Annual Jean Ritchie Folk Concert

The Music Advisory Council welcomes singer Jane Murphy and special guest Jon Pickow to the library stage on Sunday, March 18 at 3 p.m. to perform in the Annual Jean Ritchie Folk Concert. The concert will include some of Jean’s own songs. Audience participation will be encouraged, especially in a “hootenanny” segment of songs from the Folk Revival of the 1950s and 60s. Both Jon and Jane will do traditional favorites, as well as some Irish tunes. Jane will include some of her original songs for children and “local” ballads. Accompaniment will consist of banjo, guitar and dulcimer.

The concert is named for Jean Ritchie, the youngest of 14 children born and raised in the Eastern Kentucky Mountains. Jean grew up singing the old music brought over by her ancestors from Scotland, Ireland and England. Trained at the University of Kentucky as a social worker, she came to New York for her first job at the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in 1947, and eventually settled with her family in Port Washington.

Over the years, her name became one with Appalachian music, and along the way she did much research and collecting, wrote seven books and recorded 30 albums, many of them now available as CDs.

Music Advisory Council concerts are funded by donations to the Port Washington Library Foundation.