Rich Hill is from Wyoming. He began learning Gaelic when he was seven years old from a Scottish immigrant who had come to the Rocky Mountains. He met a “new family,” the Gaels of Vancouver, in 1989. He has been heavily immersed in Gaelic since that time, teaching and singing in Scottish Gaelic. He is a founder of Slighe nan Gaidheal and Féis Seattle, and is also well-known in Seattle’s early music scene.

Sarina Partridge is a musician, song-leader, educator and activist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She feels most alive when learning, creating and sharing songs — especially songs that grow out of time spent in wild places. Sarina sings with a wide variety of music projects: community song-leading of her own original songs; harmony-rich original music with folk trio Heartwood; performing and teaching vocal harmony folk music music she’s studied with master teachers around the world; and performing and teaching of Eastern European and Yiddish song – her own musical lineage.…

Canadian vocalist and composer Karin Plato came to jazz almost by accident. The music she heard in her formative years was the rock and pop music of the day and the classical music she studied from a young age. She didn’t get the “jazz bug” until she was in her early 30’s and that’s when her music career really began when she made the move from central Canada to the West Coast.