About - Al Petteway & And Amy White

Award-winning, critically acclaimed, passionate and playful, Al & Amy are an acoustic music duo that draws inspiration from musical traditions across the globe and distills these myriad styles into a rich and unique voice – a timeless recipe for healing, heartfelt music. During an Al and Amy performance, the audience is treated to a variety of acoustic stringed instruments and percussion with a dash of pristine vocals. They capture the hearts of audiences with colorful stories of wildlife in their own back yard in the Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina and the people and places along the way that have influenced their music. Al and Amy invite their listeners to celebrate beauty and joy in all aspects of life.

Al & Amy first began performing and recording together as a duo in early 1995. Their sound is an exciting blend of original, traditional, contemporary Celtic- and Appalachian-influenced music. Their repertoire offers extensive instrumental work as well as a fine touch of vocals and features acoustic guitars, mandolin, Celtic harp, banjo, Irish bouzouki, piano and world percussion. They are among the most respected and well-loved acts in the acoustic music scene. They have been Artists in Residence at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage and perform at some of the finest concert venues in the country. Their signature sound is heard often on NPR, in independent films and radio shows across the globe (not to mention all of those healing centers and birthing rooms.) While living in the Washington, D.C. area, Al & Amy won a grand total of 50 WAMMIES from the Washington Area Music Association in the Folk, Celtic and New Age categories as well as 5 separate grants from the Maryland State Arts Council for both composition and instrumental performance. In 2001, Al & Amy received a coveted INDIE Award in the acoustic instrumental category from the Association for Independent Music for their album Gratitude. In 2005, Al received a GRAMMY Award from NARAS (National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences) for his solo fingerstyle guitar contribution to the pop instrumental compilation, Pink Guitar.

In the autumn of 2003, Al & Amy packed up their cats, their music studio, photography equipment & art supplies and moved from Takoma Park, MD to the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina just outside of Asheville, NC. Al & Amy’s ridge top home now provides endless inspiration for their many creative passions: these include music, of course, but also photography, reading, gardening, bird- and wildlife-watching, mountain-gazing and hiking. The rich cultural and natural history of their new home has been a large influence on their more recent recordings Winter Tidings, Golden Wing, Acoustic Journey and Land of the Sky: musical inspirations from the Southern Appalachians.

Al & Amy recently finished a two-year Artists in Residency at Warren Wilson College. Their residency was funded by a grant from the Susanne Marcus-Collins Foundation of Asheville, NC. This grant also supported their latest creative project, the “Land of the Sky Multi-Media Show” which combines live music with projections of Al & Amy's nature photography of the Southern Appalachians. Since Al worked at the National Geographic Society for eighteen years, Al & Amy’s photographs are part of the archives of the National Geographic and their work is represented world-wide by the National Geographic Image Collection. The “Land of the Sky” multi-media show debuted on "Earth Day" at the National Geographic’s Grosvenor Auditorium in the spring of 2005 and continues to be a very popular presentation.

Live at National Geographic - photo by Steve St. John

Amy White was born to professional classical musicians and is the youngest of three children. As a result, she was nurtured and surrounded by several genres and generations of music. Despite this semi-classical upbringing, Amy never mastered sight reading and composes and plays music solely by ear. She has a unique approach to composition and her work reflects this serendipitous combination of classical, jazz, folk, world and environmental influences. Amy won her first award for music composition at the age of eleven. Her debut release, PIANO DIARIES, garnered the 1996 Washington Area Music Award for Best New Age Recording and two separate Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) grants for solo instrumental performance on piano (1996) and mandolin (1998.) Amy's last solo piano recording, BITTERSWEET, AN AMERICAN ROMANCE was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered with Noah Adams. Amy received a third MSAC grant in Music Composition (2001) for her work on this 2nd piano CD, as well as for her compositions on guitar. Amy now performs and records exclusively with her husband, Al Petteway. Over the years, Amy’s instrumentation has broadened to include not only piano, mandolin and guitar, but now features vocals, percussion and Celtic Harp. Together, Al & Amy have recorded over 14 CDs, received an Indie Award as well as 50 awards from the Washington Area Music Association prior to their move to the mountains of Western North Carolina. When she's not playing music, Amy is passionately devoted to other creative endeavors. When the mice are kind enough to share the garage studio, Amy continues to enjoy stone carving, stained glass, silver casting, block printing, mosaics and 3-D multi-media collage. The rest of the time, which is most of the time, Amy concentrates on graphic arts, digital photography and the art of digital photomontage. Life is too short to specialize!