MUSIC WORKSHOP 2006

Introduction to Folk Instruments
Conducted by: Ryan Thomson

Multi-instrumentalist arts educator Ryan Thomson will lead a fun exploration into instrumental folk music making, including:

1. Percussion and Rhythm - bones, triangle, frame drum, cajun rub board.
2. Six holed wind instruments - pennywhistle, 
wooden flute, fife.
3. Dance - cajun social dancing, clogging - seated 
and standing.
4. Accordion - folk dance tunes, piano keyboard style.
5. Piano - chordal accompaniment to folk dance tunes.
6. Banjo - 5 string bluegrass, old time clawhammer, 4 string tenor, mandolin.
7. Violin/fiddle - folk dance style, left and 
right handed playing.
8. Unusual instruments

The workshop will include both discussion of the traditions associated with the instruments and opportunities for hands-on experience with each instrument type. No experience is necessary. Ryan will bring enough of some instruments for the entire group to try at the same time; for others, participants will have to share. Conferees are welcome to bring their own instruments, too.

About the instructor: Ryan Thomson is a multi-instrumentalist who performs and teaches weekly on fiddle, banjo, flute, piano, accordion, pennywhistle, and other instruments. Thomson has been selected for both the Traditional and Touring Artist rosters of the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and for the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA). In his spare time he plays chamber music in a classical ensemble, and contributes his musical talent to charitable organizations. 

Thomson studied topics in the psychology of music in graduate school at the University of New Hampshire. He acquired the nickname "Captain Fiddle," from his co-workers on college radio station WUNH, where he played his fiddle live on his fiddling and folk music show.

Thomson has won the National Fiddle Contest’s Northeastern Regional Award, and has twice received the nomination for Country Fiddler of the Year from the Massachusetts Country Music Association. In 1994 he won a Boston Music Awards nomination for BestEthnic/International Act for his accordion playing while leading the Crawdad Wranglers cajun and zydeco band, which has played for New England dancers for over 16 years. He was invited in 2000 as a special guest artist to perform at the Celebrate New Hampshire festival sponsored by the Smithsonian, and was subsequently selected to tutor fiddle at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Washington.

After years of searching libraries from coast to coast, Thomson discovered that no general book about folk fiddling existed. He decided to fill that niche, and in 1985 founded Captain Fiddle Publications by authoring his first book, The Fiddler's Almanac, a general reference source about fiddlers and fiddling which can be presently found in over 3000 libraries in the United States and Canada. He has since authored numerous books, recordings, and instructional DVD videos on various musical topics.

Swing Dance and Lindy Hop with Mike Davis

Swing Dance and Lindy Hop
Conducted by: Mike Davis

This fun and accessible workshop begins with the idea that you already are a dancer — you’ll just be learning beginner & intermediate steps and techniques for Swing Dance and Lindy Hop. The sessions are designed to create a comfortable experience for everyone, and will include techniques for "floor crafting" — a fancy name for being respectful of the other dancers in the room. So: put on your dancing shoes and get ready to swing!

Playing With Character Peggi McCarthy and Cary Wendell

Playing With Character
Conducted by: Peggi McCarthy and Cary Wendell

Learn and apply the basic tools for creating a character's physical, vocal, and social reality in this theater workshop. The workshop will focus on scene work taken from award-winning playwright, Martin McDonagh's Irish play.

Haley House - Dave MacEachron

Digital Photography
Conducted by: Dave MacEachron

Improve your photographic skills with Dave MacEachron, a professional photographer and teacher who has spent many summer weeks capturing images of the Isles of Shoals.

"Five Turning Points": The Art of the Personal Essay
Conducted by: Reg Saner

The title of a short fiction by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” describes most human lives. Setting aside the forking paths that led your parents to meet and beget you, at how many forks in the road have you either made an important choice of direction or had one imposed? Of those significant junctures, which five now seem most crucial in your becoming who you are? The personal essay you write in our “Five Turning Points” workshop will give depth of field to those critical junctures by dwelling on an expressive image centering each of the five. 

In writing, as in much else, the hard part is beginning. Once begun, inertia gives way to an allure distantly akin to what drew apparitional ball players in the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams. The movie features a baseball diamond built on a whim by a farmer, who is surprised to find his ball diamond’s mysterious appeal summoning old-time legends of the game from beyond the grave and back into action. 

Well, at the interface between written language and personal experience, words are drawn just as mysteriously forth onto the field of the page. There, hidden facets of your most considerate self appear and “ like those ghostly baseballers“ come back into play again. Every time it happens I find myself surprised anew at how well it works. And it happens every time.

About the instructor: Reg Saner was born in 1931 in a farm town on the Illinois prairie. He first saw mountains during military service when he was sent to Big Delta, Alaska, for alpine and arctic survival training. After combat duty as an infantry platoon leader in the Korean War, he studied Renaissance culture at the University of Illinois, and as a Fulbright Scholar in Florence, Italy, at the Università degli Studi. 

On honeymooning in Colorado, he and his wife, Anne, decided to move there. Among other honors, his previous writings, all set in the American West, have won several national prizes. His poetry collection, Climbing into the Roots (Harper & Row, 1976) received the first Walt Whitman Award as conferred by the Academy of American Poets and the Copernicus Society of America. His second book, So This Is the Map (Random House, 1981) was a National Poetry Series “Open Competition” winner selected by Derek Walcott. His Essay on Air, a book of poems, was published by Ohio Review Books, 1984, followed by the collection titled Red Letters, which received a “Forty-fifth Anniversary Award” from the Quarterly Review of Literature. 

He has won an NEA fellowship, the Creede Repertory Theater Award, the State of Colorado Governor’s Award, and has been an invited Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Fondazione Culturale in Bellagio, Italy, and received the Wallace Stegner Award conferred by the Center of the American West. 

His nonfiction books include The Four-Cornered Falcon: Essays on the Interior West and the Natural Scene (Johns Hopkins, 1993; Kodansha paperback, 1994) and Reaching Keet Seel: Ruin’s Echo & the Anasazi (University Press of Utah, 1998). In spring 2005 the Center for American Places published The Dawn Collector: On My Way to the Natural World. His prose and poetry have appeared in more than 50 anthologies. 

Faith Posture I: Nigerian Mama Steve Prince graphite on paper 52" x 72"

VISUAL ARTS WORKSHOPS 2006

Workshop I:
Old Masters Silverpoint Drawing
Conducted by: Steve Prince

Workshop II:
Small Stone Sculpture
Conducted by: James Locke

Old Masters Silverpoint Drawing: In this intense drawing workshop, students will be exposed to the fascinating craft of the "Old Master's" Silverpoint Drawing. We'll examine artists such as Durer, DaVinci, Michaelangelo, and Rubens, as students take a journey back in time to learn how to prepare traditional Silverpoint ground from ancient materials and apply it to archival papers and wood. Working with a stylus loaded with silver or gold, marks made upon specially prepared paper yield an otherworldly quality unlike any other drawing process. Both traditional and contemporary techniques will be explored during the week as we draw from the figure, nature, photographic references, and still-lifes. Students will be given one-on-one instruction, demonstrations, and critiques to enhance their artistic experience. Daily exercises will enable the student to express skills with line, value, cross-hatching, gesture, contour, perspective, and composition. This course is great for beginners to seasoned artists who are hungry for knowledge.

About the instructor: Steve A. Prince is a native of New Orleans, LA and resides in Hampton, VA. He received his BFA in Fine Arts from Xavier University of Louisiana in 1991, and his MFA in printmaking and sculpture at Michigan State University in 1995. Prince, who has shown nationally in numerous group, solo, and juried exhibitions, is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2005 "Creating Excellence Award" of Virginia Career and Technical Education and the 2001 and 2004 "Best in Show" in the Making Waves juried exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia Beach. Prince has created several private and public commissions for national and international patrons, including a 4'x24' steamroller woodcut entitled "Alexandria" and a mixed media kinetic sculptural installation piece at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center. He conducts workshops across the nation, teaching his craft to people of many ages. Steve Prince has worked as founder and/or co-founder on numerous innovative programs including the SOHO (Space of Her Own) Project – a mentor program that works with at-risk teenage girls, and Operation Identity – an interdisciplinary project designed to deal with issues of race and representation through the creation of poetry and bronze masks.

Please visit www.eyekons.com for more info about Steve A. Prince.

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Small Stone Sculpture:
Sculptor James Locke will teach the design and technique of carving alabaster.  We will begin with rough stone, then evolve a design with the shape of that stone in mind.  We'll carve, sand, and polish the pieces to bring out the forms within the stones.  Each participant should be able to complete a small sculpture by the week's end. 

About the instructor: James Locke is a sculptor and painter who lives and works in his 18th century farmhouse in central New Hampshire. He has been carving and painting since childhood. As a young man he had the opportunity of working with some of the finest artisans in the country, including Robert Hughes and Karl Drerup. 

He also studied with Roi White, one of the country’s leading educational theatre directors. For a while, Locke wanted acting the classics to be his career. Eventually he “made the decision not to seek the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. Nevertheless, the experience in the theatre was of great benefit to my being as an artist--as indeed, I believe, is any art experience,” he says.

“My teachers, Bob Hughes, Karl Drerup, and Roi White, were all a great inspiration. They had enormous dynamism and talent, and they lived their art. Each was a ‘college of one.’ They were always supportive; however, Karl (Papa) Drerup was furious with me when I went to work in the theatre. His wife, Gertrude, was more understanding—‘Do you want him to become just some boring old drawing teacher?’ she asked. Ultimately, that’s what I became (I hope not boring!)”

James Locke has worked as an instructor in the visual arts and in the theatre, in both private and public institutions. As a member of the NH State Council on the Arts, he was instrumental in making Art a requirement for graduation from NH public schools. He is currently on the staff of the New Hampshire Institute of Art, and his work can be found in many private and public galleries and collections. He is also an “old shoaler:” for the past 22 years he has been the art teacher at the Natural History Conference on Star Island, Isles of Shoals.

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Guest Artists 2005

• Duo Live Oak

• Joan Anderson

• Jacqueline and Dudley Laufman

• Geoff Kaufman

Duo Live Oak is a fresh, visionary voice in alternative classical music, creating a body of lyrical contemporary art song rooted in diverse song traditions that reflect both a temporal and an ethnic diversity. Nancy Knowles and Frank Wallace collaborate as poet and composer in new songs with echoes of blues, medieval, jazz, and classical music from Ravel to avant garde. The power of great poetry infuses their work.

Duo LiveOak's musical roots go back to the 12th century: for two decades LiveOak was known for its performances and recordings of medieval and renaissance music.  Infectiously charming in performance, graced with old fashioned skill and integrity, Knowles and Wallace are eloquent, whimsical, passionate, versatile, colorful, and entirely original. Rare composer/performers, they do not merely entertain--they engage the audience with their sense of drama, Wallace’s guitar wizardry and their meltingly beautiful vocal ensemble.

Committed to outreach, education, and the environment, Nancy Knowles and Frank Wallace are skilled teachers who are actively promoting a new humanism in the arts that celebrates diversity and multiplicity.   

You can check them out at www.duoliveoak.com

Joan Anderson has been wondering about relationships her entire life. Her memoir, A Year by the Sea, won her national acclaim when it appeared on the Best Seller Lists of the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and ignited a grassroots fire among women looking for a way to make sense of their lives.

Her books have been published in fifteen languages. She has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and The Today Show, and is a frequent speaker at colleges, universities, women's clubs, and writers' conferences. Her very popular Weekend by the Sea retreats, during which attendees learn to retreat, repair, regenerate, and renew, have attracted women from all over the country. Recently she has begun hosting these retreats in other locations - such as Sonoma, California, Iona, Scotland, and Tuscon, Arizona.

Her mantra is:
"We are as unfinished as the shoreline along of the beach, meant to transcend ourselves again and again."

Dudley and Jacqueline Laufman earn their living playing jigs, reels and hornpipes at traditional New England dances. They were honored to have been selected to present these dances during the two weeks of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC, in 1999. Two years later Dudley was distinguished with the New Hampshire Governor's Arts Award in Folk Heritage for lifetime achievement and excellence. 

For the past twenty-eight years, Geoff Kaufman has been leading audiences to find truth, humor, and beauty in folk music. Whether singing sailor songs with his quartet, 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.

Songs of the sea, songs of the earth, songs of the heart and the spirit—all of these are in Geoff Kaufman's ditty bag. Ancient ballads, work songs, and songs of love; poignant songs of people in struggle, humorous glimpses of human foibles, and insights into history—all of these are likely to be woven into one of Geoff's concerts.

Above all, at the core of Geoff's performance is his rich tenor voice and an exuberant love of singing. And part of that love is to entice audiences to sing along, to share in the exhilaration of full-throated vocalization if they wish. In this age of electronic overload and passive media pabulum, Geoff likes to stress the "live" in live performance, promoting participation, be it by voice or heart or mind.

More information is available at: www.geoffkaufman.com

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