Jay Ansill

Ansill has worked as a collaborator with Robin Williamson, Tony Trischka, Maria del Mar Bonet, Anthony Green Rodney Anonymous (of the Dead Milkmen), Marah, and Honeychurch.

He became interested in folk music while at Cheltenham High School and before long he was playing mandolin and fiddle at square dances and Irish Ceilis.

While still in high school, he formed the Schuylkill Valley Nature Boys, a band that played all kinds of folk music and became well known in Philadelphia in the early 1980s for a station ID they recorded for WXPN FM.

The emotional power and stylistic adventurousness of Ansill's music also owes a great deal to the literature of the twentieth century, particularly the work of Laura Riding, Robert Graves and James Joyce.

[2] He was also nominated for two Barrymore Awards in the same year for theatrical scores for productions of The Grapes of Wrath and Charlotte's Web at the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia.

In 2004, he was awarded an Independence Foundation grant and spent two months in Majorca and Barcelona learning traditional music from the region.