2008 Camps and Workshops
Faculty
Directors
LARRY GORDON has been making community music in Vermont
since the early 1970s. He founded Village Harmony in 1988. Though
his first love was medieval and renaissance music, he is a vital figure in
New England shape-note singing. Larry is an inspired organizer with an unerring
eye for good repertoire and a unique knack of pulling together interesting
combinations of singers and letting them shine. His patient and relaxed,
yet demanding, teaching style and collaborative approach have shaped the
welcoming atmosphere of the Village Harmony community since the
beginning. Larry has led Onion River Chorus in Montpelier since
the late 1970s, and is well known across the US and internationally for leading
stunning periodic ad-hoc incarnations of Northern Harmony, a semi-professional
tour group made up largely of veteran Village Harmony singers. Larry
will teach traditional and contemporary shape-note music and lead dancing
at the Winter Workshop.
PATTY CUYLER of Marshfield, Vermont, is an energetic,
dynamic workshop leader and director with special expertise in teaching
Corsican, Georgian and South African singing and dance music. Her passion
for honest, direct music coaxes fierce, forthright singing out of even
the most timid singers. An instrumentalist from an early age, Patty is
a brass player and self-taught accordion player. Since 1995 she has co-directed Village
Harmony and Northern Harmony with Larry; in 2002 she founded
the women’s Corsican trio Eccuci, and began the Montpelier
World Music Chorus and Boston Harmony in 2004. Patty
has edited a number of song books of South African, Georgian and Bulgarian
folk music and has a large library of her own transcriptions. Patty
will be teaching South African dance-songs and Georgian and Corsican a
cappella singing at the Winter Workshop.
Visiting Faculty
PETER & MARY ALICE AMIDON are versatile musicians and
gifted teachers who are dedicated to traditional song, dance and storytelling.
Peter is a church choir director, and the Amidons are featured harmony singing
leaders at music festivals, summer folk camps, weekend choral workshops,
and adult harmony singing camps. Their choral arrangements and compositions
are being sung by choruses throughout the US and the UK.
The Amidons will be leading shape note music, gospel, and some great new arrangements of sacred and secular traditional songs. They are nationally recognized leaders of community dance, so bring your dancing shoes. Peter is a master caller, and Mary Alice's accordion playing will set your feet on fire.
For more information, visit their website: amidonmusic.com.
AMITY BAKER directs Burlington, VT’s Social Band, a singing
group that specializes in commissioning new choral works by Vermont composers.
In addition, she leads adult and children’s choirs throughout central
Vermont, teaches voice and leads community singing workshops. She sings with
a variety of ensembles, performing everything from ancient music to honky-tonk.
Amity is known for her powerful voice, her up-beat and easy going leadership
style and her ability to incorporate singers of all experience levels into
joyous music making. This is Amity’s fifth year leading Village Harmony
sessions.
Matlakala Bopape, of Polokwane, South Africa, is the director of Polokwane
Choral Society —a community-based group whose aim is nurturing musical talent in African society. As a director, Matlakala is committed to drawing out musical excellence from her singers, as well as exposing them to musical cultures of the world. Her limitless patience, careful attention to vocal technique, and rich repertoire of folk and contemporary South African choral music make her a formidable teacher. This will be Matlakala’s ninth year teaching with Village Harmony, after a fortuitous initial meeting at Festival 500 in Newfoundland in 1999.
MARY CAY BRASS of Putney, VT is a veteran of the early
days of Village Harmony and a highly sought-after contra-dance keyboardist
and accordion player. In the 1970’s, she spent two years in Yugoslavia
studying folk music on a Fulbright scholarship. She has published two book/CD
collections of folk music from the region — Village Harmony: Traditional
Songs of the Balkans and Balkan Bridges — and plays
regularly with the Greenfield Dance Band based in Greenfield, MA.
Mary Cay leads three very successful community choirs in southern Vermont and western Massauchusetts, and leads workshops at festivals and camps across the country. Using traditional music to create community is her life-long passion and commitment.
MAJA BUDIMIR is a singer and with the Sarajevo-based inter-religious choir Pontanima,
which performs the music of the Jewish, Orthodox, Catholic and Islamic traditions
of Bosnia.
EVGENY EFREMOV grew up in Kiev, Ukraine. When he was 21, he encountered
the rich polyphonic music of rural Ukraine for the first time, and immediately
took up the study of “this strange, marvellous music,” seeking
out and working with peasant singers who were the experts and masters of
this art. Now a professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology
at P. Tchaikovsky Ukrainian National Musical Academy, Evgeny has collected
and studied traditional music in ethnomusicological expeditions to different
regions of Ukraine since 1971. A teacher and performer specializing
in the methods and styles of the Ukrainian national singing for over 20 years
now, Evgeny founded and leads the folk ensemble Drevo, the first
group in Ukraine to perform traditional village singing as living and valuable
phenomenon.
MALKHAZ ERKVANIDZE is the renowned choir director of the Anchiskhati
Church Choir, which has toured throughout Europe, Russia, and
North America. Since 1988, Anchiskhati has been at the forefront
of the revival of medieval polyphonic Georgian sacred music, with many
unique recordings and publications to their credit. Malkhaz is considered
the driving force behind this organization and recognized as the foremost
expert of Georgian sacred music.
Born in the central mountainous region of Imereti, Malkhaz grew up singing folk music in his family and with a local master-singer named Benia Mikadze. Graduating from the Tbilisi State Conservatory in 1988, Malkhaz formed Anchiskhati with several friends, and begun a lifelong passion to discover, research, and promote the forgotten tradition of three-part polyphonic church chant indigenous to the pre-Communist Eastern Orthodox Church in Georgia. Malkhaz is a deeply spiritual man, and has tirelessly promoted sacred music by training young chanters, editing and republishing chant books, and directing.
His unique background growing up in a family singing tradition allowed Malkhaz the opportunity to develop an ear for indigenous Caucasus tuning systems, and as a result, the Anchiskhati Choir is one of the few professional church choirs that attempts to sing in these 'old modes.'
Malkhaz teaches at the Tbilisi State Conservatory when he is not on tour with Anchiskhati, and is a consultant for several choirs including the up and coming Sakhioba Ensemble. In 2006, Malkhaz founded the first school dedicated primarily to the history and practical study of Georgian church singing since these schools, once widespread, were shut down by the Russian Church in the 1820s.
ALAN GASSER lives in Toronto, where he teaches vocal music
and sings. For more than 20 years, he has sung and taught Georgian music
in a wide variety of groups and places: from elementary schools, to university
music students and the professional recording studios or stages of the CBC,
the Caliban Quartet and Kitka. An oft-time teacher at adult
and teen camps of Village Harmony, he is also the founder of Worldsongs
Vocal Camps in Canada. He has co-led the Echo Women's Choir with
Becca Whitla since 1993, and was the founder of Trio Kavkasia and Darbazi in
Toronto. In addition to teaching hundreds of people to sing Georgian
music, he has recorded several CDs of Georgian music with his trio, Trio
Kavkasia, and various other ensembles.
FRANK KANE first heard Georgian songs in 1982 and traveled to Georgia for
the first time in 1984. This was the beginning of a long-standing
passion which led him to found the Kartuli Ensemble in the United
States and later the Marani and Irinola ensembles in
France. His teaching approach uses exercises with vibration, the
raw material of our voices and our selves, to shed light on the principles
that underlie this singing. Working with the essence of the voice as revealed
in Georgian song brings insights that can enhance any form of singing and
the speaking voice and offers a rich path of self-discovery. This
will be Frank’s fourth year working with Village Harmony.
MARY ANN HAAGEN is a Shaker music scholar, lecturer and
director of the Enfield Shaker Singers. The group has produced three
recordings of Shaker Music. For many years Mary Ann was a public school music
teacher in Norwich, VT and a director of Summer Revels and Shaker
Revels productions for Revels North. In 2007 she taught American
music at Dartmouth College, and is currently a visiting scholar in the music
department there.
JOHN HARRISON was born into a musical family, and grew up
influenced by the sounds of his father’s stride piano, his mother’s
classical piano, and family sings. Trained in the Anglican men and boys
tradition, John was a professional chorister under Richard Connelly and James
Litton, and had the good fortune to record with Leonard Bernstein. Chucking
it all for rock and roll (well, his voice changed), he moved to New York City
after high school and performed there for many years as a singer and saxophonist,
working with Buster Poindexter, The Uptown Horns, and blues legend
Otis Rush among many others. He also co-wrote and performed in a long
running downtown revue, The Blue Light Club, with Denis Leary and
Eddie Brill. After moving to Vermont, John became associated with the Montpelier
Community Gospel Choir, which he has directed for the last eleven years. He
is particularly interested in the continuum of American popular music and
how all the different traditions relate to each other, especially in the
rich world of gospel. He leads gospel workshops, is in his 9th year
teaching with Village Harmony, and is currently in Thailand on sabbatical.
LUKE HOFFMAN is a Village Harmony and Northern Harmony
veteran. He has been studying drums and percussion for 14 years and his keen
sense of world rhythmic traditions make him a dynamic leader and teacher.
He is a strongbass whose vocal specialty is American Gospel. The newest member
of the VH faculty, his amicability and sometimes ridiculous sense of humor
will provide a light atmosphere for all. Luke is in his third year at Oberlin
College where he studies biology and plays varsity soccer. This is
his second year teaching at Village Harmony.
JEAN-ETIENNE LANGIANNI is a well-known and widely-appreciated
singer, composer and teacher on his native island of Corsica. He is an amazingly
diverse musician who feels at home in contemporary French-language popular
music, music from all periods of European classical polyphony, and of course
the polyphonic folk song of Corsica.
He has been working in Corsica for many years as a singing/guitar teacher with young people and now leads workshops of Corsican folk and sacred music, both in Corsica and throughout Western Europe. He tours in Europe and beyond with Tavagna (Corsican folk music group) and Organum (ancient music ensemble led by Marcel Peres).
He is a talented composer whose works reveal a deep understanding of the structure of Corsican folk and sacred music, his main sources of inspiration. This is Jean-Etienne’s third time working with Village Harmony/Northern Harmony in Corsica.
PEGGY LARSON is a jazz singer, voice teacher and choral
conductor who specializes in avante garde jazz and world music. As a long-time
resident of the Netherlands, she was active in the Dutch free-jazz scene,
leading her own band and working with internationally-known musicians such
as Tristan Honsinger, Marc van Roon, Ernst Glerum, Louis Andriessen, and
Rhiannon.
Peggy taught voice and vocal pedagogy at the Arnhem and Rotterdam conservatories for many years. She is also known in the Netherlands as a leader in choral music: Peggy founded the improvising jazz choir Tamam to perform contemporary compositions and combine music and theater, and her group Peggy Angels was very popular for their outstanding performances of jazz and world music. Now in the Twin Cities, she teaches private and group lessons, works for MCTC and the Compleat Scholar, and leads several choirs. She returns to the Netherlands every year to teach and perform. Peggy is a graduate of Concordia College, Moorhead.
EMILY MILLER has
lived in Kansas, Toronto, Hong Kong, Chicago, New York, Rhode Island, West
Virginia, and (currently), Nashville, Tennessee, and her background in music
is as diverse as the places she can call ‘home’. Emily’s
teaching repertoire includes traditional Appalachian, early country, down-home
gospel, blues, cowboy and (Caucasus) Georgian music. A marvelous fiddle
player, she loves to make a rollicking ensemble out of whatever instruments
show up at workshops, and she is sure to lead some great sessions during
the weekend. Emily continues to juggle her artistic career with her
graduate studies at Vanderbilt University, and regularly tours with the Sweetback
Sisters, a honky-tonk band that last spring placed a close second
in Garrison Keiller’s talent show for bands in their 20s last spring.
You can read more at www.thesweetbacksisters.com.
KETEVAN MINDORASHVILI, director of the Zedashe
ensemble, was raised in a traditional singing family in her home of Sighnaghi, eastern Georgia. She has become well known as a singer and teacher of Georgian folk music, particularly the fluid ornamentation of eastern folk songs. She has a deep knowledge church chant, and is a master of the panduri, a three stringed lute from the region. Ketevan is also a solo dancer in the Jleha dance troop based in Sighnaghi, and brings the Zedashe Ensemble on their second tour to the United States with a new repertoire of folk dances.
MARYTHA PAFFRATH, a singer, accomplished percussionist
and avid student of world rhythms and techniques, tours nationally and internationally
with the acclaimed world music ensemble Libana. She is the director
of the Instrumental Music and Dance Program at the Cambridge Friend’s
School in Cambridge, MA, where she brings her 27 years of teaching, and commitment
to multicultural arts to the development of faculty, programs and curriculum.
She infuses her lively teaching style into vocal workshops around the country,
focusing on international repertoire, rhythm and solid vocal technique. An
innovator, teacher, composer and writer, Marytha believes deeply in bringing
the simplicity of song to the complexity of the world. This will be
Marytha’s third year teaching with Village Harmony.
SUZANNAH PARK began participating in Village Harmony Camp
when she was twelve, but has been singing virtually from the moment she could
speak. She comes from a family of three generations of professional traditional
musicians and singers, and has performed and taught for the past 13 years.
Her intuitive teaching style, born of a lifetime of familiarity with American
folk music, makes her an extremely valuable teacher. She recently moved back
to North Carolina, the place of her birth, where she is making music, gardening
and clogging. This is Suzannah's seventh year teaching at Village Harmony.
For more information please visit: www.suzannahpark.com.
CARLO POZZOLI lives and works in the Milano area. His
first musical interest was the flute, although he grew up singing with his
family. He choose to work with choral music after his experiences in university
choirs. Carlo is interested in the large amount of sacred music hidden inside
the archives of Italian churchs and in the incredible variety of national
and international folk songs still extant in the country. Since 1982 he has
conducted folk choirs, both men choir singing in the typical mountain style
of the northern Italy, and mixed. Carlo also leads school and children choirs
as well as folk and polyphonic ones. Carlo has shared many important
choral experiences, including Village Harmony, with his wife, Giulia, also
a talented singer and organizer. Carlo loves being in the mountains,
cooking and bicycle riding.
EVA PRIMACK has
been singing Eastern European folk music since she was seven years
old. She has studied, traveled, performed and taught internationally. A
graduate of UCLA's Ethnomusicology department,
Eva is now based in New York City, where she performs regularly with Slavic
Soul Party! as well as many other Balkan community-based
musicians. Eva's most recent fascinations are Southern Albanian
and Corsican songs. Eva will be teaching Balkan folk songs from
a variety of traditions, ranging from Bulgarian to Albanian
with some Macedonian Rom and possibly a sprinkling of Turkish. This
will be Eva’s second year teaching at Village Harmony camp.
CRAIG SCHAFFER comes from a family of musicians in Northern
California. After touring in France in 1994 with his folk band, he decided
to move to Europe. In Paris, he discovered traditional Georgian songs and
joined the Marani ensemble. His passion for Georgian music led him,
in 1996, to form trio Mze Shina, with which he has toured and taught
this traditional music in Europe and Canada to people of all ages. Mze
Shina has produced two CDs distributed internationally. He co-directs
two choirs specialized in Georgian songs with his wife and singing partner
Denise and teaches workshops regularly. Craig also writes songs including à cappella
pieces and plays Appalachian dulcimer. He performs his compositions with
his other vocal trio, So WAX. This will be Craig’s
first year teaching with Village Harmony.
DESSI STAFANOVA from the UK, moved to England in 2000
straight from the world-famous Philip Koutev National Folk Music and Dance
Ensemble in Sofia, Bulgaria. She was immediately in demand to teach the unique
Bulgarian singing style so decided to stay and set up singing workshops - a
project which quickly developed and led to the establishment of the London
Bulgarian choir. The choir which now has twenty members, meets at the Bulgarian
Embassy and trains singers not in classical but in the Bulgarian natural style "from
the chest and the heart".
Dessi was born in Stara Zagora and started her (western) classical musical training at the age of five. But the formal and restrictive style did not suit her and it was not long before she was experimenting in other creative directions at the Children's Folk Music and Dance Company, Zagorche. While at Sofia University, Dessi successfully auditioned for the Philip Koutev Ensemble and continued her career as a professional singer.
Since her arrival in London, Dessi has recorded a CD, "Wild Wind - A Course in Authentic Bulgarian Singing" and worked on two soundtracks for Warner Brothers: "The Red Planet" and Walt Disney's "Atlantis". She is currently leading the London Bulgarian Choir, singing with story-telling company "A Spell In Time", spearheading vocal trio "The Dessibelles" and bringing together renowned Balkan musicians in the Orpheya project.
PETE SUTHERLAND is a warm-voiced singer and accomplished multi-instrumentalist
known equally for his potent originals and his intense recreations of age-old
ballads and fiery fiddle tunes. Pete's music "covers the map",
and shines with "....a pure spirit which infuses every bit of
his music, and cannot fail to move all who hear him," according
to the American Festival of Fiddle Tunes. The Champlain Valley Festival called
him "Practically the most musical person you may ever meet." Pete's
diverse original songs, instrumentals and choral compositions have
been popular with the national and local folk community (including
two VH sessions) for many years.
For more information, visit his website: www.epactmusic.com.
TIJANA VIGNJEVIC studied
conducting at the Music Academy in Sarajevo. She
started singing in choir when she was ten years old. In 1997, she began working
as a conductor with the female vocal ensemble Corona – an
a cappella group that sings the traditional music of the Balkans. She also
works as a high school orchestra teacher in Sarajevo. Her orchestra and choir
have won awards at music competitions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She worked with us at our first Bosnia camp
and co-led a teen camp in the US last summer. She will teach a mix of
Bosnian, Croatian and Macedonian repertoire. This is Tijana’s
third year teaching at Village Harmony camp.
OLGA VELICHKINA has been collecting, studying and performing
Russian folk songs since she was 17, the time she joined Moscow Tchaikovsky
Conservatory folk ensemble and went on the field trip to the villages of
Riazan province in central Russia. The charm of this unusual music was immediate
and irresistable. After graduating from Moscow Conservatory she went to continue
her education in the USA, at the Ohio State University, where she also led
the University Slavic chorus Rusalka. Now living in France, Olga
teaches Russian traditional music at workshops and to different choruses,
and has two established groups of traditional Russian singing in Paris. This
year she is on the faculty of the Slavic Department of Sorbonne University
of Paris. This year will be Olga's second season as Village Harmony teacher.
The repertoire she proposes includes vocal polyphonic songs, dances and some
folk instruments (panpipes, violin, balalaika) of Southern Russian provinces.
BRANKA VIDOVIC will return for her second Village Harmony in
Bosnia. She is a Sarajevo-based ethnomusicologist
who co-leads the Music Academy's Ethno-Choir. She is an expert in
traditional village-style singing of all the diverse
ethnic groups of Bosnia and has led choirs and taught in folk
ensembles for over 30 years.