Denver – Harry Tuft and Carla Sciaky started Ballad Night in February of 2005. To a sold-out crowd in the small hall at Swallow Hill, Harry and Carla savored a wealth of traditional English ballads, with some Irish and contemporary songs along the way. It was so much fun, they vowed to do it again. On Saturday, October 21 at 8 p.m. they return to Swallow Hill to perform in the big hall and with a fellow ballad lover, Ed Trickett.

Ed has been collecting and interpreting traditional and traditional-based folk songs for over thirty years, and has appeared on over forty recordings and performed on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion amid other public radio broadcasts. His repertoire includes a wide range of ballads, sea songs, songs of love and protest and an occasional song of no consequence whatsoever. Harry Tuft, the Godfather of Denver’s folk music scene and founder of the Denver Folklore Center, has been instrumental in fostering folk music in Colorado. Carla Sciaky, like Harry and Ed, has been performing at Swallow Hill since its foundation. She enjoyed a fifteen-year career of touring nationally as a solo act. In 1995 she said goodbye to the road and the stage and embraced the daunting and wonderful world of parenthood. Harry and other friends have helped bring her back to the musical arena in the past two years. She performs in the folk, Jewish, medieval, Renaissance and Baroque genres on instruments too numerous to mention. Come join ballad lovers Carla, Harry and Ed for a night of traditional and contemporary folk music.

Also, performing at Swallow Hill on Saturday, October 21 at 8 p.m. acclaimed folk performer and songwriter Jack Williams. Despite an illness that left him with a bout of laryngitis, Jack Williams managed to impress the Swallow Hill audience with his substantial guitar playing and songwriting abilities when he recently opened for Chuck Pyle. Folk legend Tom Paxton has called Jack Williams “one of my all-time favorite pickers!” and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary fame has called Jack the “best guitar-player” he’s ever heard. Sing Out! magazine hails Jack as “one of the strongest guitar players in contemporary folk.” To hear all the talk about Jack’s nearly 40-year career as a guitar player one would think that was all he did, while in fact, Jack is a skilled singer songwriter with an eclectic musical background. Billboard Weather Report claims Jack’s songs are “…gentle but compelling poetic and musical vision.” An acclaimed performer at the Kerrville, Philadelphia, Boston and Newport Folk Festivals, Jack has been writing and performing his own songs since 1970. “Jack Williams comprehends the potency of understatement and inhabits a world that may be less realistic but certainly kinder.” — Dirty Linen

For tickets visit swallowhillmusic.org (please note this alternate web address for public access) or call (303) 777-1003. Discounts are available for Swallow Hill members.

About Swallow Hill Music Association:
Helping people make music since 1979, Swallow Hill Music Association is one of the largest institutions of its kind in the United States as a source for folk, roots and acoustic music. With more than 2,100 members—some of whom are also volunteers—, Swallow Hill provides a place to celebrate music that is rarely heard elsewhere in the Rocky Mountain Region. Three concert venues house more than 150 performances a year, featuring some of the world's great artists as well as up-and-coming new talent. The Julie Davis Music School at Swallow Hill provides a valuable and affordable extra-curricular educational resource to the community with more than 50 music instructors involved in more than 240 adult classes and 70 children's classes annually.

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