Shauncey Ali Quartet

bluegrass · folk · newgrass

The Shauncey Ali Quartet is the band of Madison, Wisconsin fiddler, composer and educator Shauncey Ali, with Hans Holzen on acoustic and electric guitar, Nicholas Vanhaute on mandolin and David Havas on upright bass. Ali came to the fiddle from classical strings: he began on viola as a third-grader in a school strings program and earned a full viola scholarship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, playing club gigs alongside conservatory-style training. He won the RockyGrass fiddle championship in 2014, and his playing draws on bluegrass together with Celtic and Nordic fiddle traditions and touches of pop, rock and classical writing. The quartet's material is largely original and arrangement-driven rather than a string of head-solos-head features; the band describes it as melody-led and interspersed with solos, soundscapes and instrumental storytelling, aiming to be virtuosic but accessible. Ali's debut fiddle album under his own name is The Blue Hour. He has performed with Peter Gabriel and worked with the Katie McNally Trio and the Wisconsin string band Graminy. Alongside performing, Ali founded MadFiddle in 2012, a youth fiddle school in Madison whose graduates have gone on to Berklee College of Music and the Oberlin Conservatory; he has taught privately for roughly two decades and teaches at festival camps. He has written two instructional books, composed theme music for an Ambie-nominated podcast, and started Strapsey, a line of decorative instrument-case straps sold to folk musicians nationally. The Madison Area Music Association named him Teacher of the Year in 2016 and Instrumentalist of the Year in 2022. The quartet plays listening rooms and folk venues around Wisconsin and the upper Midwest.

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