Armor & Sturtevant

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Armor and Sturtevant are a husband and wife musical duo that have been composing and performing professionally since 1993. They interpret folk music from East Africa, Appalachia, and the British Isles and write songs inspired and influenced by various folk traditions, classical music, bluegrass, rock and roll, and jazz. Their collaborative work utilizes many instruments including voice, guitar, flute, banjo, accordion, fiddle, concertina, mandolin, bass flute, piano, kalimba, and East African hand percussion. They have toured across the U.S.A. and appeared in other countries, performing at opera houses, schools, and churches, and they have both performed and offered workshops at multi-cultural events and festivals. They have worked in collaboration with a ballet company, a women's chorus, a flute choir, an African drum and dance ensemble, Appalachian cloggers, a chamber orchestra and a children's choir. They produce recordings of their own music and performances of musicological interest from other parts of the world. Both of their CDs on the Tatema Music label have garnered air play on folk radio programs nationwide, including NPR's Car Talk, and internationally on the US Information Agency's Voice of America. Armor & Sturtevant are listed on the Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour Roster, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Roster for Arts in Education, and they have been favorably reviewed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Rochester NY City Paper, Dirty Linen Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune.^[1]

1 Instrumentation
2 Past Performances
3 Kelly Armor Bio
4 Dave Sturtevant Bio
5 Discography
6 Musicological recordings
7 References
8 External link

[edit] Instrumentation

Kelly Armor: voice, flute, bass flute, fife, whistle, chivoti, kalimba, kayamba, accordion, and concertina.

Dave Sturtevant: voice, acoustic, electric, and resophonic guitars, banjo, and fiddle.

[edit] Past Performances

Blissfest, Cross Village, MI
Baltimore Folk Music Society, MD
Caffe Lena, Saratoga, NY
Grand River Folk Art Society, Grand Rapids, MI
Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts
Fredonia Opera House, Fredonia NY
Whitaker Center, Harrisburg, PA
Bickford Theater, Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ
Two Harbors Folk Festival, MN
Common Ground, Westminster, MD
Shenandoah Music Festival, Orkney Springs, VA
Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD
Reading Musical Foundation, Reading, PA
Kent State Folk Festival, Kent, OH
Starwood Festival, Sherman, NY
Down East Folklore Society, Beaufort, NC
Tidewater Friends of Folk Music, Norfolk, VA
Morgan County Arts Council, Berkeley Springs,WV
Erie Summer Festival of the Arts, PA
Calliope Folk Music Society, Pittsburgh, PA

[edit] Kelly Armor Bio

Kelly Armor spent her freshman and sophomore years at Yale University studying composition with David Hicks and Martin Bresnick, and flute performance with Thomas Nyfenger. For 2-1/2 years she lived with native families in Kenya and Tanzania, became fluent in Swahili, and collected Pagan, Islamic, and Christian traditional songs, learning indigenous flutes and hand percussion instruments. She was awarded a B.A. in Intercultural Studies and Ethnomusicology from the Friends World Program of Long Island University in 1988. She has given workshops and lectures on East African music and culture for the Library of Congress, the National Flute Association, and at Chautauqua Institution. In 1999, she was hired as an oral historian by the Erie Maritime Museum where she collected stories about Erie's lakefront history. She currently serves as the Folk Art and Education Director of the Erie Art Museum. A frequent artist-in-residence at local and regional schools and community organizations, in the past 8 years she has participated in more than 30 long-term residencies with pre-school, elementary, middle school students, and adults. She is the duo's marketing, publicity, and programming director.[1]

[edit] Dave Sturtevant Bio

Dave Sturtevant's first influences were singing traditional ballads, camp songs, and Lutheran hymns with his parents and three older siblings and listening to the traditional fiddle playing of his father, born in the Appalachian foothills of north central Pennsylvania. Through high school and college he formally studied voice and trumpet, while writing songs and teaching himself guitar. In 1986 he was awarded a B.S. in Sound Recording Technology from State University of New York, College at Fredonia. His original songs are greatly influenced by a lifetime of residence along Lake Erie. His songs have been recorded and performed by other nationally touring folk musicians such as Joe Stead, Dan Duggan, John Kirk, Neal and Leandra, and Sue Trainor. He is the technical director for the duo, looking after live sound reinforcement and recordings.[2]