Nordic Summer Jam

Double Bill:
Tom Hayes
Nick and Casey
July 8

Tom Hayes
Nordic Summer Jam: Tom HayesBorn and raised in Ireland, Tom Hayes has been making music since before he could talk. At the age of five he found an old guitar at home and wouldn’t put it down. By the age of twelve was working as a professional guitarist for acclaimed Irish bands. He spent the next eight years touring at home and throughout Europe. Soon he began work on his own music, evoking the lyrical and musical styles of Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake. Trained in an ancient Irish style of A Capella singing known as Sean-Nos, Tom mixed together a blend of the contemporary and traditional, finding a unique sound, with its roots in rock and soul, as well as folk.

After living in London for some time, Tom moved to New York in 2005. He soon found a welcome home within the city’s music scene, cultivating a dedicated following. In recent months he has collaborated with prolific artists and platinum-selling writers such as Boots Ottestad, Ryan Star, and Wynter Gordon. Tom has also begun work on his debut record set for release this fall. His unique voice and style have won him the praise of numerous press and musical greats such as Jimmy Webb. In a recent review, the New York Examiner had this to say: “With succulent melodies played under perforating lyrics and a voice that is almost a ghost of musicians past, Hayes produces a smooth tone in the vein of vintage soul. Raw talent as such cannot be hidden for long.”

Nick and Casey
Nick and Casey are singer/songwriters Casey Spindler and Nicholas Webber. Their recent work includes: scoring the Leaky Tent short film Goldstar, Ohio (Bill Irwin, Mercedes Ruehl, Michael Stuhlbarg and Alison Pill); licensing their song Man Of Obstacles to the upcoming CinemaLab/Mega/IFC film Falling Awake; and appearing on Fox Network’s Fearless Music.

Nick and Casey recently finished their first, full length, studio album, Can’t Reason Through Love, with Grammy-winning engineer and producer Chris Shaw (Bob Dylan: Love and Theft, Modern Times; Lou Reed; Wilco; Jeff Buckley). The release is scheduled for fall of 2010.
They are currently backed by bassist Tim Luntzel (Bright Eyes, Rosanne Cash) and drummer Dan Rieser (Norah Jones, Marcy Playground).
Nick and Casey are based in Brooklyn and can be seen at The Living Room every third Sunday of the Month at 9 pm for the year of 2010.

Benedicte Maurseth
July 15
Benedicte MaursethNorwegian Benedicte Maurseth performs both as a Hardanger fiddler and traditional vocalist. The old tunes from Hardanger form an important part of her repertoire. These are often lyrical and complex, and many of them have been preserved in their original form. She evokes a deep, warm tone in these fiddles by using gut strings and a baroque bow.
Maurseth holds a degree from the Ole Bull Academy. She learned to play the Hardanger fiddle mainly from master fiddler Knut Hamre, but also studied with Stein Versto and Leif Rygg. In the past few years she has also studied with baroque musicians such as Bjarte Eike and Peter Spissky. Maurseth collaborates with a number of musicians who work in various genres, especially at the point of intersection of folk and baroque music, as well as with more improvised music and new music.
In 2006 she and Hamre released the album Rosa i botnen, which could be said to have introduced the concept of “early fiddle tunes.” Because she has used the old style of fiddling, the earliest tunes have regained a dimension that had gone missing long ago. In 2007 Maurseth received the Young Folk Musician of the Year award, INTRO-Folk (Concerts Norway’s competition for launching new talent).