Northeast Concertina Workshop

Northeast Concertina Workshop

April 17th, 2010 in Sunderland Massachusetts USA

The Staff


Rachel Hall	Originally from Cincinnati, Rachel Hall grew up in a musical family, with her mother playing hammered dulcimer and her father on concertina and accordion. Rachel began piano lessons at age 6 and landed her first paying gig as a teenager in a contradance band. She started playing English concertina while in college and has become recognized for her excellent technique and the unusual styles she plays. After graduating from Haverford College, Rachel was awarded a Watson Fellowship to study and collect traditional music in Scandinavia and the British Isles. As part of that grant, she spent six months in the Shetland Islands and three months in Norway and visited Ireland and Scotland. She joined the folk trio Simple Gifts in 1995 and has recorded three albums with the band: Other Places, Other Times (1996), Time and Again (1999), and Crossing Borders (2005).

George Keith	George grew up playing classical violin, but found himself drawn to Irish traditional music in the early 1990s. He learned to play traditional music on the fiddle in sessions between Chicago and Boston and picked up the anglo concertina in 2001. Since then, George has performed as a member of Grammy award-winning Tim O'Brien's bluegrass/Irish crossover band "The Crossing" and appears on the DVD of WGBH's "A Christimas Celtic Sojourn, Live". These days, George teaches for the Boston Comhaltas music school, regularly performs (on both fiddle and concertina) with Robbie O'Connell and Aoife Clancy, and can often be found playing for dances and in Irish sessions around Boston.

Jody Kruskal	Jody Kruskal from Brooklyn, New York is known for his distinctly American style of harmonic and rhythmic Anglo concertina playing. He has been energizing US dancers for years with the contra dance bands Grand Picnic, Squeezology and Hog Wild. Jody will perform a delightful selection of traditional American songs and tunes and offer workshops in Anglo technique with a focus on old-time tunes. For the past few years Jody has been a solo performer and workshop leader at a number of English festivals at Sidmouth, Warwick, Ulverston, Bradfield, Broadstairs, Towersey and Whitby as well as the US Palestine Old Time Music and Dulcimer Festival, The Incredible Concertina concert series in NYC and the Northeast Concertina Workshop in 2005. A collection of Jody's original tunes was published in the Concertina World supplement by the ICA in 2008. Back at home, Jody is a freelance educator who teaches traditional music and dance in local elementary schools, implements the education programs of organizations like Carnegie Hall and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, composes tunes for traditional dance, gamelan orchestra, original scores for Shakespeare plays, puppet shows and modern dance performances. Find out more about Jody and his music at: www.jodykruskal.com.

Jacqueline McCarthy	Jacqueline was born in London in 1957. Her parents had emigrated to England in the early 1950?s. She grew up to traditional music, her father Tommy McCarthy being a piper and concertina player from Kilmihil, Co. Clare. She played with all the legendary players from Ireland who were living in London. Musicians like Mairtin Byrnes, Raymond Roland, Roger Sherlock, Danny Meehan, Paddy Taylor and Bobby Casey were all part of a thriving music scene that Jacqueline experienced first hand. She also recalls meeting John Kelly and Willie Clancy during frequent visits to Ireland. With her father Tommy, sisters Marion and Bernadette and brother Tommy, Jacqueline performed throughout Ireland and the U.K., including The Royal Albert Hall, London. She was a member of The Sergeant Early Band who performed traditional music for a contemporary ballet production Sergeant Early's Dream by the London-based Rambert Dance Company. This association goes back to 1985 and has taken her to Poland, Egypt, Greece, Jordan, Zambia, and all over the U.K. Since 1987 she has been living in Co. Galway where she teaches concertina. She is a regular performer at the Willie Clancy Summer School in Co. Clare and has toured the U.S. on several occasions with her husband Tommy Keane. In 1995 they released an album The Wind Among the Reeds. She is a member of Maigh Seola, a group who specialise in songs collected in North County Galway at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1999 she released The Hidden Note featuring the McCarthy family, Tommy Keane, and Alec Finn..

John Roberts	Born in Wales and raised in Kidderminster, England, John Roberts got involved with the emerging folk music scene as a teen. When he came to the States in 1969 to attend graduate school at Cornell University, he met Englishman Tony Barrand and a 35-year singing partnership began. Moving to Vermont after college, the two became fast friends with Margaret MacArthur, a great source of Vermont and New England songs, thus adding song treasures from the American and Canadian branches of British folk song to their repertoire. Since then, John and Tony have performed around the country, at pubs, folk clubs, festivals, coffee houses, maritime museums, and even art museums. John has been on staff at the Augusta Heritage and Country Dance and Song Society music and dance camps. He has also been a member of Nowell Sing We Clear, featuring seasonally-themed performances of song and "mumming" (ritual folk theater). Not content with that, in the past few years he has also been performing in a trio called Ye Mariners All, which performs maritime song, and he has played for Morris dancing and for English country dancing. John has recorded over a dozen CDs with Tony and the members of Nowell Sing We Clear, as well as appearing on several other recordings including Ye Mariners All. Oh, and he has a "day job" doing music typesetting (especially guitar and banjo tablature) for Mel Bay, Homespun Books and Tapes, and Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop.

Bob Snope	Bob Snope acquired his first English concertina almost 25 years ago. In the mid-1980's he played for contra dances in the Boston/Cape Cod area with the band Nantucket Sound. During this period he was also the musician for the Northwest Clog Morris team Rose Galliard. Since joining The Button Box, where he oversees the repair and manufacturing side of the operation, he has performed regularly for English Country Dances in the Amherst area and has taught concertina privately and through the town's Leisure Services Department. A self-taught player, he enjoys working with beginners and has led workshops in music theory and playing by ear at the Northeast Squeeze-In and through the Eastern Cooperative Recreation School.

Dave Townsend	Dave Townsend performs solo and with various groups, including The Mellstock Band and The Lost Chord. His formidable technique and unique style in playing traditional and classical music on English concertina are only one part of a wide range of activities, including music for television, film and theatre, as well as recording, composition and research.

Bob Webb	For nearly four decades Bob Webb has presented the music of seafarers, loggers, railroad men and other folk heroes/heroines in theatre concerts to intimate informal programs, from New Zealand to Poland. His specialties are shipboard work songs, known as "shanties," and the seagoing ballads called "forebitters" or "main-hatch songs." He is an accomplished balladeer, who sings unaccompanied (a capella) and with the five-string banjo, MacCann-duet concertina and guitar. Bob is also a recording artist, historian and scholar with several historical exhibits and books to his name. He is a recognised expert in the history of whaling. His book On the Northwest: Commercial Whaling in the Pacific Northwest 1790-1967 (University of British Columbia Press, 1988) is still considered the essential source on whaling history in the North Pacific Ocean.

Dan Worrall	Dan Worrall is an expert on the history of the Anglo concertina and how it was played. His latest book is The Anglo-German Concertina: a Social History, a two-volume exploration of the instrument's past and present around the globe. He has previously written The Anglo Concertina Music of William Kimber, published by the English Folk Dance and Song Society in 2005, as well as numerous articles on the history of the concertina at The Concertina Library and in the Papers of the International Concertina Association. He holds a Ph.D. in Geology, is retired from petroleum industry research, and lives on a farm in southeastern Texas. He has played both the Anglo-German and English concertinas for over thirty-five years.