Calliope Presents

Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light

Saturday, October 10, 2026 | 7:30 PM
MCG Jazz Music Hall

Bookish bite. Sharp harmonies. Songs about saints, scientists, and stubborn women.

Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light are a Boston-based string band making music that blends folk tradition with feminist storytelling, poetic detail, and just enough grit. At the center is Sumner’s songwriting—rooted in history, myth, and personal reckoning—carried by close harmonies, upright bass, acoustic guitar, and fiddle. The trio features Kat Wallace on fiddle and vocals and Mike Siegel on upright bass and vocals, whose playing brings both tension and tenderness to the sound.

Their sound is spare and intimate, sometimes eerie, sometimes sweet, always intentional. They call it Femericana—sharp-edged Americana with a splash of feminine rage.

Sumner has performed at the Library of Congress, where five of her original songs are now archived, and was a 2024 winner of the Kerrville New Folk competition. Her song “Radium Girls (Curie Eleison)” struck a nerve—streamed over 300,000 times and picked up by dancers, theater directors, and deep listeners who saw themselves in its story. It’s been tattooed on arms, sung in audition rooms, and carried into classrooms and protests. The kind of song people hold onto.

TICKETS HERE

Tony Trischka’s EarlJam – A Tribute to Earl Scruggs

Saturday, February 27, 2027 | 7:30 PM
MCG Jazz Music Hall

“Tony Trischka is known as the father of modern bluegrass”

– NY Times.

Tony Trischka is considered the consummate banjo artist and perhaps the most influential banjo player in the roots music world. For more than 50 years, his stylings have inspired a whole generation of bluegrass and acoustic musicians with the many voices he has brought to the instrument.

Tony will be honoring the music of Earl Scruggs, pioneer of the three-finger banjo style and one of the most important musicians in bluegrass, or, in Tony’s opinion, in any genre.

Trischka recently came into possession of extremely rare recordings of jam sessions with Scruggs and John Hartford, and he’s transcribed and recorded Scruggs’s note-for-note solos from a number of these. Many songs that Earl had never recorded.

Together with his ace band—Michael Daves on vocals and guitar, fiddler Alex Hargreaves, and bassist Jared Engel— they will trace the story of Scruggs from his childhood to his final years. This show debuted at Joe’s Pub in New York City, which drew lots of interest, including an appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, a rarity for a banjo player these days.

“Earl is my North Star, a lifetime pathway. And I’m not alone,” says Trischka, a banjo innovator and educator who has influenced everyone from Béla Fleck to Steve Martin. “Through his music, this shy kid from Flint Hill, North Carolina, went on to enrich countless thousands of lives. At the age of 13, when I first heard 16 notes of Scruggs-style banjo playing, I put down my folk guitar and mercilessly pestered my parents to buy me a banjo. Once in my hands, that 5-string became my obsession and has been for 60 years.”