Danny Knicely comes from a musical family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that has been steeped in a mountain music tradition for generations. He has used his roots in old-time and bluegrass to explore many musical styles from Irish, Jazz and Latin, to the various types of music he encountered while performing and studying music in India, Nepal, Tibet, and China. As a multi-instrumentalist, Danny has won many awards for his mandolin, guitar, and fiddle expertise, including first place in the mandolin contest at the prestigious Telluride Bluegrass Festival. His masterful mandolinistry and original compositions can be heard on his solo CD “Roots and Branches”. He is also in great demand as a producer, arranger, and session musician and has participated in countless recording projects for many studios in and around the Washington, D.C. area including Patuxent Records, Mapleshade Records, and Cabin Studios. Danny has years of experience as a professional musician performing in many bands of varying musical styles and has recorded and toured nationally and internationally with many groups such as the award winning Magraw Gap, Furnace Mountain, Corn Tornado, Purgatory Mountain, and a multi-cultural dance troupe called Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble. He has also performed with Leftover Salmon, Keller Williams, Vassar Clements, Tony Rice, Mac Wiseman, Tim O’Brien, Michelle Shocked, Sam Bush, Col. Bruce Hampton, Larry Keel, Robin and Linda Williams, Daryl Anger, Corey Harris, Bassekou Kouyate, Jeff Coffin, and Adrian Belew. Danny is also musical director for the Mountain Music Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to serving traditional musicians worldwide and plays a major roll in a feature length documentary film called “The Mountain Music Project”. The film follows two Appalachian musicians on a journey through rural Nepal and Virginia while they explore the extraordinary connections between these two mountain cultures. He has co-conducted lectures on the similarities and differences between Appalachian and Himalayan music at Columbia University, The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and for Asia Network. A few festivals where Danny has performed are Merlefest, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Rockygrass, Grey Fox, Philadelphia Folk Festival, Wheatland Music Festival (Michigan), Smilefest, DelFest, and FloydFest. Some venues he has played are The Smithsonian, National Geographic headquarters, The Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts, The Strathmore, The Prism Coffeehouse (Charlottesville, VA), The Birchmere, The House of Blues (Los Angeles, CA), and The Fillmore (San Francisco, CA). www.dannyknicely.com