This year’s Camping Cèilidh was wildly successful with positive feedback flooding in still. Christine, Christian, Suzanne, Alicia, Seumas, and Corrina put on great presentations that had participants playing, singing, dancing, and speaking Scottish Gaelic all weekend! The addition of two social dance sessions were particularly enjoyed by all who participated in them.
As soon as the site is secured for next year, it will be announced here!
Unfortunately, registration numbers were not high enough for the 2023 Wells International Harp and Cello school, so my track was canceled. I certainly wish the school and the other presenters the very best of times!
Workshop and festival organizers! This is a list of my current topic-oriented workshops. I can also provide group instruction in level-based repertoire and style development in my area of expertise, Scottish Gaelic music.
Using the innovative Language Hunters teaching method, participants will be shocked and how much useful, conversational Gaelic they can acquire in just 90 minutes.
In this workshop, participants will learn the melodies, suggested chords, and the words of the refrain to four great Scottish Gaelic songs. Prior attendance at Introduction to Scottish Gaelic For Singing Harpers would be very helpful.
In the folk harp world we often hear pedal harpists talking about technique, but what does that really mean? In this workshop I teach just the basics of classical harp technique tailored for the folk harper. You'll learn about tone, hand and arm position, how to use a metronome to take your playing to the next level, no matter what level you are at now.
In this workshop I share an in depth look at several pieces of literature and other original sources to examine what the intact Gaelic traditional knowledge system tells us about the Other People. It isn't all capes and wings, I'll give away that much!
In this workshop I teach a series of exercises that I developed to help harpers get some of the common melodic figures from Scottish and Irish dance tunes into their fingers. We'll progress slowly from a snail's pace toward performance tempo and see how far we get!
Guitar players can create tremendous energy and flow with the rhythms they strum when they accompany singers and tune players. We can do the same thing with our harps, and in this workshop I'll show you how without ever looking at a note of written music.
The Scottish Gaelic song literature boasts several unique song forms; waulking songs among them. In this workshop, participants will learn a few of the traditions around this ancient tradition of wool milling and learn the refrains and melodies of several songs to take back to their harps.
A great source of dance tunes that are playable on the harp is the literature of Cape Breton fiddlers. In this workshop, advanced players will learn several Cape Breton tunes of difference types that Seumas learned from the playing of Wendy MacIsaac.