Monthly Groff's Music Concertina Hangout, online via Zoom for former and current concertina students and concertina customers of my shop: this Saturday, November 8. Email me after November 5 for the zoom link . . . don't use the addresses or phone numbers on these cards from the 1980s and 1990s ;)

First public gig for the new project last Thursday 9/4/25. My own playing was scattering rust all night, but what a great time. Thanks to Panayotis Paddy League for his brilliant bouzouki backing. Squeezed in some outreach to new concertina players too. Couldn't beat it. bluetaverntallahassee.com

More on my lecture next Wednesday September 3 in Tallahassee FL at the Center for Music of the Americas at Florida State University:

Music from Metallic Springs, my new performance and recording project, featuring a few instruments I love to play that developed from the 1850s to the 1930s, but whose original sounds in some cases have rarely been heard in recent years. The title is borrowed from an article published in 1839.

Hi all, I'll be starting up a once-monthly evening concertina hang-out session on Zoom for current and former concertina students, concertina customers, and other friends of Groff's Music. Message me if you might be interested in participating. NO CHARGE and you don't have to play in the meeting

Wonderful Shauna O'Hara dancing a hornpipe at the 2025 Florida Folk Festival. I really enjoyed the two years of working with her mostly on her lovely piano backing for the music, thanks to the Florida Folklife Apprenticeship Program and Dom Tartaglia (Dom's video copied by phone from screen)

Masterful dancing and piano backing from Shauna O'Hara at our gig yesterday!

My Dad, Jerry Groff, who left us in 2019. Never far from my thoughts, especially when his birthday comes around.

Excerpt from Shauna O'Hara's lesson January 26, 2025. Video by Michael O'Hara. Thanks to the Florida Folklife Program for supporting Shauna's work!

I taught for over a decade (untenured Lecturer/Senior Lecturer) at the U of Miami, retiring December 2024 to work with more flexibility in all the fields that interest me. Still open to great teaching, research, writing, or tutoring opportunities in Botany, Evolution, Ecology, Conservation, Ethics

Concertinas in Dublin in the 1850s: three concertinas sold, labeled (and in some cases signed) by Joseph Scates in Dublin, 1850s. Left: english system; middle: Wheatstone's early Duett system; right: anglo-german system.

Rough draft of a poster summarizing some of my recent work on the history of the Irish-American Accordions, developed by Baldoni-Bartoli, F.H. Walters, and other accordion innovators in New York City, from the 1920s through the 1960s.

Thanks to concertina player and scholar Aoife Kelly and fluter/fisherman Charlie Le Brun, and to James, Eve, and Sarah Kelly, for inviting me to join a lovely session while Aoife and Charlie were visiting Miami, November 2024. Great tunes, friendship, & some (concertina) shop talk.

Shauna O'Hara is studying piano backing for Irish traditional music with me. Thanks to the Florida Folklore Apprenticeship program for honoring us with a second grant this year. From last year's Florida Folk Festival (May, 2024); we'll perform there again this coming May.