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19th Mid-Winter Singing Festival Community Sing
Friday, February 3, 2023 @ 7:30 pm
-Friday, February 3, 2023 @ 10:00 pm
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University United Methodist Church (UUMC)
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About Jean Chorazyczewski and Lori Fithian
Jean Chorazyczewski has played piano and accordion since childhood, and more recently added the uke bass to her bag of musical tricks. Her professional career has included marketing, website design, non-profit work in the food accessibility world, and now back to organizational training in the computer/internet realm. Her passion has always been music, though, so she plays piano, bass or percussion whenever she can.
Lori Fithian is usually the one with all the drums, hosting her “Drummunity!” programs all over the state. Formally trained as a french horn player, self-taught on world percussion, drums, guitar, uke and other random instruments, she loves singing and playing music with all kinds of people – preferably in stress-free, fun events! Currently a self-employed traveling drum circle facilitator, she has worked as an artist, picture framer, gallery manager, and in graphics/outreach at a food co-op.
Jean and Lori have played together since 2003 or so, and accompany/lead the “Gaia Women of the Great Lakes Basin” a choir that connects around the environment and the music of Carolyn McDade. (Yes – ask them about it!) Inspired by the Fiddle’s monthly sings, they have created their own local monthly sing down in Ann Arbor, called “Folk Song Jam Along”, where anyone can join in playing as well as singing. Also, along with various other musical friends and family, they host an annual Winter Solstice Sing-along. They were part of this festival a few years ago, offering the FSJA workshop and joining in the festival choir, and are glad to be back!!
About Mark Dvorak
The Chicago Tribune has called Mark Dvorak “masterful,” and the Fox Valley Folk Festival describes him as “a living archive of song and style.” In 2012 WFMT 98.7 fm Midnight Special host Rich Warren named him “Chicago’s official troubadour.”
Mark has given concerts in nearly all of the United States and has made visits to Finland, Canada and Ireland. To date he has released nineteen albums including 2020’s “Let Love Go On.”
Dvorak’s song writing has been called “wondrous” and “profound.” He has been called a “painter” whose songs express “so many colors and so many moods.” WVPE fm 88.1, South Bend IN says he is “One of the elite ‘who’s who’ of the acoustic music scene and someone not to be missed…”
Dvorak has won awards for journalism, children’s music, and in 2013 received the FARM Lantern Bearer Award from Folk Alliance International. In 2008 he was honored with the the Woodstock Folk Festival Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2013 he published his second collection of essays and poetry, “Bowling For Christmas & Other Tales from the Road.”
About Joel Mabus
Joel Mabus is a longtime fixture in the American folk music scene as well as a favorite of the Ten Pound Fiddle stage. He’s a songwriter with roots deep in tradition, and a risk-taking multi-instrumentalist with a well-travelled voice. He’s toured the major folk clubs and festivals all over North America but is firmly centered in the Midwest.
Joel was born in 1953 to a family of old-time country music performers, who had worked in the 1930’s in a traveling “Hillbilly” troupe for Chicago’s WLS, home of the famed “National Barn Dance” radio show — his father a champion fiddler, his mom a singer and banjo & accordion player. Widowed when Joel was 2 years old, mom raised her kids in a small Southern Illinois town on meagre social security survivor-benefit checks, plus income from accordion lessons and other odd jobs.
Joel started on the family mandolin at age 9 and played bluegrass with his older brother at home; he learned singing in a store-front Pentecostal church, and the old-time and bluegrass songs at home. Guitar, banjo & fiddle were soon in Joel’s mix. Despite the family’s poverty, he earned a National Merit Scholarship, and attended Michigan State University. Studying cultural anthropology and English Lit by day, he earned his spending money at night as a folk & blues performer in local haunts.
After college, Mabus made Michigan his home, while traveling the folk circuit, playing festivals and smaller concert venues. Beginning a recording career in 1978, Joel has since traveled all over America (and parts of Texas, he adds) performing for all the fabled folk clubs and festivals.
He has played on stage with many of his heroes: Tom Paxton, Doc Watson, Peggy Seeger, Jethro Burns, Sonny Terry, Buffy Saint Marie and many more. He has worked alongside many of his own generation: Greg Brown, John Gorka, Claudia Schmidt, Si Kahn, Christine Lavin, Jack Hardy, Susan Werner…and the list goes on.
He has 27 solo albums to his credit – some featuring songwriting, others focusing on traditional guitar or banjo, and some very eclectic. His latest album is Time & Truth in 2019.
“The dean of singer-songwriters.” -Rich Warren, host of Chicago’s Midnight Special on WFMT-FM
“Joel Mabus is the Joe DiMaggio of the folk music world – a virtuoso who can make the toughest plays appear effortless.”
Ron Olesko of WFDU-FM (Fordham University, New York)
