Description

Two of the finest hammered dulcimer players in the U.S. have joined forces to perform a wide-ranging repertoire of traditional and original music. At the heart of their sound are tight arrangements for two hammered dulcimers, featuring a repertoire of traditional and original music.

Called “a world-class instrumentalist” by Sing Out!, the Baltimore-based Ken Kolodner is widely recognized as one of today’s most accomplished, musical hammered dulcimer artists (Elderly) and a fine old-time fiddler. For nearly 40 years, Ken has toured as a soloist and in ensembles with the ground-breaking world music trio Helicon (with Robin Bullock and Chris Norman), Greenfire (with Bullock and Laura Risk), Scottish National Fiddle Champion Elke Baker, and in the last decade, in The Ken and Brad Kolodner Quartet with his son Brad along with Alex Lacquement and Rachel Eddy. Now he is thrilled to have teamed up with Mary Lynn Michal to focus on their hammered dulcimer duets.

Mary Lynn Michal (MLM), a professional French horn player by training with a master’s degree from The Eastman School of Music, discovered a passion for playing the hammered dulcimer in 2012 while first chair horn in The Durham Symphony Orchestra. Over the last decade, Ken served as MLM’s teacher and mentor. Ken enlisted MLM to assist at his Sandbridge Hammered Dulcimer Retreats, an elite hammered dulcimer retreat held in Sandbridge Beach, VA, now in its 18th year. Over the last five years, MLM has relished her new career as a full-time hammered dulcimer player. It is an incredibly rare feat to switch careers as an instrumentalist from French horn to hammered dulcimer! After living in North Carolina for most of her life, Mary Lynn recently relocated to Middletown, MD, and now maintains a flock of nearly 100 hammered dulcimer students privately and on Zoom.

In 2020, Mary Lynn co-authored with Ken The Complete Guide to Theory & Mapping for the Hammered Dulcimer and teaches a year-long (40-session) online class covering the book for more than 325 hammered dulcimer players from around the globe. MLM has mastered many of Ken’s arrangements, and it was natural that the duo perform together, releasing their first CD Out from the Shadows, in 2022. Dulcimer Player News writes that “Michal and Kolodner finish each other’s musical sentences…one of the delights of the record is in the pacing of it all, starting with a bang and then retreating to a more contemplative space for a spell before erupting again with joyous energy.”

Ken and MLM have performed together at The Black Mountain Music Festival (NC), Common Ground On the Hill (MD), Kentucky Music Week (Bardstown, KY), The Quarantunes Dulcimer Festivals, Nonesuch Dulcimer Festival (UK), and the Dulcimer Jamboree (Mountain View, AK). Additional concert performances include shows in Watkins Glen NY, Holly Springs NC, Chicago IL, The Texas Theater (St Joe, TX), and Baltimore MD.