Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light

Fresh off their 2025 Telluride Bluegrass Band Contest win, Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light are a Boston-based string band blending folk tradition with feminist storytelling, poetic detail, and a little grit. At the center is Sumner’s songwriting—rooted in history, myth, and personal reckoning—carried by close harmonies, upright bass, acoustic guitar, and fiddle. The trio features Kat Wallace on fiddle and vocals and Mike Siegel on upright bass and vocals. Their playing brings both tension and tenderness to a spare, intimate sound that’s sometimes eerie, sometimes sweet, and always intentional. They call it Femericana—sharp-edged Americana with a splash of feminine rage.

Sumner has performed at the Library of Congress, where five of her original songs are now archived, and was a 2024 winner of the Kerrville New Folk competition. Her song “Radium Girls (Curie Eleison)” has been streamed over 300,000 times and picked up by dancers, theater directors, and listeners who saw themselves in its story. It’s been tattooed on arms, sung in audition rooms, and carried into classrooms and protests.

Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light has toured coast to coast, performing at listening rooms, libraries, farms, and festivals across the country. They’ve appeared at Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, Earl Scruggs Festival, IBMA, and folk listening rooms including Caffè Lena and Club Passim, where their shows have become a staple of the Boston folk scene.

Location: Banning Hall
Price: $30–40 advance / $40–50 at the door