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Northeast Music Camp - A WEEK OF FIDDLE AND GUITAR IN NORTHERN VERMONT

by Chuck Morgan, organizer and leader of the Quiet Corner Fiddlers in CT.

In mid-June, my wife Noreen and I headed to northern Vermont for a week at the 1st Northeast Heritage Music Camp at Johnson Sate College. There we found an exciting way to sharpen music skills under masters of traditional music and meet wonderful new friends. After settling into our dormitory room, we had our first meal in the college's dining hall. The meals were first class, with dark chocolate cake of various kinds each lunch and supper. Oh yes, there was other stuff to eat, too.

After supper, an orientation presentation was followed by organized jam sessions. Awakening next morning, we found breakfast wasn't until 8:00. Driving down the mountain a few blocks, in town we bought coffee. Later, as jam sessions stretched further into morning's wee hours, we came to appreciate the wisdom of breakfast at 8:00.

Finally, to morning sessions - Noreen to Peter Langston's guitar class, then Swedish, Greek, and Cape Breton folks dance; myself to Sandy MacIntyre's Cape Breton, then, Alan Jabbour's, Appalachian fiddle. After lunch I was off to Pete Sutherland's New England fiddle. Then, Noreen and I met for David Kaynor's band lab. There, in a fun-filled class, with Kaynor's inspired exclamations of "No wait, I've got an idea!" fiddles, guitar, mandolin, recorder, and piano, crafted a rousing arrangement of "Hundred Pipers".

Seminars on Cape Breton medleys, traditional Quebecois music, Swedish and banjo-fiddle duets, and improvisation in traditional music followed each day's last class. Then came supper and faculty concerts. After the concerts, faculty bands provided music for contra-dancing. Faculty then led slow and fast jams. These were followed by informal jams that lasted until at least 2:00AM one morning, when Noreen and I went to bed leaving Ken Perlman on banjo, Grey Larsen on accordion, and the French-Canadian duo, Daniel Lemieux and Normand Miron on fiddle and accordion still playing. We fell asleep to the sound of Lemieux's foot keeping time on the floor over our heads.

Friday was special. After supper each class had a recital. That was followed by a contra-dance, then jamming in the dormitory. For us, a highlight was an informal jam Friday night. All of us there were less skilled musicians, and we were enjoying playing tunes at some-what less than breakneck speed, when Alan Jabbour joined in playing with us.

Saturday morning came too soon, and after brunch and emotional goodbyes, we headed home, inspired by the music we had shared. Back home, we were delighted to have e-mail from Perlman and Langston, camp co-directors, saying they had decided to undertake the camp again in 2006. We hope to be there!

-Maine Fiddle Camp comment from Charles Richardson, one of the Falmouth Fiddlers, below

Maine Fiddle Camp Weekend June 2006 - Matt McConeghy

The main thing about Maine Fiddle Camp is the kids. This camp was crawling with kids. Did they get in the way of the music? - No, they WERE the music. This camp totally sets to rest any concerns anyone might have about fiddling dying out. There were a LOT of very young fiddlers at camp who were playing at a high level and obviously loved what they were doing.The camp is about passing on the joy of traditional music to anyone who wants to learn, regardless of age. And they are busily doing exactly that. You do not want to be at this camp unless you really a) love fiddle, b) want to learn, and c) can tolerate kids.

Weeks earlier the camp folks sent us a CD and a set of transcriptions for some tunes so that everyone would have some tunes in common. I didn't see any written music being used once the camp started and many people had not learned the CD tunes and were hardly the worse off.

The teaching workshops were divided into six levels from absolute beginner up. Because I can learn tunes by ear fairly quickly, and can play a few tunes with reasonably good intonation, I was in the level 6 workshop group.  OK, so I was a little unsure if that was a good plan. There turned out to be about 15 people in my group, about four of us were old guys and the rest were kids from about 10 to 17. OK, I thought, this can't be too bad. Ha! The dozen or so kids were like little Hoovers sucking up the tunes and blasting them out again. By the time we got to our fourth workshop there was a brief chat about whether we would spend part of our hour to learn a Cminor Joe Cormier tune or a bluegrassy three-part Byron Berline breakdown in A, D and E. The kids opted for Berline. In about ten or fifteen minutes they had learned - I mean memorized, no written music - the tune and were sliding through the complicated runs moving up to full speed. If you are in a group and it is too easy or too hard, you can move up or down, no questions asked.

Every staff person loves fiddling and  wants to help everyone else advance, and it is part of their philosophy that you can and should work on your ear learning so that the tunes are internalized and remembered.  In the four one-hour sessions for our group we learned by ear a Quebecois jig and reel, then a Cape Breton reel, then Stone's Rag, then  an A minor reel, then 'Huckleberry Hornpipe' the fancy western style reel. Also, we spent some time discussing various fiddle styles and having them demonstrated - notably Frank Farrell playing Miss McLeod's reel in four very distinct styles. After hearing all those and many more, I can still play the Canadian tunes and Stone's rag... but I have a much better feel for some kinds of stylistic concerns. The beginning and intermediate sessions were, of course, less challenging and the leaders were helping people improve their skills at learning by ear. 

The workshops below the highest level were mostly taught by experienced teachers rather than by super fiddle gurus.  And they were divided into adult learners and kid learners who were further subdivided by ages into small groups. The camp guys have this down to a system that works pretty well. Everyone seemed to be having a great time.  

There were at least 150 fiddlers at the sold-out camp. About 30 or so were Seniors (that would be my crowd, the over 55's) and about 50 or so were in middle life, and the rest were from 5 to 18. There were some wonderful senior fiddlers - notably, Frank Farrell, who played both Canadian and American Western swing fiddling - and active younger, mid-life musicians like Eric Favure from Quebec. But several of the instructors were college age, or just out of college young guys who were really good, and enthusiastic, and who had the added dimension for their young students that they could dance and run around camp in the brief interludes when they weren't fiddling. Of course, they were prominent in the usual funny traditions and amusing skits and zanities that we always enjoy at these camps.... and there was a nice free form "Sacred Music" hour on Sunday morning.

Who should go there? Camp wise: this is a very good place for a family with a young fiddler who will see ten other kids her age, some of whom will be better and some worse than her, but nearly all of whom will be wild about fiddling.. Adults will have all the fiddling they can handle. We started playing for a wonderful family dance at 9:30 and there were still a dozen musicians passing tunes around the hall at 2:45 AM. Anyone plays in the band - I was sitting between Lisa Schneckenberger (who put down her red hot fiddle and played Bass most of the night when she wasnt dancing up a storm -for her, this camp is home) and Frank Farrell. But they were playing for a dance and not showing off. We played Road to Boston, Dancing Bear, Golden Slippers, Redwing, John Ryans's Polka, Steamboat Quickstep, Westphalia Waltz, Put Your Little Foot and several other totally traditional tunes. And we played a couple polkas and a Schottische. Typically, the tunes were played many times... there wasn't a lot of switching between tunes in the middle of a dance - that is not a New England tradition. But there was plenty of energy - what you get from a really solid tune when played by a lot of fiddlers, led by some great fiddlers, and with a solid piano player who understands dancing. (It was amusing to see the dozen or more piano players sliding onto the bench in the middle of a tune, as one replaced another in a kind of continuous conveyor belt of pianists...)

Downsides: This camp is bare bones, which is of course reflected in the price that is about half what many camps charge. (The music is not bare bones, though.) Camp Neofa is rather a primitive camp. Rough wooden bunks, no electric in the cabins, small inside spaces - I don't know what they would have done if it had rained! Some folks stayed in motels and came over to camp for the day activities. A lot of folks were tenting and there were a few RVs. There were some mosquitos, but nowhere near as bad as I expected considering the rainy spring and that we were there in the height of blackfly season. It wasnt even remotely as bad as the bugs in New Brunswick when we were at the 'Fiddles on the Tobique' event. Also, this is not a dancer's camp. The Saturday dance didnt get going on a real challenging contra until after the kids had gone off to bed at 10:30 or so, when only the adult hard core fiddlers and dancers were left.  Obviously, a strong emphasis on northern tunes, some Quebecois and Cape Breton, but particularly, the 'Down East' unornamented style - rhythmic and melodic, but not fancy. Also, not a singer's camp. There was some singing, of course, and some good singers, but not the kind of overwhelmingly good group singing that you would hear at Pinewoods Song week, or Indian Neck.

Matt 6/2006

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Greetings all! (Fall, 2005)

Just back from 2 great weeks... The first was in Cape Breton at the Ceilidh Trail School of Music... spectacular scenery and awesome music just about everywhere. The second was at the Maine Fiddle Camp in Liberty (about 25 miles east of Augusta) and my experience there is what is prompting this e-mail.

Maine Fiddle Camp has two yearly sessions... The first is a short weekend one usually held around the third weekend in June, and the second (the one I just attended) is Sunday through Friday in August. Most of you know that I have attended quite a few music camps (Ashokan, SAMW, etc.) and I have to say they don't get any better than this one.

First of all, like Ashokan, they have a group of some of the finest performer/teachers anywhere. Although the emphasis is definitely fiddle, they offer multi level instruction in guitar, bazookie, cello, bass, mandolin, and piano. Campers run the gamut in age, and range in ability from conservatory educated symphony players to twinkle, twinkle little star! Although a good number are active performers who are there to expand their repertoire and or teaching techniques, the majority are quite comparable in ability to most of us Falmouth Fiddlers. But in addition to the great instruction and musical camaraderie that develops in participants over the course of the week, there are a number of other factors that make Maine Fiddle Camp worthy of interest for us Falmouth Fiddlers, not the lease of which is cost! $300 for the entire week, and that includes everything! (they even send you a CD a month or so before camp so you can practice some common tunes.) Unlike most camps where the food is just so-so, I have to say that I have never eaten so well in my life. The people who cater it are into all organic produce, and mornings would greet us with fresh blueberry pancakes, real maple sirup, farm fresh eggs, homemade granola, and so forth. Can you believe hot-out-of-the-oven sandwich rolls at the lunch buffet? And the dinners, my good God... I'm still smiling.

Concerning location, the camp is on a pretty little crystal clear lake, and you have your choice of tenting (quite a few choose that option) or staying in one of the cabins. Many families and couples attend, because even if one member is not interested in taking the classes, Liberty is right in the heart of the best vacation spot in Maine. It is not unusual for the non-musical member to take off after breakfast for a day of sight seeing, antiqueing, whale watching or the like; rejoining his or her spouse for dinner and the great evening instructor performances.

Do I sound enthusiastic? Basically I am writing this e-mail now because it would be great if we could get together a Falmouth Fiddler contingent next year for either the June weekend session or the August week long one. For those of us who are pressed for time and/or money it might even be possible to to arrange to go for just the first two or three days. I can almost guarantee that it would be the best vacation you and your significant other have ever had, and where in this good green earth can you have an all inclusive week long vacation for just $300?

Peace, and see you all in September!

Fiddles on the Tobique - Matt McConeghy, RI

(last week in June, no cost for the River run. The associated camp is $400 with room and board, or about $275 if you RV or tent)

I went to New Brunswick for this wild and crazy event in 2000. The Tobique (which I mis-pronounced toe-BEEK and was immediately, authoritatively and firmly corrected to TOE-bick) is the main river in western New Brunswick. Bill Miller, a craftsman who builds lovely canoes in his barn workshop in the tiny hamlet of Nictau (pop. 25), pretty much thought this thing up, as far as I know. Bill is a great guy, friendly and welcoming. When I heard about the FOTT I emailed him and he invited me to camp out at his place. There were about fifty people spotted around his yard in the midst of the Festival.

Basically what happens is, on a certain day everyone goes to this one spot on the river, hops into one of the hundreds of canoes that have gathered, and you all go down the river with the fiddlers doggedly trying to fiddle away. The whole thing has a kind of surreal Red Green at Possum Lodge, Canadian mystique to it. There are lots and lots of canoes. Some of them mainly have guys drinking beer and cheering. Some of them are huge war canoes that can fit about ten or twelve paddlers. They stretch 4' by 8' plywood sheets across a couple of those to make a dance floor and then have a square dance as they run down the stream.

Mostly, as a fiddle contest or fiddle concert the whole river thing doesnt work that well, but as an excuse for having a kind of nutty time, and as an excuse for having some good fiddling parties, a couple of covered-dish suppers at the volunteer fire station that will remind you why everything oversized in the American food markets is labelled "Canadian-style", a nice concert at the school with some excellent fiddling, and an excuse to spend some time with some wonderful, superfriendly and hospitable folks, it was great. The countryside is beautiful and there are wildflowers and scenery in all directions.

This is a participatory event, either paddling or fiddling. In 2000 when I went there was only a limited amount of informal jamming, but it's evident from the schedule for 2006 that they have expanded the opportunities for jams. There were some very good Canadian players there, but also a fair number of pretty ordinary fiddlers who you could sit with and knock off a few ordinary tunes. Everyone, virtuoso or not, was friendly and welcoming. The local villages are quite small so most of the activities are intimate, there isn't any separation between the stars and visitors so you can join right in at the dance or fiddler's breakfast.

The river is not too rough but there are a couple of faster current areas where if you tipped over you would be in the water for a couple hundred yards before you got out... so don't take your favorite fiddle! And I have to also say that if flying insects bother you, this is not a good prospect... you will be assaulted. It is absolutely necessary to make serious preparations mosquito-wise, blackfly-wise and no-see-ums-wise or you will not be a happy camper.

Dancing on the river! Fiddles on the Tobique June 2000

Fiddles on the Tobique

Swannanoa Gathering -- 8 Class Weeks: Guitar, Old Time, Fiddle, Dulcimer and others... at Warren Wilson College in Asheville

Old Time Music Week -- Nancy Richardson, RI

Just reading the words Ashville NC should give you an idea that this festival is not to be missed.

The Gathering is a whirlwind adventure of Old Time music and dance set in the town where the movie Songcatcher was made. Multi-level classes in fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, shape note singing, clog dancing with well known artists provide hours of daily delights in the form of those great tunes you have been dying to learn. Once classes are done for the day, your NC nightlife begins! Endless jam sessions, dances and more jams until 3:00am. You can always sleep when you get back home, if you can tear yourself away.

Now, more seriously, I liked this week because there was something for everyone. Plenty of hard core players as well as beginners from so many interesting walks of life. Instructors were all fabulous musicians, good teachers and they managed to field the problem of having so many differing abilities within one single class.

Go for it! I may see you there!

Guitar Week - Kevin McConeghy, RI

Note: Kevin was given a week at camp as a HS graduation present. I took him down, checked out the nice Warren Wilson campus and stayed for the opening concert where they presented the Faculty -- it was awesome! One after another of the most amazing Guitar players I'd ever heard....I was wishing I could stay myself! Matt

(file goes here)

This "Irish Fair" has a big glossy brochure that lists a lot of events. There were a lot of people there, like, several thousand. Most of them did not seem all that interested in Irish traditional music. There were quite a few people walking around with fiddle cases, but there was no jamming or seisuns that I saw, although there was a tent labelled Fleadh Cheoil and it had a few fiddlers in it -- when I was there, for half an hour there was one pretty good older fiddler playing a lot of obscure tunes very fast and about six or seven people with fiddles sitting glumly watching him. The "Merchandising" tent was pretty full, though. They had a lot of t-shirts that said "pog ma thoin" and "Erin Go Bragh" etc (if I spelled those wrong, I don't care) and I got a bumper sticker that has "I -heart-shamrock-quarter note." There was also a cell-phone company booth and people selling canned bread.

There was a carnival midway with rides and cotton candy, etc. and that seemed to be pretty crowded most of the time. There were two tents with people playing harps. In one tent the harpist couldnt play very well, and no one was watching, and the other tent there were two harpists playing a duet that was quite nice, and about six people were watching. There were about 1500 people a hundred yards away watching a soccer game. Speaking of which, this Irish center is fabulous. The grounds are big, and there is an athletic field for soccer or hurling with large stands for the crowd, and some big lawns and a very nice modern purpose-built building for the offices and Indoor activities. .

The Comhaltas Ceoltori Erin tent had a lively Irish dance band and a modest crowd of people dancing reels and other traditional dances without any caller or leader, just people who knew how to do it. That was pretty cool. There was a lot of beer and porter around that neighborhood.

There were a couple tents for minor musical events. I saw a session "American Connections" which was done by three young women. They didnt seem to have much to do with Irish music. One sang a forgettable version of an English folk song that she had "jazzed up." and another sang an Appalachian song "Pretty Saro" from the Watson family, unaccompanied. They weren't bad but I definitely lost track of what the connection was supposed to be.

The main stage seemed to be having a lot of problems with its sound checks which took a long time and were accompanied at the same time with piped-through bad country-rock. Why, we ask ourselves?. OK, no real reason. It just seemed like a good idea to the sound guy, I guess. I saw Darol Anger's "Republic of Strings" set which confirmed the notion that cello is the new drums. They seemed to get a fairly luke warm response from the crowd for a set which included a very un-polska like polska which Darol announced as a "dance for animals with a small surface to volume ratio." They were followed after a long interval by Halali, who got a much warmer reception, and in my humble opinion, were just better. Halali is Laura Cortese, Lisa Schneckenberger, Hanneke Cassal and Flynn Cohen. All four of them are individually really good and their fiddle trio playing was really amazing - tight and flashy, and they were grinning away and having fun the whole time while fiddling up a storm. Flynn's guitar playing somehow kept right up with them and sounded great. They sang a couple songs which sounded interesting except the sound system was still misbehaving (maybe it was the rain the day before) and a good part of the singing was inaudible. That was almost fiddle overload but it was a really good set. Then there was a tough choice. I really wanted to see Solas, who I heard were wonderful... but at the same timeslot was Martin Hayes from Limerick by way of Chicago with guitarist Dennis Cahill. I decided to see Hayes.

Martin Hayes is one of the great Irish fiddlers. He plays in the Clare style, which is in theory simple and less ornamented than say,the Sligo style of Brian Conway (via McGann and Coleman). Hayes is a slender, fairly tall young guy with Irish style glasses and a mass of unruly and unruled dark hair. His accompanist, Dennis Cahill, played a subdued guitar style which was tasteful and very restrained, even minimal. Cahill wears his hat backwards and sits very close to Hayes, watching him intently. That seemed to be necessary because Hayes just started playing and then went on from one tune to another in rapid fire succession. At one point Cahill just stopped in confusion and Hayes set him straight by yelling out "A-flat!" I suspect Hayes probably usually plays that tune in another key and just got inspired to change at the last millisecond leaving Cahill behind. Hayes also set the sound man straight - in the midst of a beautiful slow air the sound man was diddling around and there was a huge feedback whine. Hayes stopped in mid bow stroke and waited for a good four or five seconds until the feedback ended, and then went right on with the note. Later he yelled at the sound man to just "don't touch anything!" At the end of the set he asked for applause for the soundman, but there was a definite hint of sarcasm involved. Hayes took a long time to get tuned up at the start of the set - I'm guessing that he is exceptionally careful about his sound and likes to have everything be as right as possible (which maybe is how he got to be a violin god in the first place), so that sound problem was really annoying to him, I'm sure.

The Hayes set was fabulous. Beautiful tone, a wonderful swing, and meticulous timing, ornamentation and bowing beyond the reach of mortals. He definitely is right up there in the fiddle Pantheon with Vassar Clements, Jean Carignan, Aly Bain or whoever you care to name. I am looking forward to seeing Solas, but if I had to make that same choice again, at least the next several times I would still pick Martin Hayes. Quite a few other people seemed to be alert to the secret of Martin Hayes as well, because the tent was full and most of the people I had seen carrying fiddle cases anywhere on the grounds were gathered there at that moment. The audience response was by far the loudest and wildest I heard anywhere at the festival. So if Martin wasn't totally happy with how the set went, the audience at least was delighted.

The bottom line on this event, in my view, is that it has a lot of activity if what you want is to see all kinds of different Irish cultural events, but as a music festival, it is marginal. That's probably the way it was planned, so they got what they intended.

Matt McConeghy