|
About Us
Tom and Mary Kay Aufrance,
BMI, are husband-and-wife musicians and singer-songwriters
from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Carson
City, Nevada. You will find them performing close to home
on festival stages and also in intimate settings, making
music for coffee shop or pub audiences.
People know us as two singers who blend
our voices as we do our hearts. Our music is folk, and we
entertain audiences with the songs and tunes of the folks
who settled America, starting with the Celtic influences
we grew up with on the north edge of the Appalachian mountains,
where Tom's family farmed and Mary Kay's grandpa mined coal.
They were musicians too. Tom's great great grandfather played
in the Ohio Regiment Band during the Civil War, and his
mom learned to play the bass violin. Mary Kay's grandpa
entertained friends with his bouzouki that he'd brought
over from the old country, one of her cousins is in the
polka hall of fame, and another cousin has been a Broadway
star for over 20 years!
Our folk music fits many moods and events.
We have performed for rogues in pubs as well as for genteel
audiences with symphonies. We have done our show on dusty
lanes in faire villages, and we have also played with the
wind in our hair on outdoor stages as well as in the confines
of the rehab. unit of our local hospital. We offer both
traditional and original music when the occasion fits.
We have been performing and writing music
together for a couple of decades. Mary Kay's original music
fills one of our CDs Musical Dreams. Her songs and tunes
range from the ethereal mood music of Musical Dreams and
Go Ask the Rain -to- her rollicking ballad of Mr. Potato
Head. We also have several other CDs and a music book that
feature Celtic and American Folk music. We started recording
in 2005, and have released four CDs - Ramblin' Irishman,
In the Moon of Wintertime: Christmas Music , Musical Dreams
and Shamrocks, Thistles and Silver Spurs. In 2009 we also
published a music book with our arrangements of the songs
on our Ramblin' Irishman CD plus more easy-to play but still
interesting arrangements.
We got our start doing musical theatrics
at Renaissance faires and other events at Lake Tahoe. Our
first group, the Motley Madrigals, made the rounds of the
Ren Faires and also debuted our original melodies and lyrics,
including Mary Kay's Lake Tahoe Song and Tom's outlandish
irreverent arrangements, like Stasera Dorme il Leone: The
Lion Sleeps Tonight. As group directors, we got so familiar
with all the early music parts that we had fun recording
several-part harmonies and instrumentals on our CD In
the Moon of Wintertime, sounding like an entire choir
with ensemble due to the miracle of studio recording and
overdubbing.
In addition to singing, Tom also plays 6
and 12-string guitars, Irish bouzouki, mandolin and banjo.
He got his first mandolin as a college student, because
it was small enough to play it in the front seat of his
car while working on his night job as a security guard.
Mary Kay also plays accordion. Her beginnings in music included
a variety of musical arts, starting with dance, piano, guitar
and violin, but what finally took was vocals and
accordion. (We forgot to tell you that we both played flutophone
as kids!)
We also give back to
our community with twice-a-month shows for old folks, and
we have done a little teaching. In 2006 we became part of
a really fun State of Nevada and Carson City Symphony program
called Strings in the Schools. Through 2008, we helped to
spread the enjoyment of playing tunes to the program's nearly
80 students.
Lately we have had great success with our
Slim and Minnie act, which is becoming popular at county
fairs and other events where we add some just-plain-folks
humor to our show that includes American folk, country western,
pioneer, Gold Rush era and even some Hollywood cowboy songs.
In 2011, an exciting highlight was when
Director Sue Jesch of Strings in the Schools invited us
to be the workshop instructors for the Celtic Workshop.
For this day-long event and performance, we worked with
nearly 60 students of all ages from grade school through
retirement age. Our approach to teaching Celtic styles was
to help the students to form their own Celtic bands! During
the workshop we formed 10 new Celtic bands, and each band
was featured during a crowd pleasing performance that took
place at the end of the day.
You are welcome to enjoy our music at the
local Borders Bookstore Coffee Shop, the old folks home
or one of the many county & community faires around
Northern Nevada and California.
Just click on a link in the Green bar below
for more information. Contact us: (775) 841-1193.
|
[:p]
