The Mount Clare Connection

The Mount Clare Connection plays Irish and American traditional music in regional styles from Maryland. At its core is an expansive duet between the button accordion (Peter Brice) and the fiddle (Joanna Clare), supported by rich accompaniment on the guitar, five-string banjo, and tenor banjo (Richard Osban).

The ensemble’s music traces legacies of Irish culture along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, and invests renewed and newly-composed melodies into the tapestry of Irish traditional music in America.

“The Mount Clare Connection” references Maryland’s links to Gaelic Ireland via several Carroll dynasties that emigrated to the Colony of Maryland during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Carrolls’ investments in iron, railroads, agriculture, construction, and government—as well as in the growth of American Catholicism—shaped the development of Maryland’s cities, and its role in the early republic.