Alan Jabbour was born in 1942 in Jacksonville, Florida. A violinist by early training, he put himself through college at the
University of Miami playing classical music. While a graduate student at Duke University in the 1960s, he began documenting
oldtime fiddlers in the Upper South. Documentation turned to apprenticeship, and he relearned the fiddle in the style of the Upper South from musicians like Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, Virginia, and Tommy Jarrell of Toast, North Carolina. He taught a repertory of oldtime fiddle tunes to his band, the Hollow Rock String Band, which was an important link in the instrumental music revival in the 1960s.

After receiving his Ph.D. in 1968, he taught English, folklore, and ethnomusicology at UCLA in 1968-69. He then moved to Washington, D.C., for over thirty years of service with Federal cultural agencies. He was head of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress 1969-74, director of the folk arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts 1974-76, and director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress 1976-99. Since his retirement, he has turned enthusiastically to a life of
writing, consulting, lecturing, and playing the fiddle.

Superb instrumentalist, acclaimed teacher of instrumental skills, gifted performer, award-winning folklorist, Ken Perlman is surely a welcome addition to any festival or concert-series lineup. Ken is both a pioneer of the 5-string banjo style known as "melodic clawhammer," and a master of fingerstyle guitar. He is considered one of the top clawhammer players in the world, known in particular for his skillful adaptations of Celtic tunes to the style. On guitar, Ken's sparkling finger-picked renditions of traditional Celtic and Southern fiddle tunes are simply not to be missed.

He draws his material from traditional sources -- the music of Scotland, Ireland, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island and the American South. His approach to the music, however, is highly innovative. He has developed many new instrumental techniques, and much of his repertoire has never before been played on 5-string banjo or guitar.