Our history
It started with a chance meeting in the late 1970s. Jay & Molly were each performing at the Towne Crier, a rural New York club. They hit it off musically and played together from time to time until Molly headed off to Minnesota to work in the house band of a new radio show: Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. Meanwhile, back in New York, Jay put together a band with fellow fiddlers Evan Stover and Matt Glaser and guitarist Russ Barenberg. When Fiddle Fever, as the collaboration was called, needed a bassist, Molly signed on. The group recorded two classic LPs, now available on CD as The Best of Fiddle Fever (Flying Fish Records).
He was a Bronx kid.
She grew up in Washington State.
He was raised on pop music of the 1940s and ’50s.
She had a fondness for traditional fiddle music and ’30s and ’40s popular tunes.
He hung out in Greenwich Village coffeehouses and roamed North Carolina and Tennessee in search of traditional players.
She played clubs and colleges on the West Coast and took a liking to the jazzy sound of the Swing Era.
Since joining forces—both artistically and romantically (the two would marry in 1991)—Jay Ungar and Molly Mason have become one of the most celebrated duos on the American acoustic music scene.
The early ’80s also saw the beginning of Jay’s Ashokan Music & Dance Camps, a world-renowned destination for enthusiasts of American music and dance traditions. Several years later, Molly became a full partner in designing and running these programs, which are still going strong.
1984 found Fiddle Fever band members Matt Glaser and Russ Barenberg working with a young filmmaker on a documentary called The Brooklyn Bridge. They gave Ken Burns a copy of Fiddle Fever’s second LP, Waltz of the Wind, which included Jay’s Ashokan Farewell. Burns was so taken with the evocative and haunting melody, he used it in his next film, Huey, about Louisiana Governor Huey Long, and he wound up inviting Jay & Molly to provide music for many of his projects. The high point to date of this long relationship was the selection of Ashokan Farewell as the main theme of Burns’ landmark PBS documentary The Civil War. The result: an Emmy nomination for Jay and a Grammy for the soundtrack album. And the tune seems to have taken on a life of its own. Now considered an American “folk” classic, it is played by fiddlers and classical musicians worldwide. In the British Isles, a recording of Ashokan Farewell by Her Majesty’s Royal Marines has remained high on the classical charts for several years. It has been performed by major orchestras, and has been recorded by artists from Mark O’Connor to Pinchas Zuckerman, James Galway to Charlie Byrd, Jerry Garcia, David Grisman and The Osborne Brothers to Polka King Jimmy Sturr.
After signing with Angel Records in 1991, Jay & Molly—in collaboration with baritone Thomas Hampson and pianist David Alpher—released American Dreamer, a collection of the songs of Stephen Foster. They followed with Waltzing with You, their score for the film Brother’s Keeper, a Sundance Film Festival prizewinner. Perhaps the duo’s best-known composition is the title track of The Lovers’ Waltz, an album of romantic fiddle music from Appalachian, Scandinavian, Celtic, Klezmer and Swing traditions. The CD also features a medley of melodies written by composer James Horner—ones that Jay had previously performed with the London Symphony in Horner’s score for the Sony Tristar film Legends of the Fall. Harvest Home, Jay & Molly’s 1999 release on Angel Records, culminates in their 20-minute orchestral work, The Harvest Home Suite, in which they are joined by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra. In 2002, Jay & Molly produced, arranged and performed on A Song of Home, a collaborative recording for RCA, with flutist Sir James Galway, mandolinist Peter Ostroushko and bassist Steve Rust. Now, with Relax Your Mind (Angel Records), Jay & Molly, with their band Swingology, take a slightly different direction: American dance music with a focus on country blues and swing. Included are more of the beautiful waltzes that have become their signature pieces.
On radio and television, Jay & Molly have appeared on CBS Good Morning, The Rosie O’Donnel Show, All Things Considered, A Prairie Home Companion, and the BBC’s Transatlantic Sessions. And they have no shortage of future musical projects.
Quite the odyssey for the West Coast girl and the kid from the Bronx.
Our bands
Jay Ungar & Molly Mason
with Mike + Ruthy of the Mammals
If you love American roots music, don’t miss this amazing family band!
Jay & Molly are masters of music and storytelling who generously share their lives and their music with audiences. They achieved international acclaim when their performance of Jay’s composition Ashokan Farewell became the musical hallmark of Ken Burns’ The Civil War on PBS.
You may know Ruth Ungar and Mike Merenda from their groundbreaking singing and songwriting careers as Mike + Ruthy and as leaders of the Indie-Folk band The Mammals. Growing up in a musical family, Ruth cut her teeth on traditional music. Mike favored rock and ska before he found his way into acoustic music. They bring their impressive multi-instrumental skills and compelling vocal performances to the mix.
Double fiddles, sweet harmonies and rhythmic energy abound as two generations collaborate, entertaining you with music from the heart and soul of America.
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Swingology
If you’ve loved Jay Ungar and Molly Mason in concert, know this: It’s even better when Swingology takes the stage.
The group, including some of Jay & Molly’s all-time favorite musicians, morphs from string band to swing band, Cajun band to Celtic band, country band to Civil War-era dance orchestra! Expect to hear tunes from Fats Waller, Stephen Foster, Hank Williams and Leadbelly-plus Jay & Molly’s classic originals like Ashokan Farewell and The Lovers’ Waltz. Long known for performing a wide range of musical styles, Jay & Molly and their friends explore each idiom with remarkable fidelity.
Swingology grew out of the strong musical ties Jay & Molly have enjoyed while running their annual Ashokan Music & Dance Camps near Woodstock, New York. The group’s personnel may vary from show to show, but frequently includes Peter Davis (clarinet, sax, piano, banjo, mandolin, guitar, whistle and vocals), and Dave Davies (trombone and vocals), plus bassist Harry Aceto and drummer Jerry Marotta who never fail to provide the infectiously perfect groove for every tune and genre.
Ashokan Farewell
The story of Ashokan Farewell
Ashokan Farewell was named for the Ashokan Center, an historic nature and cultural in the Catskill Mountains not far from Woodstock, New York. It’s the place where Jay & Molly have run the Ashokan Music & Dance Camps for adults and families since 1980.
Ashokan is the name of a town, most of which is now under a very beautiful and magical body of water called the Ashokan Reservoir, which provides drinking water for New York City one hundred miles to the south. Locally, it’s pronounced a-shó-kun, a-shó-kan, or sometimes ásh-o-kán.
The late Alf Evers, our local historian, once told me that the name Ashokan first appeared as a place name in 17th century Dutch records. He thought it was likely a corruption of a local Lenape Indian word meaning, “a good place to fish,” but we’re still not sure.
I composed Ashokan Farewell in 1982 shortly after our Music & Dance Camps had come to an end for the season. I was feeling a great sense of loss and longing for the music, the dancing and the community of people that had developed at Ashokan that summer. I was having trouble making the transition from a secluded woodland camp with a small group of people who needed little excuse to celebrate the joy of living, back to life as usual, with traffic, newscasts, telephones and impersonal relationships. By the time the tune took form, I was in tears. I kept it to myself for months, unable to fully understand the emotions that welled up whenever I played it. I had no idea that this simple tune could affect others in the same way.
Ashokan Farewell was written in the style of a Scottish lament. I sometimes introduce it as, “a Scottish lament written by a Jewish guy from the Bronx.” I lived in the Bronx until the age of sixteen.
In 1983, our band, Fiddle Fever, was recording its second album, Waltz of the Wind, and we needed another slow tune. We tried my yet unnamed lament. The arrangement came together in the studio very quickly with a beautiful guitar solo by Russ Barenberg, string parts by Evan Stover and upright bass by Molly Mason. Now it needed a name. Molly suggested the title, Ashokan Farewell. It seemed right to me.
Filmmaker Ken Burns heard the album in 1984 and was immediately taken by Ashokan Farewell. He soon asked to use it in his upcoming PBS series The Civil War. The original Fiddle Fever recording is heard at the opening of the film, and this and other versions are heard twenty five times for a surprising total of 59 minutes and 33 seconds of the eleven hour series. Molly and I, along with members of Fiddle Fever and pianist Jacqueline Schwab played much of the 19th century music heard throughout the soundtrack. Ashokan Farewell is the only contemporary tune that was used.
– Jay Ungar
Press
Jay Ungar & Molly Mason are masters of music and storytelling who generously share their lives and their music with audiences. There are so many moments and strands to savor in the course of an evening of their music.
Jay’s fiddling is brimming with playfulness, drama, soulfulness and technical verve, as he explores the many musical styles and idioms that he has internalized and made his own. Molly’s total mastery and inventiveness on piano and guitar is always spot-on, as she supports the tunes and follows the flow of the melody. Her rich and expressive vocals along with the resonant strains of Jay’s violin, reveal the deep emotions that flow in the duos veins.
Millions were entranced by the music they did for Ken Burns’ PBS documentary The Civil War. Their performance of the series’ signature tune, Jay’s haunting composition, Ashokan Farewell, earned the couple international acclaim. The soundtrack won a Grammy and Ashokan Farewell was nominated for an Emmy.
This simple, but powerful melody was originally inspired by the week-long Ashokan Music & Dance Camps that Jay & Molly run for adults and families at The Ashokan Center in the Catskill Mountains. People attend the camps to become better fiddlers, guitarists, mandolin players, percussionists, dancers, dance callers and instructors—and in doing so they become links in the chain that helps pass our folk heritage from the people who came before us, to those who will follow.