Paul W. Ogle Cultural & Community Center

An internationally recognized musician with a wide-reaching and loyal fan base, Alison Brown has never limited herself to a single type of music. As a teenager, Brown honed her craft with some of the best pickers and singers in the industry before joining Alison Krauss & Union Station in the late 80s. Her distinctive voice on her instrument and efforts to push the banjo out of its familiar Appalachian settings and into new musical territory earned her international reputation as the best in her field. Much of her music has focused on melodic, jazz and jazz-inflected original compositions. The Alison Brown Quartet's "charm derives in large part from a delightfully colorful repertoire that manages to sound both rooted and fluid, traditional and contemporary." - Washington Post

Grammy award-winning artist Kathy Mattea hails from the Appalachian coal mines of West Virginia. A frequent performer on Mountain Stage, Mattea was a country-music hitmaker in the late '80s and early '90s before she made forays into Scottish folk, gospel and roots music, making her reputation as a consummate ''song-catcher.'' Her most recent album, Coal, reshapes the way listeners think about music, reminding us of why we love it so much in the first place. Says the singer, "Somewhere in my DNA, there's my great grandmother singing through me, with me." Her distinctive brand of classics mixed with new material continues to captivate audiences across the country.

San Francisco's The House Jacks is the original rock band without instruments. Using nothing more than their five voices, they deliver everything from blistering funk and rock to heart-melting ballads for their ever-growing legions of fans. Their music can also be heard on movie soundtracks and computer desktops worldwide and their radio spots for Rick Dees Top 40 have been heard by 50 million listeners. Their fourth album Unbroken won numerous awards, including "Pop/Rock Album of the Year" and "Pop/Rock Song of the Year" from the Contemporary A Cappella Society.

Drawing comparisons to the Blue Man Group and Stomp, The Umbilical Brothers are David and Shane performing a variety of fast-paced comedic routines that incorporate mime, physical movement and sound effects skills. Routines include everything from classic mime with a twist, to physical satire of tap dance to impossible contortionism illusions. Truly international, this Australian team has won the Australian Entertainment Industry's MO Award for Best Comedy Group for the last 5 years, the Critic's Choice Award at the 1995 Edinburgh Comedy Festival and the United Slapstick Award in Germany. Appropriate for adult patrons only.

Franc D'Ambrosio has the distinction of being the "World's Longest Running Phantom" in Andrew Lloyd Weber's The Phantom of the Opera. D'Ambrosio was discovered when Paramount Pictures sent five talent scouts on an exhausting two year international search to cast the character of opera singing Anthony Corleone in Godfather III. That search ended when they discovered D'Ambrosio in the chorus of his first Broadway show. Luciano Pavarotti and Barry Manilow both have asked D'Ambrosio to share the stage with them and he frequently collaborates with American Idol talent.