Marty Garfield is a musician, music teacher, and dancer from Boulder, Colorado. He started dancing at the McTeggart School of Irish Dance at the age of four and after falling in love with the music, picked up the fiddle at age eight. He had a long and successful dance career, winning several western regional championships, top ten at Nationals, and top twenty at the Worlds and retired in 2014. He started playing feisanna when he was 16 with the help of Tony Nother, Jimmy Butke, and Brian Glynn and has played for competitions throughout the United States over the last 13 years. He is also a skilled musician on the guitar, mandolin, bass, cello and many other string instruments. He graduated from the University of Colorado with a Bachelors of Music Education.
Marty Garfield currently lives in Northern Virginia, works as a middle school orchestra teacher during the day and is getting his masters degree in Arts Management at night. On top of playing traditional music, he also plays in a bluegrass band, plays many gigs in the Washington DC area and is slowly working on towards TC exam.
Music makes up around 95% of Marty’s life, but when he’s not playing a tune or recording with his various groups you can find him cooking, baking, playing with his cat, and sometimes, but not often, sleeping.
He is absolutely thrilled to be a part of the Beat app, and hopes his music gets everyone on their feet and gives the energy to dance their best.
You can keep up with Marty’s many musical engagements by following him on Instagram at @martygarfieldmusic.