growing musicians
Ann Downey
Ann Downey is a singer and multi instrumentalist (double bass, clawhammer banjo, and guitar) with wide musical tastes. Ann enjoys teaching clawhammer banjo to beginners and beyond!
Ann sits in comfortably with old timey Appalachian, country, swing (country and jazz), dixie, bluegrass, Celtic, English, and klezmer music. She has an affinity for yodeling and wacky songs, but one of her greatest joys is finding precisely the right harmony to sing or play.
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She has performed here and there throughout Europe and North America. She grew up singing in choirs, mostly in the southwestern U.S., but is now well settled in Ottawa, where she sings, plays, travels and/or records with Finest Kind, Sneezy Waters, the Old Sod Band, and Pat Moore and the Vinyl Frontier.
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Ann is also frequently on call on bass, banjo and harmony vocals on folk related projects in the studio as well as on stage. She can also be found on double bass in several of Ottawa’s community orchestras.
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She’s played banjo since her teens – and has taught clawhammer banjo (and yodeling!) at folk music camps and festivals as well as at the Ottawa Folklore Centre. She enjoys exploring the history of, as well as new directions on the banjo with her students and loves it when they bring in a new tune or song to work out!