Robin Petrie
Robin Petrie has been collecting and performing traditional music from around the world on the hammered dulcimer for many years. She also composes her own music and is known for her inspired improvisation.
A life-long world traveler, Robin has been deeply involved in dance since her childhood. She studied Scottish Highland dance and performed in competition as a child, studied flamenco in Spain and worked as a belly dancer in her twenties. She studied piano and the recorder in her youth and taught herself to play the hammered dulcimer in 1980.
Since then, she has recorded numerous albums and performed extensively throughout the US, Europe, New Zealand and Japan. She has taught many workshops on the hammered dulcimer and for twenty seven years she was the hammered dulcimer instructor on staff at the Lark in the Morning music camp in Mendocino, CA.
Robin recorded two solo albums of Christmas music for the Gourd label (A Victorian Christmas & A Victorian Noël) as well as participating in a great many other recordings on Gourd Music and other labels, having worked with Danny Carnahan, Martin Simpson, Henry Kaiser, Richard Thompson and many other musicians. For some years she performed in the San Francisco Bay Area with Panacea, an all woman band that played a Balkan repertoire. Panacea recorded one album. Robin currently plays traditional and improvisational music in a trio called Terra Incognita with Shira Kammen and Peter Maund.
During the pandemic lockdown Robin and Shelley Phillips got together to play music just for fun and companionship. Their similar musical taste and love of improvisation inspired them to collaborate on their album Bohemian Salon, a collection of tunes from around the globe (including one of Robin’s compositions) on the harp and hammered dulcimer.
Robin lives with her engaging cat Jockomo and splits her time between Berkeley and Bonny Doon, CA.
Shelley Phillips
Shelley Phillips (folk flutes/oboe/English horn/Irish harp) is much in demand as studio and pick-up musician for the professional folk and baroque crowd. As well as playing in a group with her family, she plays and tours with the Coulter/Phillips Ensemble and many other local groups. Also, Shelley has toured with Irish singer Éilis Kennedy and Irish piper Paddy Keenan. She and her husband Barry have collaborated with Rumi translator and poet Coleman Barks, making two albums of poetry and music: The Rose and Five Things to Say.
Shelley has appeared on over 20 recordings on the Gourd music label. Albums especially featuring Shelley are The Fairie Round, Pavane, The Butterfly, and The Wood Between the Worlds, as well as a duet album with Barry titled Wondrous Love.
Shelley has a Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, and continued her education on sabbatical studying with Sanjeev Shankar in India, Jean-Pierre Yvert in Wales, and Shirley Drake in England, as well as special classes in the Netherlands and Ireland.
She plays baroque period reproduction instruments with various orchestras such as Tempest in Halifax, NS. Shelley is the founder and director of the Community Music School of Santa Cruz, where she runs Celtic Camps for children, teens, adults, concerts, workshops, and other programs, including a recording label with albums of Christmas, Shaker and Shape Note music to benefit the school (communitymusicschool.org/cds)
In addition, she teaches at several other summer programs, including founding the Boxwood Flute Festival's children’s, teens' and seniors' programs in Nova Scotia and teaching music related crafts at various primitive skills gatherings in the west.
She also works as a music director within the Episcopal church, makes bamboo flutes with the English Piper's Guild (including representing America as a teacher at the international gathering in 2016), and directs the Santa Cruz Shape Note Society. She is the Santa Cruz County Arts Commission’s 2017 Artist of the Year. Shelley lives on the foggy California coast with her husband and cats.
