Local celebrities in Irish music–Peter Brice on button accordion, Tess Hartis on fiddle, and guest pianist Donna Long– are featured in a concert of 18th and 19th century music from Maryland and Ireland. The concert will highlight minutes from the manuscript of Annapolis dancing master John Ormsby who taught dancing here in the 1750s. Also featured is music from Annapolis’ Tuesday Club, a colonial gentleman’s club. Though dance had always been a popular form of entertainment in America and Europe, dance masters like Ormsby heightened the trend through private and public instruction.  This evening’s program is inspired by the research of former United States Naval Academy musician John Barry Tally who wrote Secular Music in Colonial Annapolis: The Tuesday Club 1745-56.

Peter and Tess perform regularly as “The Livebox,” and focus on the revival of traditional music from Maryland, restoring its links to ancient traditions in Ireland and Scotland, while identifying and demonstrating the mutations in popular American music movements.