Stefan Senders

I have been playing the banjo for more than 20 years. I learned first from Sandy Davis, and then from musicians around the SF Bay area including Molly Tannenbaum, Brendan Doyle, and Greg and Jere Canote. I later had the chance to learn from Tommy Jarrell and from other great fiddlers in Galax and Mt. Airy, where I lived in the early 1980s. Later, in Boston, I took up with the Chicken Chokers, and with Mark Graham. I also played for many years with Ruthie Dornfeld, and with Daniel Steinberg and Paul Kotapish of the Hillbillies from Mars. Later Rafe Stefaninni, Carol Elizabeth Jones and I formed the Wildcats; we released a couple of recordings on the Marimac label, and with the Kentucky Warblers we toured Southeast Asia. In addition to the old-time banjo picking, I’ve also played West African drums with the Agbekor Drum and Dance Ensemble, and I’ve studied drumming in Ghana with Godwin Agbeli and Fuseni Alhassan. I’ve taught banjo and drumming at music camps around the country, including Port Townsend Festival of Fiddle Tunes, Ashokan, Fiddlehead, and the Augusta Heritage Festival.