Molly Mason
Molly Mason is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer. Raised in Washington State, she performed in West Coast clubs before moving to Minnesota to perform as a member of the house band for Garrison Keillor's public radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. In the late 1970s, she began a lifelong creative and romantic partnership with Bronx-born fiddler Jay Ungar, whom she married in 1991. Together, they joined the acoustic quintet Fiddle Fever, whose arrangement of Ungar's "Ashokan Farewell" famously served as the signature musical theme for Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Civil War. Performing primarily as the duo Jay & Molly, their subsequent career included releasing albums, composing film scores for documentaries, performing at the White House, and co-founding the influential Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps in the Catskill Mountains.
In the newsletter
- No. 21 Fall 1999