Andrew Finn Magill

Fiddle Week coordinator Andrew Finn Magill is a Fulbright Fellow, North Carolina Arts Council Fellow, All-Ireland fiddle finalist, and 2024 Seifert Jazz violin finalist in Poland. Magill has been featured on PBS, TEDx and NPR. His 2016 album, Roots, debuted at number #46 on the folk DJ charts and he has released seven albums since. Magill grew up studying traditional Irish music, old-time, bluegrass, and swing every summer with the best fiddlers in the world at the Swannanoa Gathering. BBC Folk Musician of the year Martin Hayes calls Magill “a leading fiddler in a new generation of musicians.”

Joe K. Walsh

Mando & Banjo Week coordinator Joe K. Walsh has been hailed by David Grisman as a “wonderful mandolin player,” and by Darol Anger as “one of the best mandolinists I’ve ever played with.” Based in Portland, ME, Joe is known for his exceptional tone and taste, and for collaborations and recordings with acoustic music luminaries including Darol Anger, Brittany Haas, Grant Gordy, Mike Block, Danny Barnes, Scott Nygaard, the Gibson Brothers, and Joy Kills Sorrow. Joe’s main touring project is the adventurous string band Mr Sun. He’s an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music, teaches at music camps all over, and teaches online through Peghead Nation.

David Benedict

David Benedict is one of the leading figures and content creators in the mandolin world today. His mandolin rap sheet includes a unique degree in Mandolin Performance and years of touring experience with 10-time IBMA Bass Player of the Year Missy Raines and 2020 IBMA New Artist of the Year Mile Twelve. In recent years, David’s main focus has been his mandolin YouTube channel, with seven million views and counting. He now lives in Travelers Rest, SC, where he makes videos full-time and performs regularly with his wife Tabitha Agnew Benedict in their transatlantic folk project, The Foreign Landers.

Tabitha Agnew Benedict

Hailing from County Armagh, Northern Ireland, Tabitha Agnew Benedict could easily be mistaken for American-born-and-raised as she took up banjo at age 12, but Tabitha has merely caught a musical wind from the west and made it her own. In 2020, she won Instrumentalist of the Year at the IBMA Momentum awards in Raleigh, NC. She can be heard performing with her family in the Northern Irish band Cup O’Joe, as well as with her husband David Benedict in their quartet The Foreign Landers. She was also one of the founding members of the UK based, all-female bluegrass group Midnight Skyracer.

Duncan Wickel

Cellist, violinist, and composer Duncan Wickel is “a considerable talent…as persuasive in a traditional ballad as he is country fiddling or ripping through cascading classical flourishes or atonal double-stops” (The Boston Globe). Duncan has performed with Jon Batiste and Stay Human on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and with Rising Appalachia on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts. He has worked with numerous artists including Molly Tuttle, the Wood Brothers, John Doyle, and Tony Trischka, and has performed in over 24 countries and on every continent on earth inhabited by humans.

Zoe Guigeno

Zoe Guigueno is a bassist and songwriter headquartered in New York City. Since earning a degree in jazz performance, Zoe has been performing internationally, recording, and teaching as a freelance bassist. These days, she can be found on the road with The Faux Paws, subbing on the Broadway show Hadestown, and performing her original music in small clubs around town. Bragging rights include working with Steve Martin and Martin Short, opening for Snarky Puppy, playing with the Mountain Goats, performing with Jane Siberry, appearing on the Grand Ole Opry, and having a two-second cameo in a Paul Motian documentary.

Sharon Gilchrist

Sharon Gilchrist began touring the bluegrass circuit in Texas for several years before earning a BA in Mandolin Performance at Belmont University in Nashville, TN. For decades Sharon has performed with many groundbreaking legends of acoustic music including the Peter Rowan and Tony Rice Quartet, Scott Nygaard and John Reischman in The Harmonic Tone Revealers, Darol Anger, Tony Trischka, the California Bluegrass Reunion band, Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands, Uncle Earl, and others. She is a respected and influential music educator offering private mandolin instruction and multiple online mandolin courses at Peghead Nation, as well as teaching at music camps internationally.

Sara Caswell

GRAMMY® Nominee Sara Caswell is recognized as one of today's foremost jazz violinists through her lyricism and technical facility. She has released three solo albums, the most recent of which is The Way to You (2023, Anzic Records) and has performed and/or recorded with such artists as the WDR Big Band, esperanza spalding, Brad Mehldau, Brian Blade, John Patitucci, and Regina Carter at venues including Carnegie Hall, Village Vanguard, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Blue Note (NYC and Tokyo). She is on faculty at the Berklee College of Music, Manhattan School of Music, The New School, and New York University.

John Reischman

Grammy-winning musician John Reischman has been a foundational mandolinist, composer, bandleader, and musical educator in bluegrass and North American roots and folk music since emerging from the vibrant “new acoustic” music scene of the Bay Area in the 1980s. A founding member of the groundbreaking Tony Rice Unit, Reischman’s mastery of bluegrass, old-time, swing, and multiple Latin American musical styles, coupled with an Old Masters sense of tone, taste and musicality, has brought him a global reputation as one of the finest mandolinists of his era.