Camps and workshops
2009/2010 Midyear Weekend Workshops
Corsican Singing Workshop Weekend at Lake Morey
October 23-25, 2009
Hulbert Outdoor Center, Fairlee, Vermont
Workshop Application Form
In response to intense popular demand, Patty Cuyler, Larry Gordon and Northern Harmony veteran singers Will Thomas and Lynn Mahoney will lead a Corsican-only weekend workshop in Vermont this fall. The weekend is intended for singers who are ready and willing to sing one-on-a-part and to take on the exhilerating challenge of Corsican folk song style, with its often elaborate ornamentation and precise intonation. Warmups to work on ornamental technique, group sessions to introduce songs, and small ensemble sessions to fine-tune what we’ve learned in the big group will together give participants a solid introduction to the amazing polyphonic a capella folk and sacred traditions of this small mountainous Mediterranean island. We’ll also learn some harmonized sacred chant, reading from manuscripts. Individual singers are welcome, but even better would be to come as part of a trio or quartet (mixed-gender, all-female, or all-male) so that you can have partners to sing with when you return home.
Accommodations at Hulbert Center are largely quadruple rooms in cabins on the property, with double rooms also available. For more information about the center go to: www.alohafoundation.org/hulbert.
Faculty
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.
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 a women’s Corsican trio 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.
LYNN MAHONEY has been singing with Village Harmony and Northern Harmony for a decade, since she was 12, and has toured with us in Bulgaria and three times in Corsica. She is a recent graduate of Marlboro College where she and husband Will Thomas directed a world music chorus for several years. She and Will also perform as the duo Windborne. She is a remarkably flexible and powerful singer and has been one of the most adept among young Village Harmonies in assimilating the ornamented Corsican singing style.
WILL THOMAS is a long-time Village Harmonite and an award-winning composer. He is an alumnus of Marlboro College where he studied Music Composition and Ethnomusicology. His choral compositions draw on world music influences as well as shape-note and medieval styles. For four years, Will co-taught a world music chorus at Marlboro College. One of the most exciting young teacher-singers on the staff of Village Harmony, Will has made three music study-trips with our groups to Corsica since 2006.