For More Information, Contact:
Ruth Tonachel, 570-268-4093

For Immediate Release
November 30, 2007

Banjo Player Seth Swingle to be Featured at Keystone with Laura Orshaw

On Sunday Dec. 16, 2007 at 7 PM, the Bradford County Regional Arts Council and the Northern Tier Cultural Alliance will present fiddler Laura Orshaw and banjo player Seth Swingle at the Keystone Theatre. Both are young people who have attained virtuoso status in the old-time music world. While Laura may not need much introduction in our region, Seth’s many accomplishments make him well suited to share the stage with her for a night of outstanding American music.

Tickets can be purchased by calling the BCRAC at 570-268-2787. Seating is reserved. Tickets are $10.00 for adults and $8.00 for seniors and students.

Young artists often pique the interest of masters in their field and Seth Swingle is doing just that. At 18 he is already playing with noted traditional musicians in the United States such as Mike Seeger, Bob Carlin, and Corey Harris. His West African ngoni teacher, Cheick Hamala Diabate, continues to be astonished that this young person can not only hear the music he teaches but can play it like a Malian. Monsieur Diabate, like many of the master musicians Seth has learned from, always comments that Seth can hear a song once or twice and then play it like it is his own. He is known for his crisp playing and warmth of feeling regardless of the genre of music.

Seth has performed at The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, The John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center, The National Folk Festival, and The Ralph Stanley Museum. His newest challenge is attending freshman year at the University of Chicago.

The son of two Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Mali, West Africa, Seth also has long family roots in Bradford County. Both of his parents, Craig Swingle and Ruth Jolly, graduated from Towanda High School (class of ’74). His grandparents, Mike and Sally Swingle were lifelong Bradford County natives, farming the Swingle farm near Powell and later running M’s Market in Monroeton, before moving to Florida about 12 years ago.

Raised on the side of a mountain outside Charlottesville, Virginia, Seth was home-schooled from sixth grade through his senior year of high school. In his freshman year of high school he was one of fifty students nationwide awarded an academic scholarship through the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation for Young Scholars. This monetary award paid for most of his one-on-one education through high school, affording him unique opportunities to study with some of the finest scholars in all fields. He was awarded a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities year long Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship with old time banjo master Mike Seeger when he was fifteen.

Seth began studying the ngoni – one of the antecedents of the banjo - with Cheick Hamala Diabate in 2004. Monsieur Diabate gave Seth the extraordinary experience of playing with him at The John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center and shared the stage with him at Merlefest in Wilkesboro, N.C. when he was sixteen. Through Cheick's many introductions, Seth has interacted and played with many Malian musicians including Salif Keita, Oumou Sangare, Djelimady Tounkara, Habib Koite, Kelitigi Diabate, Ali Farka Toure. Two recent trips with his dad to Mali not only enhanced his strong language skills and musical knowledge but also solidified the close bond he and his parents have with the people, the land, and the music of their adopted second home.

An academic as well as a player, Seth was an invited lecturer and performer at The Banjo Collector's Gathering in Williamsburg, VA in 2006 and at “The Black Banjo Gathering: Then & Now,” at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina in 2005. Seth reads Latin, speaks fluent French and Bambara (the primary native language of Mali), and is studying Arabic at the college level.

So prepare yourself for an evening of extraordinary American music drawing on the roots of northern fiddling and southern banjo picking and synthesized by these two amazing young musicians who are keeping our musical heritage alive and dynamic.

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