Tara. O’Grady’s
Black Velvet Band
Tara O’Grady - Band Leader
Born in NYC to Irish immigrants, Tara O’Grady is a singer-songwriter, author, intuitive educator, tour guide, and self proclaimed Bliss Ambassador. She has recorded five albums of original jazz, blues, and folk music, and has published two memoirs – Migrating Toward Happiness: The Soundtrack to My Spiritual Awakening (2019), and The Gods of Clown Alley (2023). With a masters degree in education, Tara has taught writing, literature, film, drama, musical theater, and imaginative thinking at schools, universities, and art centers including her decade at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. As a member of IASD - the International Association for the Study of Dreams, she collaborates with scientists, psychotherapists and artists from across the globe and presents at their annual conferences in Europe and America. She is currently writing a children’s chapter book series on dreams.
Charles Frommer - Saxophone / Clarinet
Charles has been playing music of many styles professionally since his high school days in Bloomington, Indiana. After attending music school in Boston, he worked there and in New York City before moving to the Hudson Valley in 1998. He is currently a member of Swing Vipers and Tillson Jazz Ensemble and continues to do freelance work in and around the area.
Click on their names to learn more about them!Daniel Kelly - Piano
Pianist and composer Daniel Kelly creates work that explores the meeting place of music with literature, visual art and journalism. He has been commissioned by 13 performing arts centers throughout the country to transform peoples’ stories into concert-length works celebrating our shared human experience. Kelly’s music has been declared “powerfully moving” by Time Out New York. He has performed with a long list of jazz musicians such as Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, Sheila Jordan, Don Byron, Donny McCaslin, Harvie S, Bobby Sanabria and many others, as well as hip-hop star Lauryn Hill & the cutting-edge modern classical group Bang on a Can All-Stars. Kelly toured throughout Southeast Asia and India as a part of the Kennedy Center/US State Department-sponsored Jazz Ambassador program. For over 15 years, he was co-artistic director of Connection Works, an artist-led non-profit organization that has produced over 400 concerts in Brooklyn and is the Curator for the Jazz at the Lake festival in Lake George, NY. He has composed for various jazz ensembles, chamber orchestra, string quartet, film & multimedia theater works.
Trifon Dimitrov - Bass
Trifon was born in Pleven, Bulgaria. After graduating the National Academy of Music in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2002, Trifon moved to Frankfurt, Germany where he studied and performed until 2004. In 2004 he began studying at Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music in New York. He is honored to be a student of the jazz legend Ron Carter. Trifon has performed at numerous Jazz Festivals, clubs, TV, Radio, and Broadway shows. Currently based in New York, Trifon actively performs in the USA and around the world.