The Silk Road meets Appalachia and beyond! Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer (GRAMMY-winning American roots artists) join forces with Chao Tian on yangqin (Chinese classical hammered dulcimer) for a joyful, multi-traditional musical evening suffused with a shared sense of common ground and cultural belonging.

This show will include traditional Chinese and Appalachian music as well as contemporary and traditional music from around the world. Instrumentation includes yangqin (Chinese hammered dulcimer), gourd banjo, five-string banjo, ukulele, guitars, dumbek, cello-banjo and mandolin.

The trio

“From China to Appalachia” was borne of a friendship and mutual love of musical exploration. All three artists are composers and songwriters who love jam sessions and singing together. The Bluegrass Situation says, “When the three began making music together, they realized the seamlessness of their musical and cultural vocabularies almost immediately.”

The trio has been on the road since 2023, ranging from California to North Carolina, Canada to New England. Their debut self-titled album topped both the folk radio charts and Billboard bluegrass charts.

About Chao Tian

Classically trained since the age of five, Chao Tian spent years working as an instructor and the director of the Arts Education Center at Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU). She is a founding member of BLCU Arts College’s music department and has been appointed as an officer of the International Culture Exchange Program in 2019.

Chao has performed in over 30 different countries and regions across the globe and collaborated with numerous talented musicians in many unprecedented projects. In 2015, she was accepted into the prestigious Artist in Residence program at the Music Center at Strathmore, where she met Cathy Fink. Cathy has served as a mentor-in-residence in that program for fifteen years.

About Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer

TWO-TIME GRAMMY® Award Winners, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer are master musicians with a career spanning 40 years. Their superb harmonies are backed by instrumental virtuosity on the guitar, five-string banjo, ukulele, mandolin, cello-banjo, and more. Their repertoire ranges from classic country to western swing, gypsy jazz to bluegrass, and old-time string band to contemporary folk (including some original gems).

Cathy & Marcy have performed at hundreds of bluegrass and folk festivals and taught at close to 100 music camps worldwide. Happily known as “social music conductors” ready to start a jam session, a community sing, or create a music camp helping others learn to play and sing, the duo’s past students include Kaki King and Rhiannon Giddens.