Camps and workshops
2009/2010 Midyear Weekend Workshops
North Carolina Singing Weekend
October 16-18, 2009
Mount Shepherd Retreat Center, near Asheboro, NC
Workshop Application Form
This year sees the inauguarion of a North Carolina weekend in central North Carolina, at the Mount Shepherd Retreat Center in Asheboro. Taught by the dynamic team of Larry Gordon and Patty Cuyler, co-directors of Village Harmony, and Asheville residents and VH veteran Ken Shimizu. As at our perennially-popular weekend workshops in Vermont and Oregon, we will sing from a wide range of traditions, including South African, Georgian, Corsican, Appalachian, gospel and American shape-note singing. There will be plenty of dancing, too—Balkan and English country dancing before and after the singing sessions.
The retreat facility is a beautiful church owned retreat center on 542 acres of beautiful wooded countryside about 8 miles west of Asheboro in central North Carolina, due south of Greensboro and northeast of Charlotte. Facilities include 54 bed spaces in two buildings, a beautiful light main hall for singing and eating, a swimming lake with a just completed 100 foot waterslide, and an observation tower.
For photos and further information see their website: www.mtshepherd.org.
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.
KEN SHIMIZU of Williamsburg, VA, worked as a youth chorus leader in New England
and in North Carolina. He has sung and traveled for many years with Village Harmony
and Northern Harmony— both as a camper and a teacher—and his selections
of American southern gospel, shape-note, and English folk songs have been well
received by campers and audiences alike. When not teaching music, Ken attends law school at William and Mary. This will be Ken’s seventh
year leading a Village Harmony session.