Howdy folks! I’m Rick and I started the Winter Village Bluegrass Festival in January 2011 hoping to bring some great progressive bluegrass music to Ithaca during the winter, when we need a lift! The festival was so much fun I added a music camp weekend in 2013.

I have been playing music since college at the University of Rhode Island where I studied horticulture. That’s when I heard “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and Vassar and Doc’s version of Down Yonder changed everything! After college, I moved to Austin, TX where I ran a Community Gardening program, played lots of music, and learned to love Western Swing and Texas fiddle music. Four years later, I headed to Ithaca to attend Cornell’s Master of Landscape Architecture program. After grad school I found work, a band, and my wife Sally here in Ithaca. We stayed raise our son Thomas.

I have been fortunate in my ‘day job’ to lead our community’s effort to design and build the Cayuga Waterfront Trail and the restoration of Stewart Park, Ithaca’s historic lakefront park. While doing this community planning work, I became involved in Ithaca’s tourism promotion world and learned about the importance of winter tourism to Ithaca’s hospitality industry. One of my bands, Cornerstone, had performed a few times in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s at Wintergrass in Seattle and at the Joe Val Bluegrass Festival near Boston and I realized that bluegrass and roots music fills hotels, even during the winter. The Tompkins County Tourism Program has been a supporter of Winter Village ever since. Since 2025 WVMC found a home at the CSMA, a wonderful Ithaca institution where I now teach mandolin and fiddle.

I recently moved on from my park and trail work and am enjoying this ‘encore’ phase, with more time for music, my gardening obsession, family, friends and travel.