The Performers

Chad Runyon (baritone) is a professional singer, conductor, and voice teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. For nearly a decade he toured and recorded as a member of the Grammy award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer. He performs frequently with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and was featured in the San Francisco Symphony's Emmy award-winning PBS special Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He appears on over twenty recordings, including Sweet Irrational Worship, a solo recording of art songs by John Jacob Niles set to texts by Thomas Merton. www.chadrunyon.com

Sandra Jean Graham (producer, piano) is an ethnomusicologist at Babson College in Wellesley, MA, where she teaches humanities and music, and directs musical theater. Her research interests include nineteenth-century black sacred song, black jubilee groups, postbellum blackface minstrelsy, and black theater. For information on her publications as well as further information on black minstrel songs and performers see her research website, https://sites.google.com/site/grahamsandraj/home.

Lauren McNutt (soprano), Sara del Aguila (alto), Brendan Andrade (tenor), and David Kerns (bass) are at the time of this writing recent college-bound graduates of Chad Runyon's voice studio.

Joe Weed (producer, audio engineer) is the owner of Highland Studios in Los Gatos, CA. A fiddler and guitarist, he has released six albums of his own. He produces projects for independent artists and labels, and does soundtracks for films, TV, and museums. Recent works include his documentary The Waltz to Westphalia (2011); Hymn to the Big Sky, a tune included in Ken Burns' film The Dust Bowl (2013); Swanee — The Music of Stephen Foster (2000); Pa's Fiddle (music from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, 2010); and Spain in My Heart (2005), a collection of music from the Spanish civil war. http://www.joeweed.com/

All text and audio at The Songs of Sam Lucas website are licensed by Sandra Jean Graham under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.