Liz Hanley, fiddle
Jefferson Hamer, guitar
Eamon O’Leary, bouzouki

Liz Hanley is a Brooklyn based singer and fiddle player across many genres. Growing up in Boston in an Irish Hungarian American family, Liz learned traditional fiddle tunes from her father Andy Hanley, songs and stories from her grandparents Martin Hanley, Rita McNamara and Ray Nagy and family friends Brian and Lindsay O’Donovan. She attended the New England Conservatory Preparatory school where she studied under Blanka Bednarz and then Eric Rosenblith. Liz continued on to earn a degree in violin performance from NYU studying under Arturo Delmoni. It was at NYU that she met and studied with the late great Mick Moloney. She has toured globally with Moloney and the Green Fields of America, as well as prog folk rock ensemble Frogbelly and symphony and chamber rock band Emanuel and the Fear. Liz teaches workshops in singing and fiddle playing at various camps such as Acadia Festival of Traditional Music and Dance, The Catskills Irish Arts Week, The Irish Music School of Chicago, and the Augusta Irish retreat. Her personal experience with vocal injury has influenced how she teaches singing. Her workshops address how the voice works and how to think about the health of this instrument housed in the body.

Eamon O’Leary started playing Irish music while growing up in Dublin. When he moved to New York City in the early 90’s, he immersed himself in the city’s traditional music scene and travelled widely, performing with many of the great players in Irish music. Eamon has taught at many traditional music programs around the world and also records and performs original music. His last solo album, All Souls, was released on Reveal Records in 2018. Other recent recordings of note include The Alt with John Doyle and Nuala Kennedy, and The Immigrant Band, a joint old-time and Irish endeavor with John Doyle, John Herrmann, and Rafe and Clelia Stefanini.

Jefferson Hamer is a guitarist, songwriter, and producer based in Brooklyn, NY. He has recorded albums with Sarah Jarosz, Anais Mitchell, Session Americana, Kristin Andreassen, JKLOL, Laura Cortese, and many others. His self-produced solo release from 2018, Alameda, features eight original tracks with contributions by John Fatum, Jeff Picker, Sarah Jarosz, Hannah Read, Dylan Foley, and Tim Britton. In 2013, he and Anais Mitchell won a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Child Ballads, a collection of new adaptations of English and Scottish folk songs.

Eamon and Jefferson began playing together at traditional music sessions in New York City. They shared an interest in collecting, arranging, and performing songs from Irish, American, Scottish, and English traditions. As they began to collaborate – first in larger ensembles, but most enduringly as a duo, the Murphy Beds – they also recognized an affinity for other more contemporary idioms. Whatever the source – songs of the Irish travelers, Arkansas spirituals, or their own compositions – their arrangements feature the same carefully wrought interplay of voices and strings.