Sara Milonovich

Sara Milonovich

Sara Milonovich is an award-winning singer, fiddler, songwriter/composer, and bandleader as well as a sought-after accompanist for a number of other artists in many musical genres. In addition to fronting her indie alt-grass band, Daisycutter, she has performed throughout the US, Europe, and beyond, in Americana roots, folk-rock, bluegrass, Appalachian, and Celtic music, as a solo artist and in collaboration with artists such as Pete Seeger (on his Grammy-winning album “At 89”), Richard Shindell, Cathie Ryan, Eliza Gilkyson, The McKrells, Anne Hills, and Antje Duvekot, among others. With upstate stringband, Mountain Quickstep, she toured Kosovo, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Turkey in 2011 as part of The Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad, a cultural diplomacy program sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center and the US State Department. Sara has also composed music for VoiceTheatre’s 2012 production of Lovers and 2013 production of Birds on a Wire.

Growing up on a working farm in rural upstate New York, she began playing fiddle when she was four, and by nine was leading her own band (around the same time she learned to drive a tractor.) She joined the Adirondack Fiddlers at age seven, and had the opportunity to learn firsthand a variety of fiddle tunes and styles common in NY from older generations of fiddlers who grew up playing local dances at grange halls and lumber camps. At age twelve she released her first cassette of traditional fiddle tunes, Traditionally, Sara. In June 2001, Sara traveled to Mt. Airy, North Carolina, where she competed in both the Bluegrass Fiddle and Folk Song contests, placing first and second, respectively.

Her CD, ‘Daisycutter’, released in 2009, was a nominated Grammy semifinalist, as was her debut CD, ‘Miss Ippy Fiddle’, released in 1998. Her first CD with Greg Anderson, ‘Forward In All Directions!’, made the Top Ten World Music list in the Village Voice ‘Pazz & Jop’ Critic’s Poll of 2004. Her song, “Scarecrow”, was a Folk Category finalist in the 2010 John Lennon Songwriting Contest, and her song, “Newsprint”, was a semifinalist in the 2012 Show Me the Music Songwriting Contest. She continues to teach traditional music in schools and universities throughout the US, as part of American cultural outreach programs abroad, in workshops/masterclasses at festivals, and in private fiddle lessons. Her sophomore release with Daisycutter, “Waiting for the Stars,” is due out in 2015.