“Lorraine Hammond is the most versatile dulcimer player I know,” observes North Carolina dulcimer wizard Don Pedi. Lorraine’s numerous credits as a traditional singer, songwriter, teacher and instrumentalist include her groundbreaking Shanachie release with fiddler Gerry Milnes, Hell Up Coal Holler, a Homespun dulcimer instruction series, and two elegant Appalachian dulcimer books with Yellow Moon Press. Lorraine also plays, performs on and teaches five string banjo, mandolin and harp. Lorraine’s new CD, The Opal Ring, on the Snowy Egret label, combines the traditional New England ballads of her childhood with her own songs drawn from that childhood in the Connecticut Berkshires. Reviewer Mark Flanagan observes: “Lorraine Lee Hammond opens her latest CD with some of the sweetest notes ever produced on the mountain dulcimer.” Lorraine is Music Director of the WUMBfm SAMW programs, and a lecturer in American Folk Music and World Music at Lasell College in Newton, MA. She and her husband, guitarist Bennett Hammond, have been touring, teaching and performing and recording together for the past thirty years.