photo: Robert Smith
Mark Dvorak (4:15 p.m) will be honored by the Woodstock Folk Festival with its Seventh Annual Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his work as a performer, songwriter, and educator.
One of the Festival’s most popular performers over the years, Mark most recently participated by giving the “Spontaneous Folk Ensemble Workshop” in 2005. Mark Dvorak has been called “a folk singer’s folk singer who follows unerringly in the footsteps of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.” As a matter of fact, Dvorak even performs in Weavermania! a local group that recreates and pays tribute to the sound of the legendary Weavers, which included Pete Seeger. Like Seeger, Dvorak can have a crowd singing along in no time. Mark’s songwriting has been called “wondrous” and “profound.”
Mark’s accomplished guitar and banjo playing is complemented by his broad repertoire and his warm personality. Performing and teaching for about three decades, Mark released his first CD of original songs in 2006.
Mark’s roots are in Chicago, but since 1981, he has been crossing the country performing, teaching and learning all the while. He’s visited big cities where his concerts and recordings have been hailed as “a refreshing portrait of the living folk tradition,” and he’s traveled many a back road to some out-of-the-way place or little town where the sounds and songs of the American experience seem more deeply rooted and where his performance comes across like a friendly conversation with neighbors.
Mark teaches at the Old Town School of Folk Music. At their 50th Anniversary Concert in December, he led fellow performers and a sold-out crowd at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago in a rousing finale. Through his stories and songs Mark has kept alive the history of the school and its founders. He has also received the prestigious Peter Lisagor Award for Best Radio Feature for his radio documentary Leadbelly’s Legacy. The Chicago Tribune has called Mark “masterful.”
Mark's most current CD, What a Wonderful World: A Family Folk Sampler, includes 23 songs from earlier out-of-print CDs and four new songs recorded with Sons of the Never Wrong.
For more information about Mark Dvorak, visit his website at MarkDvorak.com.
