Archive: Arts & Entertainment

The Canaan Institute will host a performance by The Kate Lee & Forrest O’Connor Band. An intimate Thursday evening house concert will start at 7:00 pm Nov 7th 2019 with a jam session afterward.

Over the last three years, the duo has earned national recognition as the lead singers and primary songwriters of the Mark O’Connor Band, which features O’Connor’s father, seven-time CMA Award-winning violinist Mark O’Connor. Lee and O’Connor wrote the majority of the band’s first album, Coming Home, which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Bluegrass Albums Chart and won a GRAMMY Award in 2017. The group spent the past summer opening for the Zac Brown Band, including two appearances at Fenway Park.

Lee (vocals, violin) and O’Connor (vocals, guitar, and mandolin) began performing together in 2014 under the name Wisewater, whose EP, The Demonstration, reached #13 on the iTunes Singer-Songwriter chart. Several of their earliest performances took place at Isis Restaurant & Music Hall.

O’Connor is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard and former Tennessee State Mandolin Champion, while Lee is a Belmont graduate and violinist who has frequently backed up stars ranging from John Legend and Kelly Clarkson to Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood at the CMA Awards shows.

For their upcoming show, Lee and O’Connor will be accompanied by the Mark O’Connor Band’s bassist and banjoist Geoff Saunders, who has performed with Chick Corea, Gloria Estefan, and Bobby McFerrin, among others. They will also be joined by two-time national mandolin champion Isaac Eicher and Americana-Country vocalist Mallory Eagle.

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