Dancing The Coral Suite

Darrah Carr holds a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman's University and is an Assistant Professor in the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College. She received her MFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University. Carr is active in both the modern and Irish dance communities as a choreographer, dancer, educator, and writer.  She is the Artistic Director of Darrah Carr Dance, and describes her choreographic style as ModERIN: a blend of traditional Irish step and contemporary modern dance. Recent performance highlights include: "Good Morning America," NBC’s “The Today Show,” a performance with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, The Duke Theater on 42nd Street, Celebrate Brooklyn, Victory Dance at the New Victory Theater, and the company’s annual NYC season at the Irish Arts Center.  

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Dana Lyn has performed at New York’s Lincoln Center, Beacon Theater, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie and Town Halls, as well as folk festivals and dive bars the world over. A violinist and keyboard player, she is at home in multiple musical worlds, ranging from classical to traditional Irish, contemporary and improvisatory music. She has worked and performed with a wide variety of artists such as Tony Award-winning musicians Stew and Heidi Rodewald, Irish poet Louis de Paor, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Taylor Mac, avant cellist Hank Roberts, D’Angelo and the Vanguard, the Elysian Fields, La Mar Enfortuna, Susan McKeown, Johnny Cunningham, and the Walkmen, among others. As a composer, Lyn has received commissions from the Brooklyn Rider, the Apple Hill String Quartet, the National Arts Council of Ireland, fiddler Martin Hayes, violist Nicholas Cords and the New Orchestra of Washington. Dana was an artist in residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in the Spring of 2017.

Kyle Sanna has been active as a composer, producer, guitarist, and improviser in New York City since 2000. His music has been performed across the globe and he has collaborated with and performed alongside Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, Kevin Burke, Martin Hayes, Seamus Egan, and more. As a composer, Kyle has received commissions from Beta Collide, Brooklyn Rider, the Knights, and flutist Alex Sopp. Kyle Sanna has arranged music for  Bela Fleck, Jan Vogler, Anne Sofie Von Otter, Martin Hayes and Yo-Yo Ma. His arrangements have appeared on "The Colbert Report", NPR’s "Performance Today," and on the Sony Classical, Sony Masterworks, and Naïve labels. In addition to his composing and arranging, Kyle Sanna is an active improviser on guitar, synths, and samplers, performing solo and collaborating with instrumentalists, instrument designers, dancers, and theater companies. He lives in Brooklyn and is a member of Kinan Azmeh’s City Band, Peter Apfelbaum’s Sparkler, Marika Hughes & Bottom Heavy, The Seamus Egan Project, Ground Patrol, We the Gleaners, and a duo with violinist Dana Lyn.

Dana Lyn  & Kyle Sanna connect the dots between their experience as composers and improvisers in New York City’s rich musical community and their deep admiration for traditional Irish music. The duo has collaborated with some of the greatest living interpreters of Irish music, including Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, Cillian Vallely, Kevin Burke, and Mick McAuley. Lyn and Sanna have brought their inventive arrangements and nuanced interpretations of traditional music to the Old Songs Festival, the Catskills Irish Arts Festival, the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, Wellesley College, West Virginia’s Augusta Heritage Center, and Traditional Arts in Upstate New York. Since 2015, they have been residents at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute in Boscawen, NH. Their album The Great Arc is inspired by and concerned with extinct and endangered animal species. In April 2018, Lyn and Sanna released their third album The Coral Suite, an evocative suite of music that mirrors the life cycles and natural processes that occur within the ecosystem of a coral reef.