Touring Group
The Touring Group is an auditioned ensemble of teenage musicians who rehearse from September to April, ahead of a cultural tour to another country or region. This Vermont Folklife program nurtures youth involvement in traditional music and dance, providing opportunities to learn from tradition bearers and each other, to build connections with artists and communities from Vermont and beyond, and to perform traditional repertoire in a variety of locations and settings. Music connects people and brings joy, enriching communities as it strengthens ties between generations and offers opportunities to share memories and be inspired.
We're thrilled to announce that the Touring Group will be traveling to Appalachia in April 2027, with Artist Leaders Benjamin Foss and Oliver Scanlon. Musicians and singers at an intermediate or advanced level who will be between 13 and 19 years old on April 15, 2027 are encouraged to apply.
Auditions are open now!
Please go to this form for more information and to sign up to audition.
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Upcoming Touring Group Concerts
To receive more information about this year’s group email Christina Kennedy
Touring Group originated as a program of Young Tradition Vermont. Learn more about YTV here
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Touring Group members are teenage musicians, singers, and dancers who are proficient in performing traditional* music and dance repertoire. Members are mostly from Vermont, but has also included members from Quebec, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and Maine. Information about the online audition process, which takes place in July and August, will be available in early summer. To receive more information about this year’s group contact Christina Kennedy: touringgroup@vtfolklife.org
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Group members meet for once a month rehearsals on Saturdays starting in the fall (no December rehearsal) and continuing through May. Performances are in Vermont with a cultural tour, which is often international, this year in April.
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Group members learn from and are supported by artist leaders, guest/master musicians and dancers/dance leaders, in addition to musical exchanges with master artists, young musicians and dancers while on cultural/performance tours.
The Touring Group’s repertoire is ‘traditional’* and is coordinated by artist leaders.
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The 2025-2026 Touring Group will be traveling to Sweden. Previous groups have traveled to Québec, Cape Breton, Scotland, Northumberland (England), the West Coast of Ireland, metropolitan New York and New Jersey, and around New England.
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In this context, traditional means songs, dances and other material that has most often evolved through a process of unwritten, oral transmission and is most often performed by in a particular cultural group in a particular place over a long period of time. The emphasis tends to be on participation rather than performance. Most often what is produced, whether a song, a tune, a dance, or a quilt has a functional purpose. It is something that can be used, that has and tells a story, that carries the tradition forward in the absence of or as a supplement to a written narrative or system. Instrumentally, traditional music is often associated with social dance. At its core, it is an attempt to reproduce what came from a previous generation, and the generation before that, and the generation before that, but each attempt at reproduction inevitably, intentionally or unintentionally, adds to or takes away elements so that it fits an individual’s current experience and circumstances.
2026-27 Artist Leaders
Multi-instrumentalists and seasoned performers Oliver Scanlon and Benjamin Foss will be the Artist Leaders the 2026-2027 season. Oliver and Benjamin have long been dedicated to teaching and mentoring the next generation in traditional music in New England. We are overjoyed to be working with them this year!
Benjamin Foss
Benjamin Foss grew up in southern New England biking to the Rehoboth contra dance and building fiddles and banjos out of everything he could find. Benjamin is most at home in the high-energy Down East fiddle style, but loves and plays traditional dance music from Sweden, southern Old Time, and tunes from Québec. Benjamin plays guitar with the Pine Tree Flyers and in several contra dance combinations on fiddle, guitar, and tenor banjo. When Benjamin isn’t teaching music, holding down a raging jam or playing for dancers, he can be found in his shop restoring vintage guitars, up in a bucket truck on a restoration trim carpentry job, or working for the Brooks fire department.
Oliver Scanlon
Fiddler, mandolinist and tunesmith Oliver Scanlon grew up in Vermont and is a Touring Group alum. After studying classical viola as a child, Oliver was introduced to his mentor Pete Sutherland and the parallel universe of fiddle music. Oliver co-founded Pete’s Posse in 2013 and became the youngest member of Sutherland’s long-running dance band The Clayfoot Strutters. Oliver now teaches fiddle and mandolin in Syracuse, NY, performs at concerts and contradances with a variety of musicians including his contradance quartet Stove Dragon and dynamic duo Missing Lynx, and provides live sound reinforcement in New York and New England. Benjamin Foss is a musician, luthier, and teacher based in Brooks, Maine.
2026-2027 Youth Artist Leaders
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Lux Tierney
Lux Tierney is a high school senior from Starksboro, Vermont, who began playing the fiddle at a young age with the wonderful musician and mentor Lausanne Allen. Recently, she has also enjoyed picking up the mandolin, as well as a variety of recorders and whistles. Lux loves to sing, enjoying a wide variety of genres and styles, from musical theater and acapella in school, to Airport Drive, a recently created modern band, and traditional folk songs of varying origins. Outside of creating music, Lux enjoys hiking, canoeing, drawing, watching the clouds, rainstorms, swimming, sunsets, skiing, Mary Oliver's poems, discovering new music, reading, and striving to find happiness in little things.
This year in the Touring Group, Lux looks forward to the feeling of connection within the group that evolves significantly throughout the year until everyone feels they are a part of a loving and close-knit family, all tied together by the shared love of music.
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Eli Glasser
Eli Glasser was born in California and moved to Vermont when he was 11. He started playing classical violin and piano at the age of 5. When he was 7 he started playing Old Time tunes and competing in old time fiddle contests in California. He also participated in the National Old Time Fiddle Contest in Idaho two years in a row. Eli plays the fiddle in the Touring Group and the piano at home. He also plays classical music in the Vermont Youth Orchestra. It’s Eli’s fifth year in the Touring Group, and he has also played with Sugar in the Pan around Vermont, and at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. He is excited to get to work with the group in a leadership role and get a chance to play old time music again!
Make a general donation to the support the Touring Group or participate in one of our fundraisers!
Every gift helps!
Touring Group Sponsors
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Quotes from group members