Toronto Healing Garden Music Fest

Vinyl Café Host, Stuart McLean once described Allison as having “…a beautiful, clear singing voice and the ability to tell a story with her flute.”

Her interest in music began in the rural Ontario community of West Zorra Township where she learned to sing harmony in the church choir. She got her start playing folk music with the band Killiecrankie which was regularly featured on CBC Radio’s legendary Max Ferguson Show. Allison has performed at various festivals and venues including Mariposa, Lunenburg, and CBC’s Vinyl Café. In 2008, Allison was honoured with a nomination in the “Traditional Singer of the Year” category by the Canadian Folk Music Awards. Most recently, Allison was named “Musician-In-Residence” at McDougall Cottage in Cambridge, ON.

Allison’s band is composed of a stellar group of musicians, including renowned veteran of the Canadian folk scene Ian Bell , acclaimed bass player Denis Rondeau, Grand North American Fiddle Champion Shane Cook, and CCBA’s Mandolin Player of the Year Andrew Collins. Delighting listeners with their beautiful renditions of traditional and original songs and tunes, the group features exquisite, three-part vocal harmonies and captivating arrangements highlighting flute, fiddle, guitar, accordion, mandolin, banjo and acoustic bass.

Hailed by John Renbourn as ‘the best Celtic guitarist in the world’ Tony McManus  has been listed as one of the 50 transcendental guitarists of all time by Guitar Player Magazine.

Tony McManus has both extended and transcended the parameters of contemporary Celtic music. Ranked by peers and predecessors alike alongside the guitar world’s all-time greats, his fiendishly dexterous, dazzlingly original playing draws on traditions from the entire Celtic diaspora – Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Galicia, Asturias, Cape Breton, Quebec – along with still further-ranging flavours, such as jazz and east European music.

McManus is increasingly being acknowledged also as a pioneering figure in bridging the realms of Celtic music and other guitar genres.

Born in 1965 in Paisley, near Glasgow, his surname the legacy of an Irish grandfather, McManus was introduced to traditional music via the family record collection. Having first tried his hand at the fiddle, whistle and mandolin, he took up the guitar aged ten, although subsequent academic inclinations got him halfway through a PhD in maths before the music won out

Shane Cook - Canadian and US National Fiddle Champion

A Canadian and US National fiddle champion, Shane Cook captivates audiences with technically thrilling and adventurous performances. Noted by The Canadian Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame as one of the “finest fiddlers in the world today,” Shane has distinguished himself as a master of the Canadian old-time fiddle tradition. He also enjoys playing and arranging everything from traditional Irish and Scottish music to Pop and Bluegrass.

As one of Canada’s most highly awarded fiddlers, Shane is a three-time Canadian Open National Champion and a three-time Canadian Grand Masters Champion. Shane is also the only foreign fiddler to win the US Grand National Championship, a feat he accomplished at just 17 years of age!

Shane leads his own group, Shane Cook and the Woodchippers, and performs regularly with several ensembles including Grammy-nominee Claire Lynch Band, The StepCrew, Allison Lupton Band, Brian Pickell Band and the PBS hit, Bowfire, having toured extensively in Canada, the US, the UK, Ireland, Germany, China and Taiwan. Shane is a graduate of Western University and resides in London, Ontario with his wife and son. www.shanecook.com

"Shane offers up death-defying, acrobatic fiddle precision, soaring through tunes from his beloved Ontario with impeccable clarity." 

- Claire Lynch, Multiple Grammy Nominee

Joe Phillips - Double Bass

Joe Phillips is one of Canada’s most versatile double bassists. He performs with Toronto’s genre-defying Art of Time Ensemble, reimagines folk traditions learned from field recordings with banjoist Jayme Stone’s Folklife, struts his stuff with Payadora Tango Ensemble, performs annually at Sweetwater Music Weekend with some of the best chamber musicians in the world, and plays principal bass in the London Symphonia. Equally at home in a concert hall or at a folk festival, Joe has appeared as guest principal bass with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, has performed at the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and toured Canada with chamber music supergroup, Octagon.

Joe will be accompanying all three of Allison Lupton, Tony McManus, and Shane Cook in this Acoustic Harvest Healing Garden benefit event. To boot, we'll get to hear some of his booming-and-ethereal-at-once soloing.