Stephanie discovered traditional Irish music for the first time a few years ago while on a camping trip in Goderich, Ontario. A chance meeting at a pub with Scottish fiddle player Jonny Hardie, during the Goderich Celtic Roots Festival, led to her seeing and hearing her first kitchen session - a barn burner featuring among others, the great fiddle players Peter Horan, John Carty, Patrick Ourceau, and Jonny himself. The incredible music made there that night, and the amount of fun the musicians were having were all she needed to know that *this* was for her.
Fortunately she was able to pursue this new-found interest in Ann Arbor, Michigan, her home at the time. There she met several terrific local musicians, including fiddlers Cole Latimer and Brock Napierkowski, who helped encourage her enthusiasm for the music and associated traditions. In her 2nd year of playing, Stephanie accepted a year-long work assignment in Stuttgart, Germany, where she discovered a thriving Irish music scene. There she had the great fortune of playing several times a week with noted archivist and accordion player Jackie Small, as well as the respected uilleann pipe maker, Andreas Rogge. She studied fiddle technique under Gudrun Walther, fiddle player in Germany's acclaimed trio, "The More Maids".
She now travels regularly to Ireland to absorb the regional fiddle styles, and to become more immersed in the language and traditions. She regularly attends fiddle camps and workshops, including the Goderich Celtic College, and the Willie Clancy Summer School. She has received instruction from master fiddle players including Liz Carroll, Patrick Ourceau, Tommy Peoples, Maire Breathnach, Mick Conneely, and Coimhin O'Raghallaigh. She is active in the local session scene here in Buffalo, and can be found most Saturdays down at Nietzsche's.
Stephanie is a mechanical engineer recently returned to the area to be closer to her family. She grew up in WNY, graduated from UB, and has been playing classical, jazz and big band music on the clarinet and saxophone for 20 years. In addition to the fiddle, she is also addicted to playing ice-hockey.
Originally from New York, Ms. Unitas arrived in Buffalo in 1987 to study voice at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNYAB) where she earned a Music Bachelor degree in vocal performance (1991), NYS teaching certification in Music K-12 (1999) and a Master of Music degree in vocal performance (2003).
The performing credits of Ms. Unitas include the roles of Emmie in Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring, Eve in The Creation by Josef Haydn and Dido in Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. More recently, Ms. Unitas has portrayed the most proper Lady Sophie in the OperaLytes Production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Utopia Limited and the rather flamboyant character of Flora in Buffalo Opera Unlimited's production of Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata.
Over the last 16 years, Ms. Unitas has sung in countless recitals, concerts, weddings and church services throughout Western New York, New York City, Long Island, New Jersey and Derry, Northern Ireland. She has had the privilege of having been a featured artist in concert performances presented by such groups as Ars Nova, The Amherst Chamber Ensembles, The Lutheran Chorale of the Niagara Frontier, Musica Intima and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. The highlight of her career to this point is her participation in the awe inspiring choir of 200 voices which performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall in NYC with the Manhatten Philharmonic.
Additionally, Ms. Unitas has been a voice instructor, both privately and as a member of the voice faculty at the Community Music School of Buffalo, over the past 11 years. She is also the new vocal director for Buffalo's Sacred Heart Academy.
Ms. Unitas resides in Lockport, NY with her husband John, her two awesome kids, Ciara and Colton and their German Shorthaired Pointer, Orric. She continues to serve as a Music Minister & Cantor at St. Mary's R.C. Church in Swormville where she has worked and worshipped for the last 10 years. Ms. Unitas also teaches a Celtic vocal ensemble and private voice lessons with Amhran O'Ciar School of Celtic Music at the Buffalo Irish Center in South Buffalo.
