The official site of the Voice Works singing workshop produced by Centrum, the nonprofit arts and education organization located at Fort Worden State Park, in Port Townsend, Washington.
Peter's been running various programs at Centrum - including The Port Townsend Country Blues Festival - for 25 years. The interview gives an excellent insider's view of the artists taking part in both Voice Works and Fiddle Tunes.
You can play the file in-line, or download the mp3 file to listen on your mobile device.
On Saturday, July 2, 2011, Centrum will present a day-long concert and dance celebration of traditional singing styles - Vocal Roots and Honky Tonkin’: A Day-Long Concert and Dance Event. Beginning with a concert in McCurdy Pavilion, and then finishing with a dance on Littlefield Green, your ticket includes a full day of music and fun.
Reserved seats are $35/$20, and if you are 18 and under, you can attend for free! With your reserved seat, you can also venture out onto the lawn of Littlefield Green during the Pavilion shows to soak up some sun - and of course we'll all be at Littlefield Green for the final evening dance.
Jenny Lester is blessed with a voice with sweetness, clarity and power and is a dynamic bluegrass performer and recording artist who has established herself as an important singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
Jenny's talent is superbly displayed on her shining debut CD, “Friends Like You,” of critical and popular acclaim. Her original songs, carefully crafted in the bluegrass convention, display a contemporary freshness and vitality that breathes new life into the fabled "high lonesome" sound.
Mary Sherhart (traditional Balkan) Mary Sherhart is one of America's leading artists in Balkan singing and one of the few non-native artists to be recognized and loved by ethnic audiences. A recipient of the 2006 Artist Trust / Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship, she’s also the first president of the Sevdah North America, a nonprofit educational organization formed to promote and preserve the traditional urban music of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Mary has toured with legendary artist Omer Pobric and singers from the “Sevdah Institute Omer Pobric” to major diaspora communities throughout the United States. She’s had the honor of opening the 2005 Festival of Sevdalinke at the Bascarsija Nights Festival in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Cliff Perry and Laurel Bliss (timeless country duets) Cliff and Laurel began as a singing duo in the late 80’s and are now recognized veterans in the bluegrass and old-time music communities. Respected by their peers and beloved by their fans, Cliff and Laurel always deliver a wonderful collection of old-time country duets. Laurel and Cliff both played and sang in the much loved band, Southfork.
When listening to Cliff and Laurel, you can tell they are greatly influenced by the Carter Family, however, they’ve also internalized and taken their own approach to the material. Old-time country music encompasses a myriad of styles and Perry and Bliss opt for a composed, straightforward approach that, like the Carters’ music, suggests an earlier era.
(Intermission)
World Harmony Chorus (the harmony of Africa, Europe, and the Americas) Daniel Steinberg will lead a rousing celebration of traditional music from around the world. Over the course of thirty years, Daniel developed a unique approach to piano accompaniment for fiddle music, co-founded the popular contradance band, Hillbillies from Mars, and has appeared in concert with many luminaries of the traditional music scene. A trip to Zimbabwe in 1990 fueled his interest in African music and he played synthesizer with Bay Area afro-pop bands Bole Bantu and Wazobia over the next several years. More recently, Daniel has been performing the music of Venezuela and Brazil on flute with Tierra Vieja, and with El Tren, a quartet that plays Cuban charanga and danzón.
Drawing on vocal repertoire from all over the world, The World Harmony Chorus creates music that is exhilarating both to sing and to hear.
Pharis Romero (old time songs from the North) Pharis Romero is an outstanding singer, songwriter, rhythm guitar player, and teacher, and a respected figure in West Coast acoustic music circles. She has performed and instructed at many of the major North American festivals and venues, from Wintergrass to the Winnipeg and Calgary Folk Festivals. But more than anything, she loves playing with other people.
Pharis is a prolific songwriter, influenced by early traditional music, but looking to British Columbia and Canada incidents, accidents and issues. Songs about daily living – work, divorce, drug addiction, love and death – flow from her upbringing in a small resource-based community. She currently plays with old time trio The Haints, and directs vocal and band workshops and the Old Time Vocal Choir in her home of Cobble Hill, BC.
Alice Gerrard (Southern mountain) Alice Gerrard's nuanced southern vocal style and songwriting first gained her notoriety through her pioneering work with Hazel Dickens. The four albums Alice and Hazel recorded between 1965 and 1975, plus their many performances provided inspiration for other women who were drawn to the high lonesome sound of bluegrass. Alice plays old time fiddle, banjo and rhythm guitar.
Alice spent many years living in Galax, Virginia, learning regional music from the local old-time luminaries. Several recordings with her Galax friends, stints with the Strange Creek Singers, the Harmony Sisters, the group Tom, Brad & Alice, and a duet album with Mike Seeger, further define her legacy and provide a source of repertoire for others to learn. From 1987 until 2003, Alice edited and published the Old-Time Herald before stepping down to pursue her current musical interests as performer, songwriter, and recording artist. Alice is currently working on a new album.
The evening continues after a brief intermission with a dance on the lawn at Littlefield Green.
ON THE LAWN AT LITTLEFIELD GREEN
Lisa Mann and her Really Good Band (Northwest blues) Portland, OR based Lisa Mann is the 2009 recipient of the Cascade Blues Association's Muddy Waters Award for Vocalist of the Year, and was recently elevated to the CBA Hall of Fame with her third win in a row for Bass Player of the Year. In 2010, she was selected to represent the Cascade Blues Assn. at the International Blues Challenge in Memphi in February 2011.
Her influences run the gamut, from low down blues sisters Etta James and Koko Taylor, to singer-songwriters like Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow, to R&B belters like the late Little Milton. Lisa has shared the stage with many Northwest greats such as Paul DeLay, Duffy Bishop, Ellen Whyte and Sonny "Smokin'" Hess. She has often lent her bass grooves and musical direction to Sonny Hess' NW Women's Rhythm and Blues Revue, a very popular showcase at festivals such as Waterfront Blues Festival.
Meschiya Lake with Casey MacGill and the Blue Four Trio (Vintage swing)
Meschiya Lake began her singing career at the age of nine, garnering $500 upon winning an adults only singing contest in a South Dakota Steakhouse. In 2000 as a young woman, she met and began traveling with the Know Nothing Family Zirkus Zideshow and End of the World Circus - a troupe blending traditional circus arts with modern sideshow varieties. It was while touring with this troupe that she fell in love with and felt immediately embraced by the culturally rich and one of a kind city of New Orleans, her home base for the last decade and counting. Meschiya sings with The Little Big Horns Jazz Band and with The Magnolia Beacon. Both bands often use the streets of New Orleans as their stage.
Dan Baum of the New Yorker writes, "Meschiya Lake rocks back on her heels, lifts her chest, and opens her throat like an air raid siren to croon in a thrilling pre-microphone style that...can make you feel by turns as though you were shivering around a campfire in a railroad (yard) or drinking in a Budapest nightclub in 1938."
Reeb Willms (old time country) Reeb grew up in Douglas County near the wheat farming town of Waterville, WA. Her parents still inhabit the farm that has been in the family for four generations. Reeb grew up hearing old country music played and sung by her father and uncles, The Willms Brothers, and is still influenced by them today. The brothers sing and pick regularly at family gatherings. At age twenty she started playing the guitar and quickly realized her love for music by learning to play and sing in traditional old time & country styles.
Reeb moved to Bellingham, WA in 2004 to finish college, and currently plays in a local old time band, The Shadies, as well as a country band, The Country Messengers. She works for Uprising Seeds, a small open-pollinated seed company, where she contributes in the office, as well as in the field during the growing season.
Courtney Granger with the Caleb Klauder Band (Honky Tonk/Cajun) Courtney Granger is the next generation of the Balfa Family and his inspired fiddling and singing are testament to the power of that bloodline. He recorded his debut CD for Rounder Records at the age of 15. Now in his late twenties, he has matured into one of the most passionate singers and fiddlers in Louisiana. Courtney sheds new light on the ancient traditions left to him by his family and stakes his own claim as a vibrant young master musician. He sings with soulful abandon, fiddles with a seemingly impossible combination of ancient wisdom and youthful vigor, and possesses an endless repertoire of both Cajun and classic country tunes. Courtney plays in the Balfa Toujours and with The Pine Leaf Boys.
We're thrilled that Lisa Mann will make her first visit to Port Townsend this June, teaching blues singing for a week at the Voiceworks workshop. She'll be joined by her "Really Good Band" on Saturday, July 2nd, as part of a daylong singing celebration at McCurdy Pavilion.
What a week indeed. We'll be posting photos from 2010 Voiceworks soon, but a big thank you to the terrific staff, participants, and audience members who literally made Fort Worden sing this past week. We hope you had as much fun as we did!
Hope you had as much fun as we did at Wednesday's Honky-Tonk Night!
It's Friday, and we're "swinging" into gear with Bruce and Pammie Forman - AKA "Cow Bop." They will be joined by Voiceworks faculty all-stars for a night of sizzling swing dance tunes.
Building 204 at Fort Worden turns into Honky-Tonk Central tonight, as Voiceworks welcomes Nadine Landry and the Black Pot Cookers, along with Wylie (Gustafson) and Wild West, for a night of great music in Port Townsend.
The fun begins at 7:30pm, and tickets at the door are $10 until we're sold out.
Voiceworks' primary concert experience takes place on Saturday, July 3 at McCurdy Pavilion at Fort Worden State Park. The soaring structure, built in the early part of the 20th century to house dirigibles, has been transformed into one of the West's most distinctive performance venues.
And it is simply a stunning place to hear people sing.
Tickets for Saturday's McCurdy Pavilion show, as well as all other
Voiceworks performances, are available online,
or by calling 800-746-1982.
Elizabeth
LaPrelle: Applachian-style Mountain Vocals
Pharis and
Jason Romero: Old Time Songs from Vancouver Island
Blue Spruce
with Jenny Lester: Canadian Bluegrass
The Kings
of Mongrel Folk (Mark Graham and Orville Johnson): Acclaimed
Songwriter & Dobro Virtuoso
Laurie
Lewis and Tom Rozum: Bluegrass Female Vocalist of the Year with Ace
Mandolinist
Elizabeth LaPrelle Twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth LaPrelle is exceptional in her devotion to
and mastery of the ancient and deep art of Appalachian unaccompanied
singing. She is renowned for her piercingly authentic mountain style and
the devotion and honesty with which she approaches the poetry of the
old songs. She sings with a sense of conviction, honor, honesty and an
emotional force that evokes the great Appalachian ballad singers of
generations past.
Pharis and Jason Romero Pharis Romero is
an outstanding singer, songwriter, rhythm guitar player, and teacher,
and a respected figure in West Coast acoustic music circles. She is a prolific songwriter, influenced by early traditional music,
but looking to her Canadian home for songs about daily living – work, divorce, drug addiction, love
and death. She currently plays with old time trio The Haints, and
directs vocal and band workshops and the Old Time Vocal Choir in her
home of Cobble Hill, BC.
Blue Spruce with Jenny Lester Jenny Lester's original songs, carefully crafted in the bluegrass convention, display a
contemporary freshness and vitality that breathes new life into the
fabled "high lonesome" sound. She is a veteran stage performer, beginning on the fiddle at age eight
with her family's Driftwood Canyon Family Band out of Smithers,
B.C. Now into 27 years touring the world with different configurations
of bands, Jenny most
recently toured with the Yukon-based bluegrass band, Hungry Hill.
Mark Graham and Orville Johnson Songwriter Mark
Graham's harmonica virtuosity on Irish and American fiddle tunes and
his rich, woody sound on clarinet are well-known to Northwest acoustic
music mavens. His sardonic skewering of contemporary life in such songs as "I Can See
Your Aura and It's Ugly" and "Zen Gospel Singing," and his lampoons of
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, sex change operations, the bible, Oedipus
Rex, Oral Roberts, and dinosaurs have become immortal to
singer-songwriters in the same way that fervent “Repo Man” followers
gave rise to the term “cult classic.”
Orville Johnson,
an instrumental gunslinger whom the Seattle Times describes as "the
player's player," has a gift of finding the secret ingredient that makes
a song sound letter-perfect, whether it's an R & B tune from New
Orleans, a country blues or a jazzy ballad. guitar, dobro, and quavering, honeyed vocals have seasoned more than a
hundred recordings, soundtracks and countless TV and radio commercials.
He’s an extraordinary and magnificent musician, with interests and
passions and contributions simply too wide to be categorized by
marketing bins.
Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum Though Laurie
Lewis has won a Grammy and has twice been named Bluegrass Female Vocalist
of the Year, you'll soon realize this soft-spoken, sweet-singing
California fiddler, singer and songwriter is something very special.
Since joining forces with Laurie more than 20 years ago, Tom's
versatility and diverse musical influences come to the fore every time
they play. He mostly plays mandolin, but is also an accomplished fiddle,
mandola, and guitar player. And he sings, the ideal harmony partner for
Laurie, as demonstrated on "The Oak and the Laurel," their
Grammy-nominated album of duets.
Part of the 2010 Voiceworks gathering, on Friday, July 2, 2010, Centrum transforms Building 204 at historic Fort Worden State Park into Swing Dance Central. The terrific wooden floors on the second floor make it a fun dancing venue.
Friday, July 2 Swing Dance Building 204 |
7:30 pm | $10
Pammy and
Bruce Forman with the Boppers
Tickets for the Friday night show, as well as Wednesday night's Honky-Tonk night and Saturday's McCurdy Pavilion show are available online.
Pammy and Bruce Forman are the dynamic husband and wife duo at the heart of Cow Bop, a Western bebop band mixing swingin'
grooves, thrilling riffs, sweet and hot vocals, and acoustic western
sensibilities.
Pammy won her first talent show singing at age 6 and has worked with many bands and fabulous musicians including Mood
Indigo, The Martini Brothers Big Band, Sweet Thursday Jazz Band, Dan Hicks, and Howard Alden.
Bruce is a renowned jazz guitarist, whose guitar style has been an important part of international jazz for
more than two decades. He has been featured as leader as well as sideman
at most of the prestigious festivals and concert venues throughout the
world. His numerous recording and performing credits include the likes
of Bobby Hutcherson, Ray Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Joe
Henderson, and Barney Kessel.
Together, these two are a lot of fun, and they'll joined by the all-star Voiceworks faculty for a swing dance to remember.
Watch this video of Cow Bop playing the Cow Cow Boogie (if you watch below, be sure to select 480p for best picture).
After a two year absence, Voiceworks is back - a week of singing at Fort Worden State Park! There is still space in the workshop (register online), but today we'll start the first of our performance previews for Voiceworks.
Wednesday, June 30 Honky-Tonk Night Building 204 | 7:30 pm | $10
Nadine Landry and the Black Pot Cookers
Wylie and Wild West
Tickets for the Wednesday night show, as well as Friday night's swing dance and Saturday's McCurdy Pavilion show are available online.
Nadine Landry Nadine Landry
was born and raised in a musical family on the Gaspe Peninsula on the
east coast of Quebec. She’s spent a significant portion of her musical
life playing upright bass in the Yukon, courtesy of the Canadian
bluegrass band Hungry Hill. She has also lent her talents to various
bands ranging from old time to honky tonk to swing and Cajun. Nadine
spends most of her time on the road. She calls the Yukon home, but
frequently visits Portland, where she plays with the Foghorn
Stringband/Trio and occasionally sits in with the Caleb Klauder Country
Band.
Here is a video of Nadine singing with Hungry Hill in West Virginia.
Wylie Gustafson Singer, songwriter, rancher, horseman, and the
original, world-famous Yahoo!® yodeler, Wylie Gustafson leads
the musical outfit known as The Wild West. He’s played thousands of
gigs, delighting audiences around the world with his good-time cowboy
music. He’s performed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, The
National Folk Festival, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, on A Prairie
Home Companion, and he’s appeared more than 50 times on the Grand Ole
Opry.
Here is a video of Wylie and his band playing "Ol Montan" at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle.
