Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards
Laura Cortese might best be described as a sonic magpie: a curious and resourceful adventurer traversing great distances, collecting melodies and rhythms that glitter like jewels in the sun. Driven by the gravitational pull of human connection, her tendency towards exploration and collaboration have led her into countless niches, each providing its own unique feather with which to decorate her distinct and ever-evolving sound. But all of these explorations have one thing in common: the power of strings. This may seem limiting to some. To her, it is anything but. “Strings are at the core of what I do,” she says. “Genre is secondary to that palate.
“Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards create a stunning, forward-looking sound that charts a path for innovation in folk music.
Starting as a young child picking up the fiddle for the first time, Cortese has used these strings to tie herself to others, forging connections across age, genre, and identity. After a Californian childhood filled with Celtic music camps, Cortese went on to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston and formed her first band, Halali, in 2000.
Her early career explorations didn’t end with performance. Cortese also adopted the philosophy of learning by teaching, co-founding a music camp from which to grow community and artistry. Alongside Shannon Heaton, Cortese co-founded the Boston Celtic Music Festival in 2003, which she describes as “kind of a thank you to the community that had nurtured me and that I grew up in.” To this day, this festival celebrates and uplifts the deep Celtic folk music traditions that exist within Boston’s music scene, honoring the shared repertoire and musical vocabulary of the artists that perform and jam there. Conversely, in 2011, she partnered with Kristin Andreassen to found Miles of Music Camp, which brings together repertoire-based folk musicians with contemporary songwriters. The goal of this camp is not only to introduce these diverse musicians to new genres and musical catalogs, but to build community and spark creativity. “The two groups are in awe of each other and they start to work together,” notes Cortese, describing the unique magic that is found among the attendees and instructors at Miles of Music camps, “They find their own connections.”
All of these threads have joined together, culminating in her work leading the musicians’ collective known as Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards. Here, she showcases all of her varied experience and expertise–as a master fiddler, an instructor, a leader, and a musical collaborator–using it to craft a new sound from whole cloth: a nearly symphonic hybrid of countless traditions and influences, full of layered vocal harmonies and rich interplays of virtuosic string instrumentation.
Laura Cortese has built a career weaving together a musical tapestry as diverse as it is masterful, highlighted with experiences like playing the Newport Folk Festival with Pete Seeger in 2009, standing onstage at the iconic Carnegie Hall in New York with Band of Horses in 2009, and a stint touring alongside Uncle Earl in 2007. She has recorded with artists ranging from Aoife O’Donovan and Brittany Haas to Tao Rodriguez Seeger and Session Americana, and has released 7 albums under her own name. She has toured across the globe, acting as an ambassador of American music on behalf of the US State Department by performing and teaching in India, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Estonia, Greece, Ukraine, and Montenegro. Now, she holds space and builds community for musicians in Belgium as the co-founder of the monthly Bright Lights Session in Ghent. As always, her vision is as expansive as her background. “We’re working to basically write a new folk tradition,” she says. Were it anyone else, you’d think it impossible. But with Laura Cortese at the helm? It just might come true.