Born in Dublin, Ireland, Fergus emigrated to Canada in 1967 and, while living in Toronto, became a founding member of the Irish folk band, Ryan’s Fancy. The group moved to St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1971 and for the next fourteen years, Fergus toured extensively throughout North America and Ireland as part of the trio. They were featured on the CBC network series, Ryan’s Fancy, for five years, and on the Tommy Makem/Ryan’s Fancy show, which was syndicated throughout Canada and the world. Ryan’s Fancy was also featured in the CBC TV production of The Last Run, which is part of the Newfoundland curriculum for Music (Exploring Music) at the intermediate level.
Ryan’s Fancy recorded fourteen albums during its tenure and songs from these albums can still be heard on local and national radio playlists. As a solo performer, Fergus has performed on numerous anthologies and collections of folk music, and has contributed to recordings by Newfoundland artists such as Great Big Sea, Jim Payne, Minnie White, The Sons of Erin, and Christina Smith. He recently produced a double CD collection called Ryan’s Fancy: What a Time, featuring material culled from the Ryan’s Fancy vinyl recordings of the 70’s and 80’s.
In 1987 Fergus graduated from Memorial University of Newfoundland with a degree in Education. Since then he has been bringing folk music to children both as a classroom teacher and a performer. He has developed a program of songs, stories and slides related to his native Ireland for use in schools and leads a series of initiatives around the province through the auspices of the St. John’s Folk Arts Society called Young Folk at the Hall, designed to get young people playing traditional music.
Fergus has served on the board of directors for the St. John’s Folk Arts Society and spent several years volunteering at the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival. He organizes the St. John’s Canada Day Concert on Confederation Hill, and was Chair of the Education Committee for the 2010 Juno Awards in St. John’s.
Fergus has been a member of the award-winning band Tickle Harbour, and is a past recipient of the NL Arts Council’s Arts in Education Award, as well as Music NL’s Music Educator of the Year Award. In 2004, Ryan’s Fancy received the ECMA’s Dr. Helen Creighton Award, in recognition of three individuals who had “a profound and lasting effect on the Atlantic Canadian music industry”.
Drawing from their backgrounds in classical, jazz and traditional Quebecois music, Élisabeth Moquin, Thierry Clouette and Élisabeth Giroux have come together in 2015 to create a new and exciting group. The instrumentation of their unique and modern sonority consists of fiddle, cello, bouzouki, voice, foot-tapping and step dancing. É.T.É’s performances and creations are dynamic and modern! No matter where they go, audiences appreciate their amazing energetic style, performance complicity and their up-to-date musical style.
Fiddler Evelyn Osborne loves nothing better than to see the rug hove back and dancers up on their feet to her lively tunes. She has played for the Goat in foggy Newfoundland to Morris sets in sweaty Hong Kong, and a few spots in between. Newly returned from a long sojourn in the Far East (Asia, not Cape Spear), she is delighted to be back playing with dance caller Jane Dennison. Evelyn has taught and played fiddle locally, nationally, and internationally (UK, Ireland, Asia, and Australia). In 1999, she began collecting Newfoundland fiddle tunes and musician life stories and has chatted with over 120 musicians throughout the province, Ireland, England, and New York. She also loves a good vaudeville show!
Émile Sopkowe (they/them) has had a lifelong interest in blurring the boundaries between craft and art. When they discovered rug hooking, they delved headlong into an exploration of textiles, which are associated with comfort and warmth within our homes, but have appeared less often in spaces devoted to art.
Émile is a queer and trans educator, a human rights advocate, and a person who lives with a disability. They have a passion for creating opportunities for children to explore art not only as a means to produce a creative product, but also as a way to express emotion and to explore facets of identity. They use primarily repurposed materials, in keeping with the traditional roots of hooked rugs, but often incorporate unconventional themes into this traditional medium. As rug hooking is associated with women’s handiwork and craft, Émile plays against these perceptions to sometimes create dissonance between the medium and the imagery. Even when hooking within more traditional themes and images, Émile uses a rich and varied range of repurposed materials to capture a contemporary interpretation of the imagery.
Émile is a juried member of the NL Craft Council and has sold hooked rug pieces in Craft Council members exhibitions. They presented a virtual rug hooking workshop at the Tombolo Multicultural Festival in 2020. They were awarded an ArtsNL grant in 2024 for a rug hooking project. In 2024, they were selected as an exhibitor at the Memorial Botanical Gardens exhibit Windows on the Garden, the Art Around the Bay curated art fair in Cupids. Their hooked rug Trans Formation was purchased in 2024 by NL Health Services for display at the new Mental Health and Addictions hospital.
A 14-time Grammy winner and Billboard Century Award recipient, Emmylou Harris’ contribution as a singer and songwriter spans 40 years. She has recorded more than 25 albums and has lent her talents to countless fellow artists’ recordings. In recognition of her remarkable career, Harris was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008 and earned a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2018.
Harris is known as much for her eloquently straightforward songwriting as for her incomparably expressive singing. Admired through her career for her talent as an artist and song connoisseur, Harris shook up country radio in the 1970s, and established herself as the premiere songwriter of a generation selling more than 15 million records and garnering 14 Grammy Awards, three CMA Awards, and four Americana Awards.
Harris is one of the most admired and influential women in music. She has recorded with such diverse artists as Linda Ronstadt, Daniel Lanois, Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, Ryan Adams, Beck, Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash, Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett and Rodney Crowell. Few artists have achieved such honesty or have revealed such maturity in their writing. Forty years into her career, Harris continues to share the hard-earned wisdom that—hopefully if not inevitably—comes with getting older, though she’s never stopped looking ahead.
A longtime social activist, Harris has lent her voice to many causes. Most passionately to animal welfare. In 2004 she established Bonaparte’s Retreat with the goal of rescuing shelter dogs and adopting them into forever homes. To this day, Bonaparte’s Retreat continues to save dogs most in need at Metro Nashville Animal Care and Control and at municipal shelters in surrounding counties.
Duane Andrews casts a wide net in the musical world. Uniting what would seem to be impossible – traditional Newfoundland music with the swing jazz of the legendary two fingered guitarist Django Reinhardt, Andrews makes it not just work – he makes it soar. The Juno award winning composer, arranger, producer, conductor and globetrotting performer’s latest album is the best evidence yet of his inimitable musical vision and is the sound of him, literally, bringing it all back home. He’ll be joined by the hottest swing band in the bay The Hot Club of Conception Bay which features Erin Power (vocals/mandolin), Andrew Dale (bouzouki/bass) and Isaac Andrews Power (fiddle).
Eleanor Dawson grew up in Bay Roberts, where she developed a lifelong interest in the history, folklore, and culture of Newfoundland and Labrador. One of the founders of the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival, Eleanor has a particular interest in traditional singing and has a vast repertoire of songs from the English, Irish, and Newfoundland traditions. She is currently co-host of the monthly St. John’s Song Circle at the Crow’s Nest Officers’ Club in St. John’s.
