Amanda Witman

Music is for everyone. It’s as essential to healthy life as air and water. When people make music together regularly across age, class, and ability level, it makes their communities stronger.

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Amanda Witman smiling and holding an English concertina at the 2018 Northeast Squeeze-In — Photo Credit: Stewart Dean

About Amanda

Amanda Witman is a singer, song leader, and event organizer in Brattleboro, Vermont. Her love of harmony infuses her singing and playing. She also helps facilitate welcoming, community-based music opportunities where players, singers, and listeners at all levels are encouraged and supported.

She leads the monthly Brattleboro Pub Sing and the bi-annual Brattleboro Ballad Sing, and helps organize local pub sessions and the annual RiverJam Romp weekend. She sings with Vermont-based quartet Big Woods Voices, performing detailed, original art arrangements of poetry and world music; performs locally with friends; and occasionally performs solo, self-accompanying with English concertina and guitar.

News from Amanda

I’m thrilled to say that Cate Clifford and I will be sharing a house concert in Keene, NH on Sunday, April 6th at 7pm! Cate and I have been weaving in and out of each other’s singing lives for years, delighting in sharing harmonies at pub and shanty sings, in concert audiences, at parties, and tucked in quiet corners at camp. We are thrilled for the opportunity to join forces and perform together! For reservations, directions, and info, contact me or Kim Wallach.

I continue teaching a Traditional & Folk Singers’ Workshop at the Brattleboro Music Center from 6-7 pm on Thursday evenings during the school year. There are a couple of slots still available if you’re interested in joining! Participants share songs they’re working on or excited about, often “in progress” and unpolished; I teach songs here and there; and we talk about anything related to singing that has come up as part of the learning process. I’ve also started offering one-on-one support for those who want encouragement in developing confidence in their singing. Contact the BMC for more information.

The Brattleboro Pub Sing is alive and well, gathering from 3-5 pm on the 3rd Saturday of every month at the Tower Bar in Brattleboro, Vermont. All are welcome, and anyone is welcome to lead a song from memory with a good chorus for everyone to join in on. No experience or confidence is required. If you’re anywhere near Brattleboro, come sing!

Twice a year, in March and November, the Brattleboro Ballad Sing convenes on a Sunday at the Brattleboro Music Center for a couple of glorious hours of ballad swapping. The next one is on March 15, 2025 from 1-3 pm. Contact brattleboroballadsing@gmail.com for more info!

The Friends of the Greenfield Dance, Inc. have sponsored a series of pub sings at the Greenfield Grange. You do not have to have any experience or singing ability to come join in! The next one will be on Sunday, May 18th from 2:30-4:30 pm. For more info, contact FGD.

I’m helping out at the Connecticut Sea Music Festival this June in Essex, CT! I am super excited to have been upgraded from “person who attends” to “person who does helpful stuff.” If you haven’t been, I highly recommend it.

I’m also thrilled to be on staff at CDSS English Week at Pinewoods from August 2-9. I’ll be teaching a daily class for singers, leading a relaxed afternoon song session, playing concertina for Morris dancers, and other fun things! The week is geared primarily for those who enjoy English Country Dancing, but there is plenty of time and opportunity to explore adjacent traditions, and singing is a much-loved part of the week.
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RiverJam Romp planning is underway, and registration will open soon! The 4th Annual RiverJam Romp will take place from Friday, September 5 through Sunday September 7, 2025 at beautiful Potash Hill (the former Marlboro College campus). This event is close to my heart, as I’m one of the founders, along with Peter Siegel and Louisa Engle. There will be singing, jamming, dancing, workshops, connections, amazing food, and (of course) quite a lot of romping.

My a cappella quartet, Big Woods Voices, released a new CD in 2022! Called “Poetry in Harmony,” it features poetry beautifully arranged for our quartet in original compositions by Will Danforth. You can stream it on Spotify, or purchase it on Bandcamp or direct from us if you’re local.

Big Woods Voices also has a few concerts in store this spring! See our website for details (yet to be updated, but soon!), and join our mailing list for announcements.

I took the opportunity last summer to spend a week at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina taking part in Dance Musicians’ Week. I finally understand what the fuss is about! The Folk School is a strong model for inclusive, non-competitive, community-based teaching and learning. How wonderful to experience its magic. I brought some magic home with me and plan to sprinkle it liberally at RiverJam Romp!

The Daily Antidote of Song is an absolutely wonderful longstanding zoom-sing (4 years old and counting) that brings a variety of interesting song leaders together with singers around the country and across the world. Everyone is welcome, participation is free, everyone matters, and it’s a full half-hour of connection and song. Right up my alley! I had the opportunity to be part of the April 9th, 2024 Daily Antidote along with a lovely set of Brattleboro neighbors. Many thanks to Jo Rasi and Carpe Diem Arts for keeping this gem active!

Every year, I have a ton of fun at the Brattleboro Music School’s Northern Roots Festival, always on the last weekend of January. In 2024, I had the great honor of performing solo in the evening concert. If you missed it, you can catch it on YouTube: Northern Roots Festival 2024.

Mount Holyoke College’s Folk Music & Dance Society had Samuel Foucher and me co-lead a couple of pub sings in 2024. It was so much fun! We saw (as we often do) that many students have sing-along-able songs in their back pockets and don’t even realize it. We hope we’ll have a chance to sing with them again.

If you’re lucky, you can sometimes catch me singing informally on Sunday mornings with Shawn Magee and Peter Siegel at the Fire Arts Cafe on Route 30 in West Brattleboro. (Have a little crooning with your coffee and croissant?) Bring your musical self if you want to join in. Time varies, but you can often catch us warbling and jamming sometime between 9-11.

Sadly, after Tony Barrand and I spent the better part of a decade co-leading the Brattleboro Pub Sing and three and a half years as a Vermont Folklife Center master-and-apprentice team, that time ended when Tony passed away unexpectedly on January 29, 2022. I am very grateful to the VFC for their continued support of our work. Tony’s mentoring was unfailingly gracious and encouraging. He shared much with me, and I look forward to passing it on.

We’ve sung together many a time, and so will we yet.