Meet the Band!

Blake has been playing fiddle since he was a small child, performing classical as well as traditional music. He traveled to London with his Orchestra as well as Ireland for musical performances and competitions, and picked up the concertina in his early 20s. 

Up until 2020, he was working as a sushi chef, but he packed up his knives and decided to play music full-time! You can watch a slice-of-life video he posted from his sushi days at Tomo in Arcata (with music by Blake and Quinn Bachand) on YouTube.

Now Blake teaches fiddle and concertina to students of all ages. Many of his students are kids, but he teaches students of all ages and experience levels. If you'd like to see the kind of fun they get up to, you can watch a Blake Ritter Fiddle Academy performance from 2022 on Facebook.

Blake is currently available for solo gigs (teaching and performing on both instruments), as well as group performances with Ceo, Harmonic Convergence, and Covered With Moss...

Harmonic Convergence is a duo with Tai Evans (sometimes as trio with Alina) performing modern and trad folk songs around the Humboldt and Mendocino counties. You can hear them in this YouTube duet.

Covered With Moss is a trio with Chris Hinderyckx and Sam McNeill, performing trad tunes around California, at festivals such as KVMR Celtic Festival. You can hear them in this YouTube video.

Blake has also performed with Summer McCall, when she was based in Arcata CA. They performed at KVMR and as a duo around California. You can hear them playing in this YouTube video.

You can listen find out more about Blake in this recent interview on Humboldt Hot Air (97.4 FM) here.

Alina started playing the uilleann pipes in May 2020 after finishing grad school and traveling to Scotland and Ireland.  She has been playing pipes every day since then. Every 3rd Thursday, she posts a video celebrating another month of daily piping on her Instagram page, alina_uilleanna.

Before the pipes, she played whistles, hurdy gurdy, guitar, violin. Pretty much any instrument she could get her hands on! She also sang in her college choirs – both the Women's Chorus and The Community Chorale – and continued singing for some time with the Oakland-based Bay Area Classical Harmonies, (BACH Chorus).

Alina also has a long history with dance, and would teach and DJ dances as a board member for East Bay Waltz. For a time, she was on the Starry Plough Céilí Band céilí committee, after co-founding Céilí Without Ceilings, a casual outdoor Irish dance picnic. You'll often find her playing for dances at the Plough and Stars in SF. 

Alina first came to the music through dance, bringing a whistle to the Starry Plough and sitting in on the céilí band in 2013, before she even knew what an Irish session was. Finding a welcoming community of musicians through her local sessions in Berkeley and Santa Cruz helped to further ignite her passion for the music!

She currently works part-time for the Lark in the Morning Music Store (constructing newsletters and writing articles for the website). You can often find her working the Lark Store booth at Lark Camp in the summertime. 

Alina has also recently stepped into the role of board member for the San Francisco Folk Music Club (SFFMC). She has been doing some social media work and manages the SFFMC Instagram page. She performs and leads sessions and workshops at various musical gatherings that the club puts on throughout the year.

In her spare time, Alina enjoys illustrating, attending sessions, and transcribing tunes  ^__^