Vermont Instruments School of Lutherie

Saturday October 23, 2010

• Concert 8 pm $20
• Mandolin workshop with Will, 1 - 2:30 pm $25
• Jazz Improv Workshop, 3 - 4:30 pm $25

Will Patton, Clyde Stats and Dono Schabner have been playing their spirited stew of world music around the Northeast for over three years. Drawing from Gypsy jazz and Brasilian choro styles, they create an improvisatory dialogue rich in melodic and harmonic invention. Mandolin Magazine has described the music as "elegant, memorable lines . . . powerful and sophisticated, perfectly capturing the essence of the style." Will Patton has played his music all over the world, from Key West to Fairbanks, Alaska and from Paris to Rio. His collaborations with the manouche guitarist Ninine Garcia from Paris, documented in the cds "Peripherique" and "String Theory" have been enthusiastically reviewed both in the U.S. and abroad. He has taught at Jay Ungar and Molly Mason's Ashokan Camp and the Django in June Festival at Smith College. He has performed with Mose Allison and his bands have opened for such acts as Ray Charles, Bonnie Raitt and Van Morrison.

Dono Schabner was born in Germany and grew up in Pennsylvania and New York. He started playing professionally at age 12 with Italian wedding bands. At 17 he hit the road, playing R & B all over the U.S. and the Caribbean. After many years of travel, he settled near Stowe, Vt. with his photographer wife, Lauren. For the last 3 years he and Will have been making music in many contexts, and also work as a duo. He has been studying the demanding 7 string guitar of late, using all 10 fingers.

Clyde Stats has been a professional bassist for over 30 years, and has performed rhythm and blues, funk, bluegrass, and jazz throughout Vermont and New England for the past 21 years. He began his career in Chicago performing with blues greats Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, and Otis Rush He has studied with internationally known jazz bassists George Mraz and Santi Debriano, and has accompanied jazz legends Mose Allison, Bobby Watson, Joshua Redman, and James Carter in their Vermont appearances. An active jazz educator, he holds an M.A. in Jazz Studies from Norwich University and teaches courses in jazz and popular music at Johnson State College, Trinity College, and the University of Vermont

http://wpatton.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhlMrmEolB4&feature=related

Saturday November 20, 2010

• Concert 8 pm $25
• Fiddle Workshop 1 - 2:30 pm $35
• Banjo Workshop 3 - 4:30 pm $35

Grammy-nominated Bruce Molsky weaves fiddle, guitar, banjo, and song into his own beautifully unique style of American and world traditional music. His audiences are transported on a captivating musical voyage through time and place, starting with the archaic sounds of Appalachia and extending to Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, and West Africa. Bruce Molsky is one of America’s true folk virtuosos.

Described as “old-time music’s answer to Ry Cooder,” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) Bruce’s love aff air with old-fashioned music of all kinds has grown stronger over the decades. His command of the instruments and his laid-back, intimate style draws in audiences to make them feel very much a part of his performances.

As a teacher, Bruce has introduced an entire generation of young artists to the richness of the traditional music genre. Says Rob Adams of the Scottish Herald, “Molsky’s ever-increasing role as an ambassador for American music has allowed him to come home with more and more new angles and surprises to punctuate his already unique approach to music … [He] concedes that music for everyone is a form of escape, a unifying activity.”

“We all play music for the same reason.” Molsky says. “It’s just the language that’s different. When I’m playing the fiddle, nothing else exists. I think all musicians live for that moment when it all just comes up off the ground. You can’t explain it, you can only feel it, but that moment is when you understand why you do it.”

The same is true of Bruce’s finger-style guitar and banjo playing. The listener instantly hears the broad palette he makes of his guitar, synthesizing so many influences and refining them as only he can. His composition, Brothers and Sisters, always leaves audiences spellbound, and Rove Riley Rove is as joyful and playful as banjo music gets. Famous for singing while harmonizing with the fiddle, Bruce has helped to add a whole new, electrifying vocabulary to folk music.

Bruce’s singular artistry has been featured at The Smithsonian Institution’s Annual Folklife Festival, Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and on BBC television’s Transatlantic Sessions. He is on the Board of Advisors of the American Roots Music Program at Berklee College of Music and has been invited to deliver the prestigious Albert Gordon Lecture on American Studies at Glasgow University in Scotland.

A long-time recording artist on Compass and Rounder Records, Bruce is joined on his CDs by many musical greats. But the solo pieces are where his artistic light really shines. Mick Moloney tells the Irish Times, “His talent is positively frightening.” His works with Grammy-nominated Fiddlers 4, Mozaik, and Aly Bain & Ale Möller have become staples for music lovers everywhere. As a music producer, his recording studio work includes producing CDs for

Fiddle and Banjo Workshop

Bruce Molsky is widely recognized as a driving force behind the current wave of interest in old-time music, and he has inspired hundreds of musicians from beginners to professionals and music educators. He offers master classes in fiddle, banjo, and guitar, and group workshops for players at all levels.

His classes can focus on a specific instrument or a combination of instruments. The concentration is on the detail of playing and performance, ear training and technique, and it is always colored with the rich history of how early rural country music evolved in America. For schools, he can present both educational and bus-in performances in conjunction with evening concerts.

A regular instructor at Mark O’Connor Fiddle Camps, O’Connor says, “Bruce has tapped in to a mystical awareness of how to bring about the new in something that is old.”

http://www.brucemolsky.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uznu0z62q_A&feature=related

Friday December 10, and Saturday December 11, 2010

• December 10 Concert, 8 pm $10
• December 11 Workshop, 12 - 2 pm $25
• Both concert and workshop are free to our Ukulele Building students

On December 10 we welcome Joel "Ukulele Eck" Eckhaus to perform novelty songs and pop stadards from the teens to the 60's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJvmBYCmWdg&feature=channel

Joel will lead a Ukulele workshop on December 11, from 12 - 2 pm. He will address Chord melody a la Smeck- playing chords and melody together in the style of the "Wizard of the Strings" Roy Smeck. He will also demonstrate left hand chord positions and right hand strums and techniques- for advanced beginners and intermediate players. No music reading knowledge required.

JOEL ECKHAUS began building instruments in 1973. He studied woodworking at the Shelburne Craft School and at Rochester Institute of Technology with noted cabinetmaker, James Krenov. He apprenticed at the Tourin Musica, in Duxbury, VT, with harpsichord and viol maker, Peter Tourin, and built his first EARNEST mandolin at the Augusta Heritage Arts Workshop, in Elkins, WV, under the instruction of Paul Reisler. He opened a shop in 1976, and has been playing, teaching, designing, building, and repairing string instruments ever since. His woodworking experience also includes sailboat repair and construction, home renovation, nickelodeon construction, whirligig design and production, fine furniture and cabinetmaking, and production lutherie with Dana Bourgeois Guitars. Joel has a BS degree in vocational education and currently teaches woodworking and instrument making at Maine College of Art.

In addition to being a luthier, Joel also plays the mandolin, tenor guitar and banjo, ukulele, and musical saw. He studied uke and banjo with former vaudevillian, Roy Smeck, the "Wizard of the Strings", and studied mandolin with former Texas Playboy, Tiny Moore. He was a founding member of the Arm and Hammer String Band, and has performed with the New York Banjo Ensemble, the Howitzer Mandolin Orchestra, the Neverly Brothers, the Blue Sky Serenaders, the New England New Vaudeville Review and the Pinetones. He currently plays with the ukabilly duo Dos Eckies; a ukulele/tap dance duo, Ham & Legs; and his own group, Ukulele Eck and the Fabulous Lacklusters.