An Evening of Irish Music with Donna Long, Peter Brice and Samantha Suplee at the Historic Lyceum

Donna Long was born in Los Angeles, California. When she was five years old, she began taking piano lessons with her father, Byron Long, a jazz/classical pianist who instilled in Donna a love for music. As a child, Donna was exposed to many different genres of music, including players from the old and new Jazz eras, Classical, Scottish, Indian, and African.

In 1978, she moved to the Baltimore/Washington, DC area and heard fiddler, Brendan Mulvihill playing Irish music. He inspired her to pick up the fiddle and gave her a solid foundation in style and playing. She then began to accompany him on the piano and now Donna is considered one of the finest pianists playing Irish music. Along with Brendan Mulvihill, she has recorded two duet albums, The Steeplechase and The Morning Dew.

Donna passed her music on to her son Jesse Smith and helped produce his first solo recording entitled The Hurricane. In addition to these recordings Donna can be heard as a guest artist on many recordings backing up other musicians and also on the motion picture soundtrack Out of Ireland . A former member of the internationally acclaimed Irish group Cherish the Ladies , she has recorded five CDs with them. In the year 2000, the Smithsonian Institution asked Donna to represent Irish Music in the series, Piano Traditions celebrating 300 years of the piano. Donna was also commissioned by the Library of Congress in 2001 to write a composition for fiddle and piano. She wrote a slow air called Before the Snow Falls, and a reel to accompany the air called Pandora’s Box. These tunes were performed by Cherish the Ladies and can be found in the Library of Congress. Donna currently teaches Suzuki piano, Irish piano and Irish fiddle in the Baltimore/ Washington, DC area. Her first solo CD, Handprints, was released in June 2003.

Peter Brice sings old songs in a traditional style, and plays Irish traditional music on the button accordion. A native Annapolitan and an exponent of Baltimore, Maryland's Irish traditional music community, Peter's work blends singing and musicianship with musicology and history, humor, colorful design, and a vision for traditional culture as a foundation for an intellectual life.

A lifelong singer, Peter has married a repertoire of American historical songs with a wide-ranging English-language style that he gleaned from his mentors Dónal Maguire, Louisa Jo Killen, and Lisa Null, as well as from members of his family.

His playing reflects his admiration for Galway accordionists such as Joe Cooley and Kevin Keegan—a style into which he was initiated by Brooklyn-born accordionist and National Heritage Fellow Billy McComiskey. He advanced his playing under the tutelage of Derek Hickey from Adare, County Limerick. 

The core of Peter’s public work is the collection and revival of traditional music from Maryland, to which end, even as a teenager, he was rescuing orally-transmitted songs from local people who were born in the early 20th century.  He has collected and collated the compositions of Billy McComiskey, and is continuously collecting Irish and American traditional music in Baltimore and Anne Arundel County.

Peter is a steadfast teacher of traditional singing, and trains children and adults in vocal technique, traditional style, and declamation.  He also teaches the button accordion, music theory, and, as an affiliate to Irish dancing schools, supplements dance instruction with an architecture for developing proficiency in Irish traditional music.

He is a former vice-chair of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann’s O’Neill-Malcom Branch in Washington, D.C. and a past co-coordinator of the Washington Folk Festival. He founded the Baltimore Singers Club with singers Andy O’Brien and Pat Egan to promote traditional singing in Maryland, and was a founding member of the Old Bay Ceili Band. With singers Lisa Null and Judy Cook, he created a project—Yankee Frolics—to revive traditional songs about the War of 1812 for the bicentennial of that conflict.

In 2014, he and his mentor Billy McComiskey were recognized by the Maryland State Arts Council as a traditional arts master-apprentice pair. He received the Maryland Traditions Apprenticeship Award again in 2019 with singer Lisa Null.  He has independently written over $32,000 in awarded grants for Maryland's Irish traditional music community. A graduate of the Peabody Conservatory Preparatory program, Peter also holds a BA in Irish Traditional Music and Dance from the University of Limerick. He has served the New Century American Irish-Arts Company as its executive director since its inception in 2011.

Samantha Suplee is a fiddle player from Washington, D.C. She studied classical and traditional music with Mitch Fanning, Brendan Mulvihill, and Brian Conway, and has performed at the Embassy of Ireland in Washington, D.C., the Millenium Stage at the Kennedy Center, NYU’s Glucksman Irish House, the Penn Mar Irish Festival, and the Maryland Irish Festival, among others. In 2011, she competed in the All Ireland Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Cavan, Ireland. She is a regular guest with the New Century American Irish-Arts Company, and enjoys playing at various sessions in Annapolis and Washington, D.C.