Associates, Inc.

Admission is $15 for adults and $12 for students and seniors. For more information or to purchase tickets, please call (603) 228-1196 or visit www.ccmusicschool.org.

About the Artists

Warmth, vitality, and spontaneity mark the performances of Susie Burke and David Surette, and have earned them a reputation as one of the finest acts on the lively New England folk scene. Recipients of Individual Artist Fellowship awards from the NH State Council on the Arts, Susie and David are also on the Council’s Touring Arts roster. Together they have released eleven albums since 1990, including their most recent, Waiting for the Sun.

Kent Allyn is an in-demand accompanist and studio musician, as well as a key member of several groups, including Ben Baldwin & the Big Note and the Night Heron Consort. His stellar bass, piano, and electric guitar work have been heard on numerous recordings, Susie and David’s among them.

About the Concord Community Music School

Concord Community Music School is a full member of the National Guild for Community Arts Education and is recognized nationally for program innovation and management excellence. Welcoming adults, teens and children of all musical abilities, 53 artist teachers reach more than 33,000 people in four states with educational programs, concerts, workshops and community partnerships. CCMS has received major funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hearst Foundation, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, Jane’s Trust, and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and is the 2005 recipient of the NH Governor’s Arts Award for Cultural Access Leadership.