Coming up this Sunday, October 20 at 7pm at The Fort Garry Hotel, Jazz Winnipeg is presenting two true legends of folk music.
Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer are virtuoso multi-instrumentalists who have been performing together for more than 40 years. In the process, they have been nominated for 14 Grammys, won two Grammys, and have performed with the likes of Pete Seger, Tom Paxton, and Patsy Montana amongst many others. They have performed at hundreds of folk, bluegrass and country festivals and their work as children’s song writers and performers has won them accolades from far and wide. As ambassadors of Americana music, they have gone on to teach the next generation of folk musicians, most notably guitarist and composer Kaki King and the composer and singer Rhiannon Giddens.
Cathy Fink is originally from Maryland and Marcy Marxer is originally from Michigan, but both have an extraordinarily strong connection with and deep love for Winnipeg. Fink hitchhiked to Winnipeg in the 70s after spending a year at McGill in Montreal. As she explains, “My former partner and I hitchhiked our way across Canada with our instruments...we played house concerts everywhere, and the house concert host in Winnipeg said ‘Hey we’re going to have a Folk Festival here. You should audition for it.’ They took us over to Mitch Podolak’s house who instigated the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and we sat there in his living room and auditioned. From there we continued touring but came back for the festival. I turned 21 at the first Winnipeg Folk Festival, and lived in Winnipeg until ‘79, when I moved back to the states.”
For Marxer, the Canadian folk music scene was an inspiration early on. As she states, “My experiences with the Canadian Folk Festivals were mind-blowing because they were so musically diverse. It was incredible! You could hear acts from around the world. I had no idea that playing Canadian Folk Festivals would actually change my life in terms of music and my life partner.” Since those initial experiences, Marxer has been to Winnipeg several times, as she goes on to say, “I feel like a kindred spirit in Winnipeg. We've done shows there before, we’ve hung out with friends, we’ve done the festivals. It feels like home to me.”
The show on Sunday at 7pm at The Fort Garry Hotel promises to be extremely entertaining and varied. As Fink says, “It’s going to be an eclectic night...Marcy is the secret sauce. She is a virtuoso musician on guitar, mandolin, ukelele, cello banjo and so many other things. I’ll mostly stick with guitar and five string banjo. The eclectic evening is going to include some jazz classics... Daniel Koulack is going to play some bass with us. We are going to do some old-time country music, some western swing. We also write a lot of songs so there will be a bunch of original material in there. So, it is going to be an eclectic evening.”
Eclectic and fun! Fink and Marxer are master musicians and the opportunity to see them perform at such an intimate venue as The Fort Garry Hotel is something that should not be missed.
For more details on Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer's performance on Sunday, October 20 at 7pm at The Fort Garry Hotel as presented by Jazz Winnipeg click here.
