Camps and Workshops
2010 Midyear Weekend Workshops
Columbia River Gorge Weekend
March 19-21, 2010
Menucha Retreat & Conference Center, Corbett, Oregon
Tuition: $225 per person in 4-person shared bunk rooms or $300 per person for a double room. Commuters, $155 
Village Harmony’s second annual west coast weekend at the Menucha Center, located on the south side of the scenic Columbia River Gorge. Led by Suzannah Park, Nathan Morrison, and Eva Primack, along with Village Harmony veterans Stefan Amidon and Zara Bode. The weekend workshop will be part of Suzannah, Nathan, Stefan and Zara’s west coast tour as this year's incarnation of the Northern Harmony Quartet.
You can expect to learn a lot of wonderful American traditional music—shape-note, Appalachian, gospel, ballads, rounds, game-songs—as well as a great set of traditional and arranged folk songs from the Balkans and Ukraine, and a number of South African songs and dances. Bring your dancing shoes for Balkan line-dancing and some contras. Instrumentalists will be very welcome to join the ad-hoc workshop dance band.
Accommodations are largely in rooms for six, with a limited number of double rooms available. Commuters are also welcome. A 100-acre ecumenical sanctuary in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge, Menucha Center is high above the Columbia River with walking trails, old-growth trees and perennial springs. The workshop will take place in Wright Hall, with it’s Great Hall, keeping cozy at night with its huge stone fireplace. For more information about Menucha, go to: www.menucha.org.
Faculty
STEFAN AMIDON is a Village Harmony/Northern Harmony alumnus currently living in Brooklyn, NY after graduating last year as a jazz percussion major from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He is a percussionist in the Sweetback Sisters honky tonk band. Stefan is the percussionist of choice for several of America's favorite contra dance bands, including Lissa Schneckenburger and Lift Ticket. Stefan has led shape note singing classes at Oberlin and at the CDSS-sponsored summer camps Pinewoods Family Week and Ogontz Family Week.
ZARA BODE is a Village Harmony and Northern Harmony veteran and an extraordinary singer with an unerring ear for harmonies and the nuances of inflection, phrasing and ornamentation. She shares the vocal leads with Emily Miller in the up-and-coming contemporary country band The Sweetback Sisters, which was runner up in the 2007 Prairie Home Companion young performers’ competition. www.thesweetbacksisters.com and www.myspace.com/zarabode
NATHAN MORRISON hails from the mountains of Vermont where he grew up exploring the woods and music of all kinds. His parents sang with Larry Gordon in the late 80’s, thereby influencing the styles of singing Nathan would come to love in high school while singing with Village Harmony. He managed to escape high school a year early to sing with Northern Harmony in Europe and across the US before heading to Hampshire College. After deciding definitely not to study music, he designed a major combining jazz and religious experiences. Always ready to play with new varieties of music, Nathan is thrilled to be singing with Village Harmony once again, with the added bonus of traveling through New England in the summer.
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 eighth year teaching at Village Harmony. www.suzannahpark.com.
EVA PRIMACK is a California native now based in Brooklyn who travels the world learning, teaching and performing traditional music. With a lifelong focus on the music of the Balkans, Eva holds a degree in Ethnomusicology from UCLA, where she studied extensively with Tzvetanka Varimezova. She performs regularly with Æ, a duo with Aurelia Shrenker, and with Slavic Soul Party!, a Brooklyn-based brass band. As an ensemble member, she has toured with KITKA and Northern Harmony. She also teaches at the EEFC's Balkan Music and Dance Workshops. This is her third time teaching for Village Harmony. www.aesings.com