Sound Wizards
Audrey Knuth (CA)
Audrey Knuth hails from Honolulu and moved to Boston in 2008 to attend Berklee College of Music and to explore the thriving New England folk scene.
Even before graduating Audrey began making a name for herself as a dance fiddler specializing in ECD, New England, Celtic, and Old Time tunes. Her fiddle playing is so rhythmically lively and spontaneous that dancers are irresistably drawn to get up and dance!
Audrey has spent the last few years traveling across the US and Europe, playing for dances and concerts with her bands The Free Raisins, The Gaslight Tinkers, Audacious (with Larry Unger), and Wake Up Robin.
Audrey is also adept at teaching and has been on staff at a multitude of camps including CDSS English week at Pinewoods, Ashokan Northern Week, BACDS American week, Hey Days, and Halsway Manor.
When the pandemic began Audrey dusted off her degree in Music Production and Engineering and shifted her focus to helping others sound their best when playing for Zoom dances and concerts.
Brian Lindsay (WA)
Brian Lindsay is an experienced and versatile sound engineer as well as a nationally recognized folk musician.
Getting an early start making his first recordings in his bedroom during high school, Brian has gone on to run live sound for dozens of contra dances and events, been primary recording and mix engineer on a number of successful albums, and has been producing live-stream concerts and virtual events with high quality audio and video since the start of the COVID-19 shutdown.
Charlie Pilzer (MD)
Charlie Pilzer is the Chief Engineer and owner of Tonal Park, a recording, mixing and mastering studio in Takoma Park, MD and, previously, a co-owner of Airshow Mastering.
Over 35 years Charlie's path has included producing, and engineering award-winning Celtic, folk, jazz and acoustic music. In addition to mastering many GRAMMY-nominated projects, Charlie received a GRAMMY for mastering and restoration on the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings Anthology of American Folk Music (1997). Recent dance related projects include CDs for Sugar Beat, Live Wire, Steam, Terpsichore, English Echoes, Countercurrent and Stringrays. Song projects include Joe Jencks, Tret Fure, Magpie, Tom Paxton, Adam Hurt and Dear Jean: a tribute album to Jean Ritchie. Chances are good that if you own folk CDs or listen to folk radio or to folk streams, you have heard Charlie's engineering and production work.
Charlie gets outside too. A sought after mixer for festivals, Charlie has mixed monitors or front of house at the National Folk Festival, the Richmond Folk Festival, the American Folk Festival, the Golden Festival and the Washington Folk Festival. On a smaller scale, he has mixed sound for camps at Ashokan and Pinewoods, dances at Glen Echo, concerts for the Institute of Musical Traditions, Folklore Society of Greater Washington and the NEA National Heritage Awards. Other live mixing engagements include theatrical productions for Washington Revels and George Washington University. With the increase of online streaming events, Charlie has researched into how to make them sound the best they can.
Charlie appeared in front of the microphone as a performer on bass and piano and accordion. He has played at contradances with the Polka Pants Band, Not Enough Fiddles, Serpentine and other bands for more than 40 years. He has toured nationally with the Scandinavian trio Hoag/Kelley/Pilzer, and internationally with the Faroese-Danish Band, Spælimenninr. He has been on staff at CDSS camps at Buffalo Gap and Pinewoods and for Christmas Country Dance School in Berea, KY and has the honor of leading the Festival Orchestra at NEFFA.
Everest Witman (CAN)
Everest Witman started his tech journey coding for fun and volunteering to run live sound for local contra dances as a teenager.
He has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Vermont and has worked as a full-stack web developer at Green River, a software company out of Brattleboro, VT harnessing the powers of technology and data science for social good. Now a full-time musician, he is otherwise known for making up one third of the contra dance phenomenon Nova.
With touring life slowed down this year, he spends most of his time producing music in his home studio, discovering new music technologies, and performing for live stream events. This October he worked on the tech support team for Fiddle Hell Online, a music festival that moved virtual this year and saw upwards of 1,000 participants over the course of a weekend.
To follow and support Everest's musical work, you can subscribe to his page on Ampled.
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