BIO
Alan Epstein has been playing music since his college days in the early 1970's when his father bought him his first mandolin. Over the past 50 years, he has studied with some of the top mandolin players in the world, and has played in bluegrass bands in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Michigan and Upstate New York. Alan was the founder of the modern day Pittsburgh Mandolin Orchestra (2002), was a contributing writer to Mandolin Magazine (2004-2005) and in 2004 was a recipient of the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Apprenticeship in Traditional Arts grant, which allowed him to study mandolin with the great Russian/Gypsy mandolinist Charley Rappaport.
As a teacher, Alan has taught mandolin workshops at Calliope in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Michigan, at Augusta Heritage "Bluegrass Week" in Elkins, West Virginia, at the Classical Mandolin Society of America Conventions in 2015 and 2017 and at the Fiddleheads Acoustic Music Camp in New Hampshire. Since 2012 he has been a Wernick Method Bluegrass Jam Instructor teaching bluegrass jamming to folks in Upstate New York and at music camps across the country.
As as a performer Alan has played on stage in duet format with the great Italian mandolinist Carlo Aonzo, was a special guest member of Don Julin's Neptune Quartet, and appeared with Charley Rappaport & the Great American Gypsies at the 2004 CMSA Convention in Philadelphia. Alan can currently be seen and heard playing local Strolling Mandolin gigs, filling in as guest mandolinist with the Upstate Bluegrass Band at the Saratoga Race Track. and as a Volunteer musician at the Glens Falls Hospital playing solo mandolin in the hospital lobby.