[SongOrganizers] Re: Hello from Boston!

Hi all! I'm Suzanne Mrozak, also a member of the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston and also a list Champion. Lynn Feingold has done a great job of describing how our FSSGB sings work. (Thanks, Lynn - both for your description and for the wonderful way you manage our events.) As for me, I was exposed to folk music when I was in elementary school in Ontario, Canada, and have loved it ever since. After college in the 1960s at McGill in Montreal, where I was able to hear performers like Phil Ochs, Tom Rush, and Dave Van Ronk in coffee houses and in concerts, I moved to Chicago, where I ended up living a few blocks from The Old Town School of Folk Music. I took classes - including a memorable one on ballads led by John Roberts and Tony Barrand who had managed to arrived in town by train one winter just ahead of a blizzard - and attended concerts there. It was a great time to be in Chicago. In addition to the Old Town School, there were coffeehouses, the University of Chicago Folk Festival, and plenty of opportunities to make music with other people. For most of the 1970s, I played with a group called The Sweet Betsy from Pike Memorial Autoharp Band, a group of 9 autoharp players who also sang. (You might pause a moment here to consider the challenge of tuning 9 autoharps with a pitch pipe, which was our only option back in those days.) We even got invited to perform at Fox Hollow in 1976! I moved to Boston in the fall of 1979 and after a few years, I discovered the Folk Song Society of Greater Boston, where I was pleased to find like-minded people to sing with, coffeehouses like Passim, and festivals like NEFFA and the Eisteddfod. Although I am not currently organizing singing events, I do have a lot of experience as an organizer and participant, and I'm looking forward to hearing what questions and suggestions you all have :-) Suzanne Mrozak Roslindale, MA https://smrozak.wordpress.com/