Camps and workshops
Summer 2010 Residential Adult Camps
Oregon Cascades Labor Day Weekend Adult Camp
September 1-6 , 2010 (5 nights)
Led by Larry Gordon, Patty Cuyler,
Malkhaz Erkvanidze, and guest dance teacher Helene Eriksen
This will be our fourth annual Labor Day singing camp at St. Benedict's Lodge in the Cascades. Bounded on one side by the wild, scenic McKenzie River and on the other by national forest, the 70-acre complex is an inspiring setting for our singing retreats. Patty Cuyler and Larry Gordon will once more bring an eclectic selection of music from the exciting traditional singing styles that Village Harmony is particularly known for: American shape-note, gospel quartet and Appalachian music, Balkan village songs, Corsican polyphony, rare early music vocal works. Joining them this year will be Malkhaz Erkvanidze, director of the renowned Anchiskhati and Sakhioba ensembles in Tbilisi, Georgia. Malkhaz is acclaimed worldwide as one of the foremost singer-teachers of Georgian folk music and chant, and will add an exciting set of music to the mix as well as offer individual coaching in such specialist techniques as krimanchuli (Georgian yodeling). In addition, we are happy to announce that choreographer Helene Eriksen will be joining us to teach dancing from the Balkans and the Caucasus.
We will begin with supper on Wednesday evening, give a concert Sunday night at the chapel at St. Benedict's, and finish the session with a celebratory brunch supra (Georgian feast) on Labor Day Monday. Families and friends will be able to stay overnight following the concert and join the group for our ending party.
In residence at St. Benedict’s Lodge, McKenzie, Oregon
Tuition: $500
Leaders
Village Harmony co-director 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 and published two volumes of The Folk Rhythm South African songbook series, as well as three books of Georgian folk and sacred songs. She has also compiled a large collection of her own arrangements of old gospel-quartet music.
MALKHAZ ERKVANIDZE has been at the forefront of the revival of medieval polyphonic Georgian sacred music, with many unique recordings and publications to his credit as founder-director of the Anchiskhati Ensemble and more recently of Ensemble Sakhioba in Tbilisi, Georgia. Born in the central mountainous region of Imereti, Malkhaz grew up singing folk music; with the formation of Anchiskhati in 1988 he began a lifelong passion to research,and promote the forgotten tradition of three-part polyphonic church chant indigenous to the Orthodox Church in Georgia. Malkhaz teaches at the Tbilisi State Conservatory. This is Malkhaz’s fourth summer working with Village Harmony.
Village Harmony founder and director 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 adhoc incarnations of Northern Harmony, a semi-professional tour group made up largely of veteran Village Harmony singers.
Helene Eriksen, based in Seattle, WA and Göttingen, Germany, is a teacher and choreographer of traditional dances of the Balkans and Islamic Orient. She lectures and publishes on dance ethnology and costume studies. For many years she has been leading dance and culture study tours and now she is the director of her own travel agency Window on the World Voyages. As a dancer she is in demand internationally with performances in Germany, Austria, England, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, France, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Turkey, Russia, Canada, Norway, the USA, Pakistan, Algeria, Slovenia, and Mexico.http://www.helene-eriksen.de/about.htm
AT St. Benedict's Lodge, McKenzie River, Oregon
Located on the McKenzie River at the edge of the Willamette National Forest, St. Benedicts Lodge is an inspiring setting for singing, with close encounters with Oregon's famous old-growth fir trees. Rooms are primarily singles, with a few larger rooms, as well as a handicapped-accessible cottage. Easy access to wonderful hiking, hot springs, waterfalls. A big lawn in front, perfect for volleyball, frisbee, and dancing. www.sblodge.org