August 27th-30th
Tickets available at https://www.capeannguitarsociety.org/folk-week-2025
The Cape Ann Guitar Society is excited to announce four nights of music where we showcase some of our area’s most unique musical voices in a variety of venues on Cape Ann. Our diversity is our strength – get to know the folk music of the Puerto Rican countryside, Jewish celebrations, the Emerald Isle, Cape Ann maritime tradition, and modern Americana. 4 folk music concerts on 4 nights at 4 different Cape Ann cultural venues! With sponsorships from our community partners, ticket prices have been kept extremely affordable to open the doors to everyone.
Wednesday, August 27th
Ezekeil’s Wheels Klezmer Band
MAGMA (Movement Arts Gloucester MA) 7:30 pm
Tickets $15
Folk Week starts off with the internationally-acclaimed Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band bringing the passion, virtuosity and contagious energy that are hallmarks of their performances. Featuring Cape Ann’s own Abigail Reisman on violin, Ezekiel’s Wheels will infuse MAGMA with the special spirit of their joyous and poignant music. If you are a fan of Klezmer, this is the Klezmer of your dreams. If you have never heard Klezmer, this is your chance to be introduced to a wonderfully evocative musical genre by some of the best Klezmer musicians in the world. This opening night of Folk Week is brought to the community through a generous grant from the Tina Snider Foundation of Gloucester.
Thursday, August 28th
Jug of Punch; Michael O’Leary & Gary Dolinsky
Cultural Center at Rocky Neck 4-7 pm
this is event is FREE thanks to contribution from the Rocky Neck Art Colony
Jug of Punch puts a modern twist on traditional Celtic music, with lush vocal harmonies and a driving folk beat. Jug of Punch will get your hands clapping and your heart singing.
Michael and Gary will share a mix of maritime songs, from tragic to comic, relating to seafaring life around Cape Ann and coastal New England from the 1800’s to recent times.
Friday, August 29th
Fabiola Mendez Trio
The Cut, Gloucester 8pm
Tickets $15-$25
Fabiola Mendez will bring her Trio and her mission to The Cut: to share and celebrate the cuatro, (the national instrument of Puerto Rico,) folk music, and collective story-telling. A full evening of Fabiola’s music at the Cut with cuatro, bass and percussion will be a special treat for the North Shore. Fresh from not one, but two Tiny Desk concerts in the last year, Fabiola is a rising star and we are so lucky to have her here as a part of our Folk Week.
Saturday, August 30th
The Clements Brothers & Good Company
Night Owls
Windhover Center for the Performing Arts
Tickets $25
For our final night of Folk Week, join us for an evening outdoors under the tent at Windhover Center for the Performing Arts. We open the night with the sweet three-part harmonies of the Night Owls. Danny Palmer’s complex and beautiful original songs will open your heart.
The Clements Brother & Good Company will headline the final night, a special treat of Americana with the incredibly talented George and Charles Clements and their full band. Their music is at once enthralling and intimate, groovy and serene.
Performer bios
Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band improvises with the intimacy of chamber music and the intensity of a rowdy dance band. Their engaging contemporary interpretation of Jewish music is irresistible to audiences ranging from elementary school students to the judges at the International Jewish Music Festival, who heralded them as “a true musical democracy.”
The Wheels’ unique style was forged in the subway stations and farmers’ markets of Boston, where the informal setting and ever-changing audience created an ideal environment for musical experimentation. They honed their craft with bulgars and 90’s pop covers for the morning rush hour and mixed doinas and zhoks with fresh produce on the weekends, building a community of fans and friends across the city. As their tightly coordinated but playful style matured, they moved on to larger and more discerning audiences, and in 2012 they won both the jury-awarded City Winery Prize for best klezmer ensemble and the Audience Pick Award at the third biennial International Jewish Music Festival in Amsterdam. This success opened a new chapter in the band’s ongoing saga that included high-profile performances at the Kennedy Center, the Shalin Liu Performance Center, and Yidstock. Over time, their repertoire grew to incorporate original as well as traditional instrumental tunes, and in 2017 it further expanded to include songs in Yiddish and English.
Jug of Punch puts a modern twist on traditional Celtic music, with lush vocal harmonies and a driving folk beat. The band, in one form or another, has played up and down the east coast from Canada to the Virgin Islands but makes its home around Boston. Jug of Punch will get your hands clapping and your heart singing.
Michael O’Leary is a blow-in to Cape Ann from the Midwest and a singer and song-searcher of Celtic and Maritime songs. He strives to share the historical and cultural background of songs, and his Fisherman’s Ballads project explores the 1874 Gloucester publication ‘Fishermen’s Ballads and Songs of the Sea’, a collection of 120 pieces by a wide array of authors, including many who were local. He hosts Celtic Music Sunset Sails on schooner ARDELLE every Sunday June thru September, and performed in Cape Ann Guitar Society’s inaugural concert last year.
Gary Dolinsky performs original songs and traditional folk music from North America, England, Ireland and Scotland accompanying himself on guitar, Irish bouzouki, and Anglo-Concertina. Formerly of the critically acclaimed folk-duo, Compass Rose, and more recently with The Wild Maple Band, Gary has performed extensively in the New England coffeehouse/club circuit. He started performing as a teenager in the early 1970’s. Since that time he has shared the stage with premier national artists including Chris Smither, Bill Staines, Pete Seeger, Greg Brown and Sally Rogers at some venerable music venues in the Northeast region.
Fabiola Méndez is a Puerto Rican cuatrista, singer, educator, and Emmy-nominated composer. Her artistic vision and original music focus on the exploration of her culture, her ancestry, and her identities. Native to Caguas, PR, Fabiola began playing the cuatro, Puerto Rico’s national instrument, at six. She got her early music training at the Antonio Paoli School of Music in Caguas and her Bachelor’s in Music from Berklee College of Music, where in 2018, she made history as the first graduate to play the Puerto Rican cuatro as the principal instrument.
Fabiola’s mission has always been to share and celebrate the cuatro, folk music, and collective story-telling. Her recordings include Herencia Criolla (2009), Al Otro Lado del Charco (2019), Afrorriqueña (2021), and Flora Campesina (2024). In 2022, she produced her first documentary, Negrura, showcasing Afro-Latinx stories on colorism and discrimination within our communities.
In recent years, she’s had the honor of receiving recognitions such as the Quincy Jones Award, ambassador for the Puerto Rican Day Parade in NYC, the Brother Thomas Fellowship, the Whippoorwill Arts Fellowship, and the ASCAP Foundation Lucille and Jack Yellen Award.
The Clements Brothers are George and Charles Clements, identical twins from New England. They’ve been playing and writing music together for as long as they can remember and and their music is a reflection of their long and continuing musical journeys.
With backgrounds in jazz, classical, folk, and bluegrass, their music is true Americana— a blend of many styles, imprinted with their own inescapable musical sensibilities. Whether performing as a Duo or their full band, ‘The Clements Brothers & Good Company’, the music is at once enthralling and intimate, groovy and serene.
Night Owls, formed in 2022, brings together the musical talents of guitarist Brendan Evans, vocalist Ben Blanchard, and Daniel Palmer, a songwriter turned mystery/suspense novelist. The group performs mostly original material blending classical guitar with three part harmonies to create a unique sound for their indie-folk infused songs.
Cape Ann Guitar Society is dedicated to building and nurturing a community of listening and learning through guitar related concerts, workshops, and meetups. As a maritime center, Cape Ann’s culture is inherently diverse, and we seek out, represent, and learn from that diversity through the guitar. The Guitar Society amplifies local voices and brings visiting artists and teachers to Cape Ann, connecting our local communities with the global guitar family – music as cultural diplomacy. We seek to expand the repertoire through commissioning projects and collaborations with other local arts and historical organizations.
Good Morning Gloucester 