Village Harmony Summer Camp
2007
Faculty
Larry Gordon has been making community music in Vermont since the early 1970’s. 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.
Patty Cuyler of Marshfield, Vermont, is an energetic, dynamic workshop leader and director specializing in Bulgarian, Georgian & 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 co-founded the women’s Corsican trio Eccuci. She currently also leads the Montpelier World Music Chorus and Boston Harmony, a Village Harmony school-year offshoot in Massachusetts. Patty has edited a number of songbooks of South African, Georgian and Bulgarian folk music.
Guest Leaders
Peter & Mary Alice Amidon are versatile musicians and gifted teachers who are dedicated to traditional song, dance and storytelling. They are featured harmony singing leaders at major music and dance festivals, summer family folk camps of song and dance, and adult harmony singing camps in the US and the UK, and are founding members of New England Dancing Masters which has published numerous instructional dance books and recordings. 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, Vermont’s Social Band, a singing group that specializes in contemporary choral music. In addition she leads adult and children’s choirs throughout central Vermont, was a member of Village Harmony in its first years and has collaborated with Northern Harmony with frequency. She sings with a variety of ensembles, performing everything from ancient music to honky-tonk to Corsican folk music. 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 third year teaching at Village Harmony.
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 eighth year teaching with Village Harmony, after a fortuitous initial meeting at Festival 500 in Newfoundland in 1999.
Mary Cay Brass of Putney, Vermont, 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 books 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, and nationally and internationally with the band Airdance. 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.
Kathy Bullock’s father was a Baptist minister, and she grew up singing and playing piano and organ in his church and performing with her four sisters. She is a professor of music at Berea College where, in addition to teaching music theory and ear training, she teaches courses in African-American music and directs the Black Music Ensemble, a boys’ choir that performs music from the African-American tradition and by African-American composers. This will be Kathy’s third year leading a Village Harmony session.
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.” Efremov’s
teachers were peasant experts in Ukraine’s traditional music. He is now
an Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology at P. Tchaikovsky
Ukrainian National Musical Academy. Since 1971, he has collected traditional
music on ethnomusicological expeditions across Polesye, Podolia and Dnepr,
and he teaches using the methods of the Ukrainian peasantry. He is the founder
and leader of the folk ensemble Drevo, the first group in Ukraine to perform
traditional village singing as living and valuable phenomenon.
John Harrison grew up training in the classic men and boy’s choir tradition, but upon graduating from high school promptly escaped to New York City where he sang with rock n’ roll bands in the late seventies punk scene. During his 13 years in NYC, he sang, played saxophone and performed in a long-running downtown musical-comedy revue with Dennis Leary, The Uptown Horns, Adam Roth and other musical and comedic luminaries. Upon moving to Vermont in the early 1990’s, John combined a desire to sing sacred music again with his experience in jazz, blues and R&B, by starting a small gospel singing group in Plainfield. John has led the choir (now the Montpelier Gospel Choir) for the past nine years. This is John’s ninth year leading Village Harmony.
Linda Hirschhorn is the founder of the internationally acclaimed Jewish women’s a cappella group Vocolot. She has published songbooks and recordings of original material, and her songs and arrangements have been sung by ensembles around the world. Her music has been published in Sing Out, Songs for Earthlings, and many other places. Linda has also worked as a cantor in synagogues for the last 25 years. This summer she will be teaching Hebrew, Ladino (a combination of Hebrew and Spanish) and original English songs that express themes of peace, healing and unity. For more information, visit http://www.lindahirschhorn.com/
Luke Hoffman is a Village Harmony and Northern Harmony veteran. He has been studying drums and percussion for 13 years and his keen sense of world rhythmic traditions make him a dynamic leader and teacher. He is a strong bass 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 second year at Oberlin College where he studies biology and plays varsity soccer.
Emil Ivanov is choreographer of the Pazardzhik
Ensemble in western Bulgaria.
He taught our first Village Harmony Bulgaria camp session an award-winning
dance set for its 2000 performance at the prestigious Koprivshtitsa Festival.
His infinite patience and endless humor make him a perennially popular and
well-beloved instructor. As he has for Village Harmony’s previous
three Bulgaria sessions, Emil will be doing a lot of our on-the-ground arrangements
for this Bulgaria camp.
Petrana Koutcheva grew up in a family of singers in Thrace, Bulgaria. During her time in the USA she has toured and performed extensively, including concerts at the Knitting Factory, the Lincoln Center and the United Nations. She has four recordings to her name, and has won many honors in her native Bulgaria for her performances and her activities in teaching traditional music. In 1999, the Slavic Heritage Council of America awarded her a special Certificate of Recognition in gratitude for her outstanding contributions to the Slavic community of Greater New York. Her husband Ivaylo Koutchev plays kaval and tupan. He also teaches and plays with different groups, mostly on the East coast. He accompanies all of Pepa’s performances.
Emily Miller—daughter of Village Harmony leader Val
Mindel—has
lived in Kansas, Toronto, Hong Kong, Chicago, New York, Rhode Island and
West Virginia, and her background in music is as diverse as the places
she can call “home.” Her teaching repertoire includes traditional
Appalachian, early country, down-home gospel, and Georgian music. In addition
to leading songs, she loves to make a rollicking band out of whatever instruments
turn up at camp. When she isn’t teaching, Emily tours with the Brooklyn-based
Sweetback Sisters.
Val Mindel, a veteran teacher at Village Harmony, is a versatile teacher, singer and instrumentalist. She focuses on teaching the mechanics of creating harmonies and arrangements as well as singing in small groups, using early American country, Appalachian, gospel and bluegrass repertory. She lives in southern Vermont and leads adult harmony workshops there and around the country, often with daughter and fellow Village Harmony leader Emily Miller. She was a member of the 1970s string band, Any Old Time, has performed and taught in Hong Kong, Canada, Scotland and England, and was a long-time instructor at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music.
Ketevan Mindorashvili, director of Zedashe
Ensemble, was raised in a traditional
singing family in Sighnaghi, in the eastern Kakheti region of Caucasus Georgia.
She has become well-known as a singer and teacher of Georgian folk music,
particularly of the fluid ornamentation of Kakhetian folk songs. She has a
deep knowledge of church chanting, and is a master of the panduri, a three
stringed lute. Ketevan is also a solo dancer in the Jlekha dance troop based
in Sighnaghi. She has led four extremely successful Village Harmony camps
in Sighnaghi since 2003.
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.
Suzannah Armstrong 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 many years. Her intuitive teaching style, born of a lifetime of familiarity with American folk music, makes her an extremely valuable teacher. She recently graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and helped lead Northern Harmony’s fall 2005 tour in Europe and the UK. This is Suzannah’s sixth year teaching at Village Harmony.
Shergil Pirtskhelani, from the highland region of Svaneti in Caucasus Georgia,
was raised singing and dancing traditional songs with his eight siblings. He
moved to Sighnaghi from Svaneti after studying painting in Tbilisi for two
years. In Sighnaghi, he sings bass and second voice in the Zedashe
Ensemble and performs with the Jlekha dance troop. He plays and teaches several traditional
Georgian instruments, including panduri, chonguri (four-string lute), and chuniri.
He is also an artisan wood-carver, and continues to study painting. Shergil
has been teaching at Village Harmony camps in Georgia since 2003.
Ken Shimizu of Marshfield VT, worked as a youth chorus leader in New England
and in North Carolina. He has sung and traveled for many years with Village Harmony
and Northern Harmony— both as a camper and a teacher—and his selections
of American southern gospel, shape-note, and English folk songs have been well
received by campers and audiences alike. Ken graduated from Warren Wilson College
in 2006, and spent this past year in Vietnam. This will be Ken’s sixth
year leading a Village Harmony session.
Raised on a diet of Broadway show tunes, operatic arias and British invasion melodies, Pete Sutherland discovered both traditional music and songwriting in college and like Huck Finn, "lit out for the territories". 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." 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 and a grammar school choir conductor in Sarajevo.
Her orchestra and choir have won awards at music competitions in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. At Village Harmony, she will try to reveal a small part of the
musical traditions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and will present original traditional
songs from villages and towns, and some composed music as well.