Marni Rachmiel

Marni Rachmiel (Seattle, WA) grew up outside Detroit and studied Music History/Musicology at the University of Michigan, where she played & sang in concert bands, Early Music Ensemble, Javanese Gamelan, and the U-M Gilbert & Sullivan Society. She started dancing and playing for contra and English dances in 1990 in Albuquerque, NM, when she stumbled into a Bare Necessities weekend that totally changed her life. Returning to Michigan, she was active in the Ann Arbor dance and music scenes and became an avid dance-wanderer, including pilgrimages to Buffalo Gap and Pinewoods.

Shifting west in the later ‘90s, Marni danced and played in and around Boulder, CO, while getting her MA in Contemplative Psychotherapy at Naropa University. The siren song of the Northwest Folklife Festival drew her further west to Seattle, where she moved in 2004.

After many years in Seattle playing with bands, including Contra Sutra, Reverie, and The End Effects, among other dance band configurations, serving on the boards of the Seattle Folklore Society and FAR-West (Folk Alliance Region West), and co-hosting Two Pools House Concerts, currently Marni is on a British adventure living in Cambridge, UK, and gradually getting involved in dance music and organizing across the pond. If you’re traveling to England, say hello!