First Encounter is proud to present an evening of three powerful local women singer/songwriters.

Eastham native Sarah Burrill brings to her music and performance a depth and passion that is nothing short of contagious. Whether she is belting out a blues, caressing the melody of a delicate love song, encouraging social consciousness and change or singing about her pajamas, it is an experience that inspires courage, strength and hope. Her latest CD is If By Chance.

West Barnstable singer-songwriter Diana Di Gioia has been very popular at open mike events up and down the Cape. Her second album, Either/Or World, features 11 original songs and a host of talented local musicians. At their core, they are heartfelt stories of love, life and authenticity, full of courage and free of inhibitions.

Barnstable native Alicia Mathewson has a CD, Isn’t It Amazing? Songs and Chants for the New Vibration. An accomplished guitarist, yogi, and music educator, she founded Sounding Still Wellness in 2011, providing music education, energy healing, and transformative music recordings and performances serving the five fundamental values: love, peace, truth, right-conduct, & non-violence. She has sung in coffeehouses, yoga studios, healing centers, school gyms, & Gilette Stadium.

Artist Web Sites: Alicia Mathewson  Sarah Burrill Diana Di Gioia

Sparky and Rhonda Rucker perform throughout the U.S. as well as overseas, singing songs and telling stories from the American folk tradition. Sparky Rucker has been performing over forty years and is internationally recognized as a leading folklorist, musician, historian, storyteller, and author. He accompanies himself with fingerstyle picking and bottleneck blues guitar, banjo, and spoons. Rhonda Rucker is a musician, storyteller, author, and songwriter. Her blues-style harmonica, piano, old-time banjo, and bones add musical versatility to their performances.

Sparky and Rhonda are sure to deliver an uplifting presentation of toe-tapping music spiced with humor, history, and tall tales. They take their audience on an educational and emotional journey that ranges from poignant stories of slavery and war to an amusing rendition of a Brer Rabbit tale or their witty commentaries on current events. Their music includes a variety of old-time blues, slave songs, Appalachian music, spirituals, ballads, work songs, Civil War music, cowboy music, railroad songs, and a few of their own original compositions.

Over forty years of performing, Sparky and Rhonda have performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well as NPR’s On Point, Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, and Morning Edition. Their recording, Treasures & Tears, was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award, and their music is also included on the Grammy-nominated anthology, Singing Through the Hard Times.

Their new CD, Let Freedom Ring, is a testament to the ongoing struggle for liberty in the United States. The songs trace this history from slavery and the Underground Railroad, through women’s suffrage and the founding of the UMWA, to the civil rights movement. Rhonda’s song, “Living River,” is included in this collection, thereby continuing her tradition of environmental songwriting.

Artist Web Site

Jon Brooks’ latest record, Delicate Cages, takes its title from the Robert Bly poem, Taking the Hands: “Taking the hands of someone you love / You see they are like delicate cages…” 

Delicate Cages aims to reveal the complicit nature of good and evil, love and fear, and freedom and imprisonment. He promises freedom to all who choose love over fear. Jon debuted in 2006 with No Mean City, a portrait of Toronto homelessness and a weighty exposition of the modern urban soul’s condition and moral fatigue. A year later Jon won acclaim with the release of Ours and the Shepherds, a CD of Canadian war stories. The collection earned Jon a Songwriter of the Year nomination at the 2007 Canadian Folk Music Awards. Ours and the Shepherds is now in the collections of the Canadian War Museum and the John McRae Society. 2009 brought Moth Nor Rust, an album of songs looking inward to what “neither moth nor rust can touch.” Moth Nor Rust earned Jon his second Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for Songwriter of the Year, and the music and lyrics were published by the esteemed literary quarterly Exile Editions.

Jon’s music is filled with grey and morally ambiguous characters living on the outskirts of approval, but his mandate is unequivocal: “I’m not interested in writing ‘happy songs’ – I’ve chosen to write healing songs and for that reason, I’m obliged to reveal a wound or two now and then. That said, I’m less interested in writing ‘unhappy songs’: I want to write hopeful songs, inspiring songs and I expect I owe today’s listener some compelling argument as to why we should believe our present world can be improved, or healed. A song’s highest aim is to invoke empathy – to offer that rare sight of ourselves in others. In this sense, the songwriter is simply trying to ‘politicize love,’ hence my contention: today’s songwriter should be a lobbyist for compassion to be our principle representative in government office.’

Artist Web Site