Fairview Waltz

Award-winning, critically acclaimed, passionate and playful, Al & Amy are an acoustic music duo that draws inspiration from musical traditions across the globe and distills these myriad styles into a rich and unique voice – a timeless recipe for healing, heartfelt music.

Al & Amy's sound is an exciting blend of original, traditional, contemporary Celtic- and Appalachian-influenced music. They offer a repertoire that includes extensive instrumental work as well as a fine touch of vocals and features acoustic guitars, mandolin, Celtic harp, banjo, piano and world percussion. They are among the most respected and well-loved acts in the acoustic music scene.

Al and Amy were Artists in Residence at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and Warren Wilson College. Their signature sound is heard often on NPR, satellite, internet and independent radio stations. Al and Amy's music has also been used in soundtracks for independent films including Ken Burns' documentaries on "Mark Twain" and most recently, the Emmy Award winning "The National Parks - America's Greatest Idea" and "Baseball - The Tenth Inning." While living in the Washington, D.C. area, Al & Amy won a grand total of 50 WAMMIES from the Washington Area Music Association in the Folk, Celtic and New Age categories as well as 5 separate grants from the Maryland State Arts Council for both composition and instrumental performance. In 2001, Al & Amy received a coveted INDIE Award in the acoustic instrumental category from the Association for Independent Music for their album Gratitude. In 2005, Al received a GRAMMY Award from NARAS (National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences) for his solo fingerstyle guitar contribution to the pop instrumental compilation, Pink Guitar.

In the autumn of 2002, Al & Amy packed up their cats, their music studio, photography equipment & art supplies and moved from Takoma Park, MD to the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina just outside of Asheville, NC. Al & Amy’s ridge top home now provides endless inspiration for their many creative passions: these include music, of course, but also photography, reading, gardening, bird- and wildlife-watching, mountain-gazing and hiking. The rich cultural and natural history of their new home has been a large influence on their more recent recordings Winter Tidings, Golden Wing, Acoustic Journey and Land of the Sky: musical inspirations from the Southern Appalachians.

Their multi-media show, "Land of the Sky” combines live music with projections of Al & Amy's nature photography of the Southern Appalachians. Since Al worked at the National Geographic Society for eighteen years, Al & Amy’s photographs are part of the archives of the National Geographic and their work is represented world-wide by the National Geographic Image Collection. The “Land of the Sky” multi-media show debuted on "Earth Day" at the National Geographic’s Grosvenor Auditorium in the spring of 2005 and continues to be a very popular presentation.