SHERI MIGNANO CRAWFORD

Pre-show and Intermission Accordionist
It's a Grand Night for Singing

Sheri Crawford

Sheri has provided pre-concert and intermission entertainment at Jarvis since 2009. She met Maestro Richard Evans in a pit orchestra and he invited her to join him at the Conservatory. Before the pandemic arrived in early 2020, she had celebrated ten years performing as part of IAGNFS and is excited to be returning in 2022.

Starting at nine years old, she studied flute, and at eleven, she began accordion lessons followed by piano studies in high school and college. After she earned a Baccalaureate in Music History & Literature at San Francisco State and a Masters in humanities at Arizona State, she taught humanities at the college level for 25 years, and now devotes herself to performing, researching, transcribing, preserving, and publishing old Italian dances, and French bal musette and chanson. She also specializes in arranging music for voice and keyboard.

Her other musical activities have included participation as a member of various pit orchestras for operatic and theatrical productions and as a flute soloist with a community orchestra. As an accordionist she has performed as a member of various mandolin orchestras and ensembles in the bay area. For decades she performed as a member of the Caffè Trieste House Band and still directs the folk music ensemble on Saturday mornings at the North Beach espresso house. Since 2004, she has been music director for Zighi Baci, and her trio was a recipient of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s “Certificate of Honor” award. 

Sheri Crawford

Her extracurricular musical activities revolve around the Cotati Accordion Festival where she founded the student scholarship program in 2014. She serves as the Student Stage Coordinator and holds annual competitions for scholarships during the festival.

Her published music history books include “Mandolins, Like Salami” and “Mandolin Melodies” which cover the Italian dance repertoire in orchestras and small ensembles. “French Soirée” covers the accordion’s history in French chanson and bal musette. Her most recent publication is “Italian Mandolin Heroes in America,” a comprehensive examination of Italian American music publishers, their musicians and composers in Philadelphia, New York City, Providence, RI, and the San Francisco Bay Area. She traces the Italian mandolin music from the old villages to America and shows how the dances morphed into accordion sheet music in the San Francisco region.

She is currently completing her first digital book, a biography of Rudy Cipolla whose mandolin mentoring has included David Grisman and Mike Marshall, some of the world’s most popular mandolinists. Sheri is a member of the Classical Mandolin Society of America. 

IT'S A GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING
The FIRST SATURDAY of EVERY MONTH, 7:00 pm
The Jarvis Conservatory, 1711 Main Street, Napa CA
Tickets are only $20, pre-order, or available at the box office by 6:00
Doors open for general seating at 6:30

FRANK JOHNSON
Bay Area associations have included TheaterWorks (Palo Alto); Beach Blanket Babylon; American Conservatory Theater (as musical director, and as adjunct faculty in their Master of Arts program); Teatro Zinzanni; San Francisco State University; Marin Theater; Pocket Opera; many other regional opera companies and organizations... 
CLICK HERE for more information.
SHERI CRAWFORD
Sheri has provided pre-concert and intermission entertainment at Jarvis since 2009.
CLICK HERE for more information.

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