The Spirit of ‘76
The William Paca House @ 186 Prince George St, Annapolis, MD 21401 | Sunday, 30 June 2024, 5 pm
TICKETS $25 AT THE DOOR
To commemorate Independence Day, Peter Brice and Samantha Suplee will present American topical songs from the Age of Revolutions drawn from oral traditions and 18th and 19th-century broadsides. This performance will also feature Irish and American traditional music on the button accordion and fiddle. For Peter, a 12th-generation Annapolitan, this offering is part of an initiative to reinvest the Spirit of ‘76 into our celebration of the 4th of July.
The Performers
Peter Brice sings old songs in a traditional style, and plays Irish Traditional music on the button accordion. A native Annapolitan and an exponent of Baltimore, Maryland’s Irish traditional music community, Peter’s work blends singing and musicianship with musicology and history, humor and colorful design, and a vision for traditional culture as a foundation for an intellectual life. His playing reflects his admiration for Galway accordionists such as Joe Cooley, Kevin Keegan, and Raymond Roland—a style into which he was initiated by Brooklyn-born accordionist and National Heritage Fellow Billy McComiskey. He advanced his playing under the tutelage of Adare-born accordionist Derek Hickey. A lifelong singer, Peter has married a repertoire of American historical songs with a wide-ranging English-language style that he gleaned from his mentors Dónal Maguire, Louisa Jo Killen, and Lisa Null, as well as from members of his family.
He is a former vice-chair of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann’s O’Neill-Malcom Branch in Washington, D.C. and a past co-coordinator of the Washington Folk Festival. He founded the Baltimore Singers Club with singers Andy O’Brien and Pat Egan to promote traditional singing in Maryland, and was a founding member of the Old Bay Ceili Band. With singers Lisa Null and Judy Cook, he created a project—Yankee Frolics—to revive traditional songs about the War of 1812 for the bicentennial of that conflict.
In 2014, he and his mentor Billy McComiskey were recognized by the Maryland State Arts Council as a traditional arts master-apprentice pair. He received the Maryland Traditions Apprenticeship Award again in 2019 with singer Lisa Null. He has independently written over $22,000 in awarded grants for Maryland’s Irish traditional music community. A graduate of the Peabody Conservatory Preparatory program, where he studied with Susan Harwood, Peter also holds a BA in Irish Traditional Music and Dance from the University of Limerick.
Samantha Suplee is a fiddle player from Washington, D.C. She studied classical and traditional music with Mitch Fanning, Brendan Mulvihill, and Brian Conway, and has performed at the Embassy of Ireland in Washington, D.C., the Millenium Stage at the Kennedy Center, NYU’s Glucksman Irish House, the Penn Mar Irish Festival, and the Maryland Irish Festival, among others. In 2011, she competed in the All Ireland Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Cavan, Ireland. She is a regular guest with the New Century American Irish-Arts Company, and enjoys playing at various sessions in Annapolis and Washington, D.C.