About Geoff

Over a performing career of more than fifty years, Geoff Kaufman has been leading audiences to find truth, humor, and beauty in folk music. Whether singing sailor songs with his group, Forebitter; or environmental songs on board the Sloop Clearwater in the Hudson River; or in solo performances at coffeehouses throughout the Northeast United States and festivals in Europe, Geoff has entertained and touched audiences near and far.

Geoff is perhaps best known for his thirty-five years of singing as a chantey man at Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, where for twenty-five of those years he was the Coordinator of Maritime Music Programs and Director of the annual Sea Music Festival. In the latter role he was instrumental in bringing together the best of maritime music performers and scholars from across the United States and Europe (France, England, Poland, Germany) as well as source singers of work song traditions such as net hauling for menhaden, linin' track chants and rowing songs from whaling in the Caribbean.

Early in those Seaport years the group Forebitter formed and quickly became renowned across the U.S. and Europe, in particular traveling annually to festivals in France (Brest, Paimpol, Douarnenez, Vannes, Boulogne), England, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Poland.

Another side of Geoff's career began by his becoming a member of the Hudson River Clearwater Sloop Singers in 1986 and singing with them and Pete Seeger for the next ten years supporting the work of Clearwater Inc. to clean up the Hudson River. From those years Geoff developed a repertoire of environmental and social justice songs that have become central to his concerts as well as for young people's programs and Sunday services for Unitarian Universalist churches.

Since retiring from Mystic Seaport in 2019, Geoff pursues a somewhat less frantic schedule of concerts, programs, and special annual musical trips. He welcomes inquiries.

"…we are stunned by the beauty of your music."
- a fan in Corpus Christi, TX