Matt Nakoa grew up on a small goat farm in Smyrna, NY, and began composing music as a teenager. Following a formative stint as a classical pianist, Matt won scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied alongside future Grammy winners St. Vincent and Esperanza Spaulding. After college, Matt toured with his band, The Fens, and eventually landed in New York City’s vibrant piano bar scene, where he quickly became a star performer at Manhattan’s Brandy’s Piano Bar, with lines of people waiting outside the door each Saturday night.
Matt’s piano music has received favorable reviews in publications including the New York Times, and his ?lm scoring has been featured by Disney. Matt now tours internationally, recently performing at The White House, throughout India, and regularly with folk music icon Tom Rush.
Heather Aubrey Lloyd wields a powerful tenor voice that flies from velvet to growl, providing just the right amount of force, grit, softness or sweetness a song calls for. She also has blossomed into an award-winning songwriter and performer, both solo and with the Baltimore-based band ilyAIMY.
Though interested in music her entire life, Heather did little more than play coffee houses for fun while she took an eight-year detour into journalism. A fateful encounter with percussionist Rob Spectre in Providence introduced Heather to the incredible expressiveness of African djembe in ilyAIMY’s first year of touring. Showing an incredible aptitude for the instrument, Heather has gone on to write a number of songs completely on the drum (like “Can You Love a Girl Gone So Long”) and has been recognized nationally through touring as the percussionist for Dar Williams on her 2008 Promised Land Tour.
The FOCUS event will be staged at Tikvat Israel; light refreshments will be available for purchase during intermission. Advance tickets are available through FOCUS’s website. FOCUS member pricing for tickets purchased at the door will be extended to Tikvat Israel members.
FOCUS is a non-profit organization whose mission “is to bring folk and acoustic music to a growing audience through performance, education and participation in the musical folk art.” Tikvat Israel and FOCUS have agreed to a partnership to bring folk music concerts to Tikvat Israel and the Montgomery County community.
