Overview
SALLY ROGERS & HOWIE BURSEN have built a folk reputation together throughout the U.S.A. and Canada, since their 1981 Greenwich Village coffeehouse encounter. Sally has been awarded Master Teaching Artist and Connecticut State Troubador by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. She has spent years as a K-4 music teacher and taught as an adjunct professor at Lesley University. She wrote music for four Mennonite folk operas, has four award-winning recordings for young people on her label, Thrushwood Kids, has songs in the Quaker and Unitarian hymnals, two major national music textbooks, and a children’s picture book, Earthsong. Her latest album is Old Friends I’ve Never Met, featuring songs about bygone characters who loom large in Sally’s musical consciousness. Howie is known for his warm baritone voice, devilish sense of humor, red-hot banjo wizardry, and inventive guitar work. In his wild career, he has been a telephone lineman, a professor of philosophy, a winemaker, a grape grower, a designer of wineries, and an author, but his abiding love has been singing and playing folk music. Howie’s recordings include two solo albums on Smithsonian Folkways and one on Flying Fish. His latest is Volcano Lake. [2026 Connecticut Sea Music Festival website]