HEADLINERS // P&S 2011

	RUFUS WAINWRIGHT New York It is rare for poetry, melody, rhythm and harmony to dwell comfortably within a single soul. Rufus Wainwright is such a soul. To say that he is an accomplished performer is to understate his talent. Since his early teens he has variously been an actor, composer, songwriter, arranger and instrumentalist. He is equally at home in the pop, alternative, rock, country, and more traditional genres including jazz, classical and opera. He has set Shakespeare sonnets to music, and written an opera; his current catalog includes eight albums and two DVDs, widely recognized for their originality, variety and workmanship. He comes to Shelter Island from recent sold-out performances in New York and Montreal. www.rufuswainwright.com photo credit: Alex Lake
	MARTHA WAINWRIGHT New York With a hugely expressive voice and powerful songs, Martha is a beguiling performer and a refreshingly different force in music. She started singing with her brother, Rufus, as a duo in the early '90s. She took a major step in 1998 with her song "Year of the Dragon" in the album "The McGarrigle Hour". In 2005, she released the eponymous, "Martha Wainwright", to great critical and commercial acclaim. Martha toured the world last year, promoting her third album, "San Fusils, Ni Souliers A Paris: Martha Wainwright's Piaf Album", an homage to Edith Piaf. In 2010 and 2011, she headlined her own outdoor show in London and delighted Australia with sold out shows at Sydney's Opera House. Meanwhile, she is hard at work on her next studio album and caring for her beautiful 20-month old son. www.marthawainwright.com/
	ANAIS MITCHELL Marshfield, Vermont Her music is inspired by the country ballads of the Carter Family, the hard-edged cabaret of Brecht and Weill, the story-songs of Randy Newman, the vast narrative scope of Pink Floydʼs The Wall, and the tales of her namesake, bohemian feminist Anais Nin.. www.anaismitchell.com
	STRAIGHT DRIVE Northern New Jersey In a time where much of bluegrass music has veered towards the more polished and commercial sounds of "Music Row," Straight Drive has kept its identity firmly grounded in the grit and intensity of the classic, first generation performers of bluegrass music. http://www.straight-drive.com/

MUSIC // P&S 2011
		CALEB ELDER Starksboro, Vermont. Caleb plays fiddle in several Vermont-based bluegrass bands, and enjoys old-time banjo as much as the next guy. Bluegrass viola is one of his newest experiments and we're lucky to have him on Shelter Island for the first time.
		CAROLINE DOCTOROW Bridgehampton, New York. As a teenager, Caroline met and played with many folk music greats. She attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, mostly playing music and not going to classes very often.
		DAVE HARVEY New York, NY. Dave is an experienced contra dance caller who runs NYC Barn Dance, a monthly event designed to give New Yorkers an opportunity to experience traditional music and dance in an urban setting.
		DUNEGRASS Shelter Island, New York. Tom Hashagen, Lisa Shaw, Dan Skabeikis, Sandra Chapin and Sarah Shepherd have been entertaining music lovers on the East End for years, bringing a deep knowledge of bluegrass and a love of other musical styles from contradance to jazz and oldies to their energetic performances.
		EDITH & BENNETT Shelter Island and Maine, These stewards of Sylvester Manor play and sing old-time Appalachian music, English farmer's ballads, and Scandinavian fiddle tunes.
		FREE SEEDLINGS Belmont, Maine. This acoustic trio brings Sylvester Manorʼs Creative Director, Bennett Konesni, together with longtime friends David and Jeff Lewis. Together they present a buoyant mix of bluegrass, old time and original music.
	ISLAND FOLK Shelter Island, New York John Kerr, Penny Kerr, Heather Reylek and Thom Milton make up this quintessential Island band, playing American folk songs, old-time favorites and spirituals.
		JOE HANNA Shelter Island, New York Joe is an eclectic Renaissance man, heard here as a guitar picker. Heʼs also known for his award-winning humor column in the Sag Harbor Express and is author of the Lawton Close mysteries, a painter and a cartoonist.
		MIA FRIEDMAN, Boston, and MIA BERTELLI, Marlboro, Vermont. The pair met on a singing tour of Sweden with renowned chorus Village Harmony. Their voices meet in a rare and powerful union, combining to belt out old English songs, mountain ballads, and the occasional Swedish duet they learned on their trip. Mia Friedman is the grand prize winner in the 2010 John Lennon songwriting contest.
		THE SYLVESTER MANOR WORKSONGERS Shelter Island, NY. This is the group that tends the fields at Sylvester Manor. They plan, plant, weed, harvest and sell over 80 types of vegetables, and manage to hold together a band on top of it. Members rotate with the seasons, but include staff members Nate Kraus-Mallet, Creek Iversen, Max Godfrey and Bennett Konesni.
		THE SUN PARADE Northampton, Massachusetts A quirky, fresh, youthful sound is the trademark of this quartet, featuring Chris Jennings, Jefferson Lewis, Jacob Rosazza, and Don Mcaulay. Original homegrown pop and rock songs influenced by good music and real people, in particular, the Beatles.
BRIAN DOLPHIN, of Shelter Island and New York City, spent a year travelling the world from 2009 to 2010 on a Thomas J Watson Fellowship studying the music of nature and the nature of music. He now sings traditional songs from Tuva, Scandinavia, and Peru, and most recently he has spent time touring with Village Harmony in the Republic of Georgia. Brian volunteers on our farm and has worked up a fine collection of rounds, which they will share with the crowd during Plant & Sing.
WHO DAT LOUNGERS, Shelter Island, The Loungers are a nine piece band specializing in the great music of New Orleans. From the Jazz of Louis Armstrong and the Voo Doo of the Neville Brothers to the Funky Meters! with some great original tunes in the mix as well. These guys turn their shows into a Mardi Gras party!
MAX GODFREY Atlanta, Georgia, has one of the clearest voices and visions in American singing today. He studies old songs like a scholar, but sings them with the authenticity of fieldhand born in the south, which he is. When not playing the guitar he can be found hollering in Sylvester Manor's fields.

WORDS & FOOD // P&S 2011
		BILL BURFORD Southampton, New York.Bill is a seasoned theatre director, producer, writer, designer and educator. Formerly producer and general manager for Bay Street Theatre, Bill teaches graduate playwriting, production and performance for the new MFA Program in Theatre & Film at the Southampton and Manhattan campuses of Stony Brook University. This year, Bill returns to Plant & Sing with a staged reading of Joe Pintauro's play "Men's Lives," adapted from the book Men's Lives by Peter Mathiessen about the end of the East End's traditional fishing community.
		BILL PERSKY NYC and Shelter Island. The 5-time Emmy Award winner for the Dick Van Dyke show, Kate & Allie, and creator of That Girl returns to Plant & Sing with more Great Food Stories and personal accounts of celebrity and food.
		BRAD DAVIS Pomfret, Connecticut. Brad teaches Creative Writing at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Massachusetts) and edits Theodate, the new online poetry journal of Hill-Stead Museum (Farmington, Connecticut). His most recent books of poem are "Opening King David" (April 2011) and "Self Portrait w/ Disposable Camera" (November 2011). He lives in Pomfret with his wife Deb and their Norwegian Forest Cat. Brad and Deb hope one day to move much closer to Brooklyn, New York, where their son and daughter-in-law reside
		BRYAN FUTERMAN Water Mill, New York. Bryan owns and cooks at Foody's, in Water Mill, serving New American cuisine that highlights local, slow food on the East End. A graduate of the University of Denver with degrees in hotel restaurant management, he has over 10 years experience as a chef de cuisine, sous chef and chef tournant, and is the third generation of his family in the restaurant business. Bryan is Education Committee Chair for Slow Food East End and co-founder of Springs Seedlings.
		HEIDI FOKINE Shelter Island, New York. Heidi teaches yoga classes at Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor, NY; and private wall yoga classes in her fully equipped studio. She has been studying yoga since 1991 and her classes combine a precise knowledge of anatomy and alignment with a reverence for the intelligence and mysteries of mind-body-spirit and a quest for freedom and fun.
		BOBBY WALDEN Shelter Island, New York. A member of the Sylvester Manor Farm Crew who grew up on the North Fork, Bobby will be leading the sweet potato harvest. He has farmed in Vermont and Michigan and is hoping to initiate some livestock projects on the property.
MAC GRISWOLD New York. A journalist and garden historian, Mac has been writing about landscape and place since 1987. The author of many articles and three previous major works of garden history, she looks at the land primarily as a cultural document. "Landscapes and gardens never lie," she says, "they always tell you something about their makers and their times." Currently the Director of Archival Research at Sylvester Manor, she is now writing about this remarkable place whose written history begins in the seventeenth-century Atlantic World. Slaves in the Attic, Rediscovering a Long Island Plantation, which Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish in Spring 2013, begins with story of Indians, Europeans, and Africans living with each other in the first age of colonization. Appropriately for Columbus Day, she will read her chapter on the Manhansetts, the native people of Shelter Island.
JONATHAN BRANDEIS Shelter Island and New York. Jonathan works in television as a writer-producer-director-editor. Writing-wise, he published two short stories in the NYU literary journal, The Minetta Review, and subsequently won The Seth Barkas Award in Creative Writing. He directed and wrote the narration for numerous nationally and internationally aired documentaries for PBS, VH-1 and theatrical release; has written comedy in various forms for Joan Rivers, Joy Behar, Jean Doumanian and Ellen DeGeneres; wrote and performed original bylined humor pieces for the series "Esquire: About Men For Women," which aired on Lifetime; directed and wrote seven original 16 mm short films for Comedy Central and has taught a Writing for Non Fiction Media workshop at the Stony Brook University Writer's Conference.
RAY SMITH, Southampton, New York. Ray has been taking care of Sylvester Manor's collection of arboretum-quality trees since he was 22 years old. Legend has it he is the only one who knows the secret to caring for the Manor's massive copper beech. Today he has built his tree care business, Ray Smith & Associates, into a successful East End business. Ray is a former president of the Long Island Arborists Association and a dedicated supporter of Sylvester Manor Educational Farm.
MEGAN CHASKEY, Sag Harbor, New York. Megan is a teacher, poet, musician and healing practitioner. Born in New Mexico, she lived as a child in California, Pennsylvania and Denmark. Megan graduated from Bennington College, Vermont with a BA in Literature and from Lesley College, Massachusetts, with an MA in Elementary Education. She met her husband, Scott Chaskey, farmer and poet, in England. Together they lived eight years in Cornwall, England until 1989 when they moved to Sag Harbor, Long Island, NY. Megan has poems in various anthologies including "The Light of City and Sea", "Sag Harbor Is" and "Peace On Earth, A Book of Prayers From Around the World". Her limited edition books illustrated by local artists include "Heartwood" and "Voice". Recently, she released two sacred music CDs. Megan teaches at Ross School and is the Music Coordinator at the Unitarian Universalist meetinghouse in Bridgehampton.
SCOTT CHASKEY, Sag Harbor, New York. Scott is a farmer, poet and an educator. He has worked as poet-in-residence in numerous schools and museums in the U.S. and in England, and for over twenty years he has taught poetry to children of all ages. Employed by the Peconic Land Trust as a steward of land, he has farmed garlic, potatoes, greens (and 60 other crops) for over 20 years at Quail Hill Farm, one of the original Community Supported Agriculture farms in the country. He is a founding Board member of the Center for Whole Communities in Vermont and of Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, and is past president of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York. In 2004 he edited Free Concert, the final book of poems by his teacher, Milton Kessler, published by the Etruscan Press. In 2005 his most recent book This Common Ground, Seasons on an Organic Farm was published by Viking/Penguin. He lives in Sag Harbor, NY, with his wife Megan, and their three children.
CHRISTIAN McLEAN Southampton, New York. Christian is the Conference Coordinator for Stony Brook Southampton's MFA Program and the founder of the Florence Writers Conference. His fiction has been published in Scores Anthology and The Southampton Review. His poetry has been featured in a collaborative work at the Dundee Contemporary Arts Museum (Dundee, Scotland). 2006 saw the publication of his first children's book Duckhampton. Christian holds a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.
STEVE EATON, began farming on the east end in 2007 at Quail Hill Farm and started Fireplace farm in 2010 in Springs, Stephen is a yoga musician and teacher and was recently certified through Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor. He teaches 3 classes a week in Springs, Amagansett and Sag Harbor.