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Si Kahn, Joe Shannon, Sixth Floor Trio and Forget-Me-Nots to Perform Benefit Concert at Rosen Concert Hall

Aug. 9, 2012. A benefit concert Sunday, Aug. 12, will feature well-known musicians Si Kahn, Joe Shannon, Sixth Floor Trio and Forget-Me-Nots performing selections spanning the worlds of bluegrass, Broadway, Celtic, country and Klezmer.

Billed as “An Appalachian Afternoon,” the 3 p.m. concert will take place in Broyhill Music Center’s Rosen Concert Hall on the campus of Appalachian State University.

Roy Krege will serve as the master of ceremonies for the afternoon concert, which will also feature a “Ben and Jerry’s” ice cream social during intermission.

For a donation of $40, tickets may be reserved by calling 828-262-2311, 828-387-9203 or 828-963-5167, or by emailing uponbeech1@bellsouth.net Donations are payable by check to the Appalachian State University Foundation Inc. with “Judaic Studies” in the memo line. Checks may be mailed to Molle Grad, 103 Raven Rd., Beech Mountain, N.C. 28604. Please include a phone number on the check.

About the musicians

Si Kahn has worked for more than 45 years as a civil rights activist. He is an internationally recognized musician whose body of work includes 16 CDs, five books, five musicals and hundreds of songs. In 2011, Kahn received a special Triple Crown award from the Folk

Alliance for being the No. 1 artist on international folk radio, as well as for having both the No. 1 CD and the No. 1 song for the previous year.

He is a board member of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies, as well as the national organization Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice. He is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos: A National Center for Ideas and Action. He is executive director emeritus of Grassroots Leadership, the Southern-based national organization he founded 30 years ago.

Joe Shannon has taught students from elementary to graduate school, has two books and one play, and has recorded two CDs. He is executive director of Mountain Home Music, which he founded in 1994. Mountain Home Music is a concert series dedicated to honoring the music and the musicians of the Appalachian region.

Shannon taught himself to play guitar by listening to Peter, Paul and Mary records and by watching Johnny Cash on television. After the guitar came the banjo, which he learned to play in college. Shannon plays the hammer dulcimer, the concertina and the harmonica as well. 

The Forget-Me-Nots bring fresh energy to the ageless tradition of Celtic music, adding their own compositions and arrangements to the existing lode of musical treasures. The band originated in 2002 but its roots go back to 1999, when the three girls started playing violin. At the time, their ages ranged from 2 to 4 years old.

Members of the music group are violinists Willa Finck, Maura Shawn Scanlin and Ledah Finck, with David Finck on backup guitar. The musicians have been frequent performers in the area for years, playing at concert series, festivals, fundraisers, weddings, dances and house parties.

This fall, Ledah Finck enters UNC-Chapel Hill as a freshman and a recipient of a Kenan Music Scholarship. Scanlin will be a rising high school senior at the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, and Willa Finck will be a rising high school junior, dual-enrolled at Watauga High School and Appalachian State University. Besides playing guitar, David Finck occasionally builds guitars as an accent to his primary focus as a furniture designer and builder.

The Sixth Floor Trio is a chamber group dedicated to the creation and performance of music that connects different musical styles, communities and artistic disciplines. Formed by graduates of the Curtis Institute of Music in 2008, the trio has performed extensively throughout the United States in venues ranging from traditional concert halls to grunge bars and experimental spaces.

The trio’s debut performance took place in August 2009, when the group opened for and collaborated with pianist and composer Marvin Hamlisch in Western North Carolina.

Comprising the trio is Teddy Abrams, who conducts, composes and performs as a clarinetist, pianist, and sometimes as a saxophonist; Harrison Hollingsworth, who holds the principal bassoon chair of the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center and is widely regarded as one of the premier wind players of his generation; and French-American clarinetist Johnny Teyssier, laureate of the Juventus organization, which recognizes the most talented young soloists in Europe. 

About the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies 

Appalachian’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies was founded in 2002 to develop new educational opportunities for students, teachers, and the community. Located administratively within the College of Arts and Sciences, the center seeks to strengthen tolerance, understanding, and remembrance by increasing the knowledge of Jewish culture and history, teaching the history and meaning of the Holocaust, and using these experiences to explore peaceful avenues for human improvement and the prevention of future genocides.