Who are the Acoustic Nomads?
Meet the Band!
Noah Harrington
Upright Bass
Noah Harrington is a bassist, composer, bandleader, and educator from Lexington, Massachusetts. Since graduating Cum Laude from Berklee College of Music in 2019, Harrington has led the band Acoustic Nomads, blending Newgrass with South American and Jazz music to reimagine the stringband for the 21st-century.
Harrington frequently shares the stage with captivating Bluegrass band “The Ruta Beggars,” winners of the 2019 Thomas Point Beach Festival Band of the Year award. Since 2017 Harrington has led the group “Husky Sound,” a group of virtuoso Jazz musicians specializing in playing material from the Great American Songbook, and available for private bookings throughout New England. Harrington has also performed on recordings (and onstage) with Alisa Amador of Tiny Desk Fame, G Rockwell, Zahili Zamora, Lindsay Foote, Hannah Siglin, Tema Siegel, Aaron Percy Davidoff, Isaiah Johnson, and many others.
Harrington is also a two-time alumnus of the Acoustic Music Seminar at the Savannah Music Festival (2015 & 2018), where he shared the stage with such luminaries as Mike Marshall, Julian Lage, and Mike Block, as well as his amazing fellow Seminar-goers (among them Ethan Setiawan).
Maurizio Fiore Salas
Guitar/Venezuelan Cuatro
Maurizio Fiore Salas is a performer (guitar/Vzlan cuatro), arranger and composer that currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Throughout his career, he has worked in many genres such as Venezuelan folk, Argentinian folk, boleros, tangos, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Peruvian, Brazilian, among others. Fiore Salas is one of many musicians around the world that actively works towards combining elements of traditional music with elements of contemporary jazz, in an effort to create a new world where the past meets the present, and they both help each other in reaching for the future. Fiore Salas holds a bachelor's degree in Jazz Composition from Berklee College of Music, and a master's degree in Jazz and Contemporary Music from Longy School of Music.
Ethan Setiawan
Mandolin (and other mandos)
Ethan Setiawan is a Boston-based mandolin player who’s won such accolades as the National Mandolin Championship and the RockyGrass Mandolin Championship. He’s a member of bands Corner House, Mudskippers, The Harmolodic String Band, and freelances with musicians including Darol Anger and Tony Trischka. In 2015, he attended the Acoustic Music Seminar at the Savannah Music Festival, a program where participants work with musicians like Mike Marshall, Julian Lage, Casey Driessen, and Bryan Sutton. Later that year, he guested on A Prairie Home Companion (now known as Live From Here.) A move to Boston in August of 2015 to attend Berklee College of Music on a full ride scholarship brought about a new chapter in Ethan’s life.
He’s been a catalyst for several projects in the Boston area and elsewhere, including Mudskippers, a progressive string band, Corner House, which draws from Scottish, Appalachian string band, and bluegrass styles, and the Harmolodic String Band, which plays the music of Ornette Coleman on bluegrass instruments. He has shared the stage with Julian Lage, Darrell Scott, Mike Marshall, Tony Trischka, Darol Anger, Bryan Sutton, Casey Driessen, and the Steel Wheels.
Clara Rose
Fiddle
Clara Rose is a violinist and vocalist from the unceded territory of the Coast Salish people in Vancouver, BC. With her background in Celtic, Balkan, Swedish, blues, bluegrass and jazz folk traditions, Rose effortlessly melds these disparate styles into her own passionate and groovy fiddle voice. A master improviser across many genres and disciplines, Rose’s joyous expression and skillful artistry has a transformative effect on all of her collaborations.
Rose has studied with distinguished artists from across Canada and the United States, including Marc Destrubé, Oliver Schroer, Daniel Lapp, Moira Smiley, Mike Block, Jenny Scheinmann, and Bryan Sutton. In 2018 and 2019 Rose was selected as one of 16 young string players to participate in the Acoustic Music Seminar in Savannah, GA, directed by Mike Marshall. Rose is currently pursuing her degree in violin performance at Berklee College of Music. She performs with The Acoustic Nomads and leads the Clara Rose Trio.
Sofía Chiarandini
Fiddle
Sofía Chiarandini is a musician based out of New England. She has been playing violin since age five, and at age fourteen decided to dive into the world of bluegrass. Sofía studied with Grammy award winning fiddle and dobro player and notable author Stacy Phillips, who was her mentor and main source of inspiration in the non-classical world. She has been playing double bass since she was nine, and throughout childhood studied with Domenick Fiore, who inspired Sofía to diversify and study jazz as well.
Sofía started playing music using the Suzuki method, and quickly fell in love with classical music. At thirteen, she was awarded 2nd place in the Danbury Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition for her performance of Ravel’s “Tzigane.” She later joined the Danbury Symphony Orchestra as a first violinist for the 2014-2015 season, simultaneously playing for the Community Orchestra, in which she played bass for six years. After moving away from classical study, she branched out to perform in bluegrass, jazz, and folk genres, playing the main stages of major bluegrass and music festivals in the northeast with various ensembles.
At age seventeen, Sofía was accepted to the Berklee College of Music on scholarship, and was also honored to receive the Fletcher Bright award in her freshman year. During her time at Berklee, she studied and performed as part of the American Roots Music Program, as well as had the opportunity to study with musical heavy-weights such as Howard Levy of The Flecktones, Noam Pikelny, Stuart Duncan, Bruce Molsky, Tony Trischka, Greg Liszt, and Matt Glaser among others. She was selected as one of the sixteen participants for the Acoustic Music Seminar at the Savannah Music Festival in 2020.
Sofía now performs in Boston-based bluegrass and modern stringband groups, including The Ruta Beggars, winners of the 2019 Thomas Point Beach band competition; Kol Kahol, a group blending contemporary Jewish music with traditional American roots music; and Acoustic Nomads, a group combining North and South American folk and jazz elements to create a vibrant, modern sound.
In addition to her active performing life in these bands, Sofía frequently performs and does session work for other musicians, and enjoys sharing her joy of music by teaching workshops and lessons online and at her home in Cambridge, MA.