Center for Cultural Vibrancy Stage

The Center for Cultural Vibrancy Stage returns this year with another scintillating lineup of some of the finest traditional artists from across the Commonwealth and beyond. We’re excited to welcome back some friends who have graced our stage through the years. We’ll revel in the virtuosic jazz stylings of Danny Knicely accompanied by the gifted tap dancer Baakari Wilder; the bluegrass rhythms of Crooked Road legends Johnny and Jeanette Williams backed by returning members of the legendary No Speed Limit bluegrass band; the bluesy prowess of Justin Golden; and the soul-stirring and electrifying harmonies of Richmond’s own Legendary Ingramettes with some very special surprise guests. Our stage will also introduce audiences to a host of gifted artists gracing our stage for the first time. We'll sing Sephardic harmonies with Minnush, get swept up in the evocative Americana and Irish sounds of Anya Hinkle and John Doyle, and be entranced by Steve Martin Banjo Prize-winner Bill Evans. 

Check out the schedule below, and make sure to grab your seat!

Featured
Africa to Appalachia featuring Cheick Hamala Diabate, Riley Baugus, and Danny Knicely
Africa to Appalachia featuring Cheick Hamala Diabate, Riley Baugus, and Danny Knicely

African/Appalachian Fusion
Greater Washington, DC

The history of the five-string banjo, among the very first truly American-born instruments, provides a revelatory lens through which to view the immense contributions of African cultural traditions to the development of American popular music and culture. The instrument we now know as the banjo was derived from lutes enslaved Africans brought to the New World, most notably the West African n’goni and kora. The European violin (fiddle) and the African-derived banjo likely comprised the “first duet” in the New World, providing the cornerstone of American musical forms for centuries to come.

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Anya Hinkle and the Billy Sea featuring John Doyle
Anya Hinkle and the Billy Sea featuring John Doyle

Ashville, NC
Americana

Anya Hinkle is a distinguished American singer-songwriter whose music captivates with its blend of Appalachian roots and contemporary folk influences. Known for her soul-stirring voice and evocative songwriting, Anya has carved out a significant niche in the Americana and folk music scenes. With a career that spans more than a decade, her artistry reflects a deep appreciation for tradition while pushing the boundaries of the genre.

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Bill Evans, Steve Smith & Tim May

Bluegrass
Staunton, Virginia

Bill Evans is an internationally recognized five-string banjo life force. He is a recipient of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize and a 2024 American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame inductee. As a performer, teacher, writer and composer, he brings a deep knowledge, intense virtuosity and contagious passion to all things banjo, with thousands of music fans and banjo students from all over the world in a music career that now spans more than 35 years. Bill’s banjo artistry is best experienced in live performance and on his recordings Fine Times at Fletcher’s House with Fletcher Bright (2013), In Good Company (2012), Let’s Do Something with Megan Lynch (2009), Bill Evans Plays Banjo (2001), and Native and Fine (1995).

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Danny Knicely, Bakaari Wilder and John Previti
Danny Knicely, Bakaari Wilder and John Previti

Appalachian, Jazz and Tap
Loudoun County, Virginia

If there’s one thing you can count on at the Center for Cultural Vibrancy Stage, it is the presence of multi-instrumentalist and musical genius Danny Knicely. You can also be sure he’ll be up to something new. Danny has the uncanny ability to thrive in and elevate most any musical situation, and often melds the Appalachian folk music of his youth with the expansive types of music he has encountered in the diverse cultural communities of the U.S. and the world. He has shared his music and collaborated with musicians in four continents, including U.S. State Department tours in Russia, Tunisia, Morocco and Cabo Verde, as well as participated in the celebrated Mountain Music Project with traditional musicians from Mongolia.

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Johnny Williams and the Crooked Road Revival featuring Stevie Barr, Josh Pickett, Ryan Blevins, Jacob Eller, and Jeanette WIlliams
Johnny Williams and the Crooked Road Revival featuring Stevie Barr, Josh Pickett, Ryan Blevins, Jacob Eller, and Jeanette WIlliams

Bluegrass
Galax, Virginia

Johnny Williams grew up in Fries, Virginia, a small community nestled alongside the New River in Grayson County, an area that has long been steeped in bluegrass and old-time music. Johnny soaked up the musical culture around him at fiddler’s conventions, local performances and jam sessions and eventually moved with his family to Danville, on Virginia’s Southside, a region home to diverse musical styles. Johnny became a powerful singer and songwriter and, after stints with soul and blues bands, returned to his bluegrass roots. At a local Opry production, Johnny met Jeanette Finney of Eden, North Carolina, a sought-after singer who joined Johnny’s band Clearwater. They married two years later. Jeanette has performed with Ralph Stanley, Alison Krauss, Larry Sparks, among many others. Johnny and Jeanette often perform and write songs independently; each has won the prestigious Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest, in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, as well as collaborated with distinguished songwriters Dixie and Tom T. Hall.

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Justin Golden & Devil’s Coattails

Traditional Acoustic Blues
Richmond, Virginia 

Justin Golden's origins are deeply vested in the blues, with roots in the Mississippi Delta, Chicago and the Piedmont of Virginia. Picking up the guitar as a teenager, Justin did what came naturally and let the music flow through him. Fascinatingly, the Piedmont Blues style first came to him in a dream, which he later shared with the late harmonica great Phil Wiggins, who told him that he’d been unconsciously playing this deeply rooted style all along, and in fact he had written several songs in the Piedmont style before he had ever heard of the style. While perhaps not as well-known as the Mississippi Delta style, the Piedmont Blues has a deep history in Virginia, and is home to some of its greatest practitioners, including John Jackson and John Cephas.

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Kadencia

Bomba y Plena
Richmond, VA 

Kadencia is a band led by the father-son duo of Maurice Sanabria-Ortiz and Maurice “Tito” Sanabria. The band is dedicated to playing, promoting, and preserving Afro-Puerto Rican music. Kadencia was founded in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico in 2007. Since 2018, Kadencia calls Richmond, Virginia home. Kadencia's music and sounds pay homage and follow the traditions of bomba and plena from western Puerto Rico. The lyrics of its songs are narrative and describe various aspects of Puerto Rican society, culture, and traditions. Kadencia utilizes bomba and plena's long-rooted storytelling traditions to vividly capture multiple aspects of the Puerto Rican experience on the U.S. territory and on the U.S. mainland. 

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Kily Vializ
Kily Vializ

Plena and Bomba
Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

 Erick Miguel Vializ Montalvo, better known as Kily Vializ, grew up on Cantera Street in the Broadway barrio (neighborhood or community) of Mayagüez, on the central west coast of Puerto Rico. Raised in a family of performers, he began singing and playing plena and aquinaldos traditional music as a child. “Plena is my life. Both my mom and dad played plena,” he explains, “My mom sang and wrote music. When she was pregnant with me, she took guitar lessons.

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Kinney Rorrer and the New North Carolina Ramblers

Charlie Poole Style Banjo
Danville, Virginia

The New North Carolina Ramblers perform old-time string band music in the tradition of such legendary artists as Charlie Poole, The Carter Family and The Floyd County Ramblers. The band was founded and is still led by Kinney Rorrer on banjo. The great nephew of Charlie Poole and Posey Rorer, Kinney has written numerous liner notes and magazine articles on old-time music, in addition to his biography of Charlie Poole. For decades Kinny co-hosted a seminal radio program of traditional rural music called Back to the Blue Ridge on WFVT-FM, Southwest Virginia’s NPR affiliate

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Maurice “Tito” Sanabria
Maurice “Tito” Sanabria

Plena
Richmond, VA 

Plena is a narrative, energetic, and percussive musical genre created in the early 1900s by working-class Puerto Ricans along the island’s southern coastal towns. Mayagüez, western Puerto Rico’s largest city, has a long and rich tradition of Plena dating back to the genre’s origin, and has produced leading practitioners that wrote, performed, and recorded some of Plena’s most emblematic songs.

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Minnush
Minnush

Contemporary Sephardic
Charlottesville and Northern Virginia 

Minnush, a fresh and innovative ensemble dedicated to playing contemporary Sephardic music, pays homage to the life and legacy of the late Flory Jagoda, the National Heritage Award-winning Sephardic singer and composer. When the Sephardic Jews were forced into exile from Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth century, many settled in other Mediterranean countries but preserved their native language, Ladino, and their oral culture. Flory Jagoda was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, a member of the Sephardic Jewish community. Through her “nona,” her mother’s mother, Flory learned songs that had been passed down among the Sephardi for generations, as well as absorbed the Balkan region’s cultural traditions. Flory escaped the destruction of Sarajevo’s Jewish community, eventually arriving in the United States after World War II.

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Riley Baugus
Riley Baugus

Old Time and Mountain Ballads
Walkertown, NC

Riley Baugus, a North Carolina native who lives in Walkertown, began singing and playing music at an early age. Raised in a household where recordings of old-time music were often played, he developed a love and appreciation for traditional southern Appalachian music. He and his family attended a Regular Baptist church, where unaccompanied hymn singing was a long-standing tradition.

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The Legendary Ingramettes
The Legendary Ingramettes

Gospel
Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia, has long been celebrated as a “Gospel town” for its legacy of vibrant Black gospel groups and choirs. Among the city’s generations of countless groups, the Legendary Ingramettes have become widely considered the city’s “First Family of Gospel,” uplifting audiences for more than six decades while becoming beloved cultural icons in the community. Music is one of many forms of ministry they have practiced, and the one they are most famous for. The storied group was originally formed by evangelist “Mama” Maggie Ingram, a single mother who steadfastly taught her five small children to accompany her as her “Ingramettes.” To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Richmond Folk Festival, all five of Maggie’s children, the original Ingramettes, will perform on the CCV stage: Almeta, Tina, John, Luke and Thomas.

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Willie Marschner
Willie Marschner

Fairfax, VA
Old-Time Fiddle

Willie Marschner remembers falling asleep to the sounds of his family and their friends making music, and he began playing the fiddle himself when he was just six years old. Now a multi-instrumentalist, Willie worked with fellow mandolin-guitar-fiddle player Danny Knicely in the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program to develop his skills in improvisation and in furthering his personal style on traditional tunes.

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Center for Cultural Vibrancy Stage SCHEDULE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28:

12:00-1:00 Sacred Music Workshop featuring Cora Armstrong, The Legendary Ingramettes Ladies, Heather and Tony Mabe (The Junior Sisk Band), and Susan Gaeta and Gina Sobel (Minnush)
1:15-2:00 Kinny Rorrer and the New North Carolina Ramblers (Old-time)
2:15-3:00 Minnush (Contemporary Sephardic)
3:15-4:00 Danny Knicely, Baakari Wilder and John Previti (Jazz and Tap)
4:15-5:00 Kadencia featuring Kily Vializ and Maurice Sanabria (Bomba y Plena)
5:15-6:15 Africa to Appalachia featuring Cheick Hamala Diabate, Danny Knicely and Riley Baugus (African and Appalachian Fusion)

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29:

12:00-12:45 Riley Baugus with guests Danny Knicely and Willie Marschner (Old-Time)
1:00-1:45 Anya Hinkle and the Billy Sea featuring John Doyle (Americana)
2:00-2:45 Bill Evans, Steve Smith and Tim May (Bluegrass)
3:00-3:45 Justin Golden and Devil’s Coattails (Traditional Acoustic Blues)
4:00-4:45 Johnny Williams and the Crooked Road Revival (Bluegrass)
5:00-6:00 Legendary Ingramettes (Gospel)

ABOUT The Center for Cultural Vibrancy

The Center for Cultural Vibrancy creates and cultivates opportunities for cultural connections to support living traditions and energize communities. CCV contributes to a more empathetic world—one where people respect and celebrate one another’s cultural expressions—through sharing traditional arts, customs, and lore that promote cultural exchange, understanding, and honor artistic mastery. To learn more, visit CulturalVibrancy.org.