Songwriters in Reading featuring Janet Feld, Esther Friedman, Erin Ash Sullivan, and Aaron Tornberg

Janet Feld

Janet Feld is an award-winning performing songwriter, appearing at folk festivals and coffeehouses from coast to coast throughout a nearly four-decade career. She’s been teaching general music classes and private lessons to people of all ages since the 1980s. Since 2000, she’s been teaching guitar and songwriting at The Passim School of Music and is the founder and Chief Music Officer at Janet’s Planet: Music Lessons for Humanoids, Inc. She has recorded 5 CDs and published her first book in 2023 for music teachers Practicing Safe Music: Create an Emotionally Safe and Magical Space for Your Students…While Rocking Your Self-Care!

Esther Friedman

Esther is a Boston-based acoustic singer & songwriter. She started writing songs in the mid-nineties after moving to Boston, where buskers who braved street corners and t-stops inspired her. In 1998, a compilation called Respond picked up her song Moon Over The Water. The compilation, and her song, received accolades from Billboard Magazine. Encouraged, she recorded her first CD, Eve’s Lament, with producer John Sonntag of Thunder Pumpkin Records in 1999. In 2016, she completed a second record, a concept album called Cult Confessions — her original soundtrack to a true story about a cultic misadventure. She works as an expressive art therapist while performing and song writing as much as humanly possible.

Erin Ash Sullivan

In 2021, Erin released her debut solo album, We Can Hear Each Other, which reached #10 on the FAI Folk DJ Chart, and in 2023, she was a “Most Wanted” selection at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. She has won numerous songwriting awards, including the Rose Garden Coffeehouse Performing Songwriter Competition, the Mark Erelli Judge's Choice Award in the New England Songwriting Competition, the Great American Song Contest (finalist) and the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest (finalist). Her second album, Signposts and Marks, came out in July 2024, and it reached #4 on the FAI Folk DJ Chart for that month.

Erin’s music focuses on the power of stories to build connection and calls back to the style and spirit of her music idols, which include Joni Mitchell, Patty Griffin, John Prine, and Ellis Paul. Her shows are warm, intimate, heartfelt, and funny, with tales that are authentic and drawn from her lived experience, shining a light on the ties that bind us together.

Aaron Tornberg

Aaron Tornberg has over 30 years of experience as a performer and songwriter. His music is best described as eclectic folk. He plays acoustic music, ranging from Folk to Klezmer to country to acoustic interpretations of heavy metal music. He has a company that helps other artists with their administrative tasks and booking. An Instructional Designer and Educational Technologist by training, his interests lie in music that has a story, filk, and sea chantys.

Currently Aaron continues his work with musicians and other artists at the non-profit arts organization, One Broadway Collaborative, which he founded in June 2021, and at which he serves as director. After putting together his songs written over the years and furious writing new material, he has a new album coming out in the next year. 

This event will be held at Beantown Music School due to the closing of One Broadway Collaborative in its previous location.