The building at 732 Charlotte Street has been many things to Fredericton over the past century and a half, but it has almost always been a place where people gathered to learn something. On the evening of Saturday, October 10, 2026, the lesson on offer is folk music, delivered in three-part harmony by a trio that knows the form well.
The billing on the Fredericton events calendar reads simply "Jessica Rhaye," but the concert itself is a reunion of sorts. Rhaye will perform with Bill Preeper and Sandy MacKay, the three of them working together as Preeper Rhaye MacKay. Rhaye leads on rhythm guitar; Preeper adds fingerstyle guitar and mandolin; MacKay rounds things out on upright and electric bass, with touches of banjo.
The timing of the Fredericton date is not accidental. Preeper Rhaye MacKay released a new album, Blackberry Lane, on October 2, 2026, just over a week before this show, following up their 2024 record Wood & Wire. The Charlotte Street concert is part of the push behind the new material, presented by The MRTI Agency.
For Rhaye, the evening is also a homecoming of sorts. She is a New Brunswick artist, based in her home province, and has spent a quarter-century building a career rooted in folk and Americana. Her discography runs to nine independent releases, beginning with a self-titled debut in 2000 and continuing through Short Stories (2006), Good Things (2009), Far Gone Lullabies (2013), and Song In Me (2016). In 2019 she released Just Like a Woman – Songs of Bob Dylan with her folk-rock band The Ramshackle Parade, a project that took her across the country, including a stop at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Her most recent work with that band, the EP Foolish Heart, arrived in 2026 and earned two Music New Brunswick nominations, for Recording of the Year and Video of the Year.
Her songwriting has been recognized by the Canada Music Week National Songwriting Competition, where she was twice a finalist, and by the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, where she was a folk-category finalist. She has been nominated for Canadian Folk Music Awards, multiple East Coast Music Awards, and Music New Brunswick Awards. Her songs have turned up on television, in the CMT series Unstable and the CBC drama Heartland. Along the way she has co-written with Ron Sexsmith, Royal Wood, Matt Andersen, Steve Poltz, Brent Mason, and the late Ken Tobias. An earlier bio notes that her career has included performing for Prince Charles and an official showcase slot at Folk Alliance in Memphis in 2010.
All of that would be reason enough for a night out, but the room itself is half the appeal. The Charlotte Street Arts Centre occupies what was once the Charlotte Street School. The original building went up in 1884, designed by the same architects who designed the New Brunswick legislature. The school was one of the more innovative large urban schools of its day, a brick-and-stone structure built to contrast with the log one-room schoolhouses that were still common across the province.
In 1916 the school gained an addition: two more classrooms, washrooms for boys and girls, and an auditorium on the second floor. That auditorium is, in a sense, the ancestor of the performance space audiences will sit in on October 10. The building served as a public school for generations of Fredericton children before its life as a school ended, and in 2005 it was registered as a historic site. With the dedicated support of local residents and the Fredericton Heritage Trust, it was transformed into the Charlotte Street Arts Centre, a hub that now houses affordable studio spaces, galleries, and an intimate auditorium.
That combination — a heritage room with a modest capacity and a local artist with a national resume — is the particular pleasure of the venue. The centre's own materials describe it as a community catalyst, a place that makes arts accessible and supports the growth of local talent. A free, general-admission concert by a New Brunswick songwriter and her bandmates fits that mandate almost exactly.
The details are simple. The show runs from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at 732 Charlotte Street. Admission is free, with no reserved seating and no ticketing platform to navigate. For anyone who has spent years meaning to catch one of Rhaye's shows and never quite gotten around to it, the barrier this time is essentially zero. You walk in, you find a seat in a room that has been holding audiences since before the First World War, and you listen to three voices find their way around a song.
It is worth noting for anyone planning around the listing that some event aggregators have posted confusing times for this date, including a late-night window that does not match the venue's own schedule. The Charlotte Street Arts Centre lists the concert as a 7:30 p.m. start, and that is the one to trust.
Beyond the music, the evening is a small illustration of how a city keeps its old buildings alive. A school built in 1884 to educate children, expanded in 1916, saved by residents and heritage advocates in the 2000s, now hosts a folk trio launching an album called Blackberry Lane. The rooms have changed purposes more than once. The habit of gathering in them has not.