Mark O’Connor has released the list of instructors for his wildly popular String Camps for 2010. The 2010 String Camp faculty features a handful of fiddlers from the world of Bluegrass and Country Music. They include: Bobby Hicks, April Verch, Byron Berline, Casey Driessen and Buddy Spicher. A full list of this years instructors is below.
Mark O’Connor currently has two camps set for the year. The first runs from June 21-15 at Eastern State Tennessee University in Johnson City, Tenn. and the second camp is set fro July 26-30 in Manhattan, NY at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School on Central Park West.
O’Connor’s String Camps offer instruction in violin/fiddle, viola and cello as well as teacher training on the Mark O’Connor Violin Method. The camps will also offer student concerts and nightly jamming in addition to the classes each day.
Registration is still open and more info can be found on Mark O’Connor’s Web site.
2010 Mark O’Connor String Camp Instructors
- Bobby Hicks, a legend in his own right and an elder statesman in Bluegrass fiddling. His credits include playing with and writing tunes with Bill Monroe.
- Buddy Spicher is a living legend of Nashville country music fiddling. For more than two decades he was one of the most sought after fiddlers in the country for recordings. He leads his own Western Swing band with members of his family today.
- Casey Driessen one of the top young bluegrass/newgrass fiddlers, plays acoustic and electric 5-string violins. He currently performs with Bela Fleck in the Sparrow Quartet.
- Byron Berline is a legendary national fiddle champion and heads the Byron Berline Band, playing mostly bluegrass and Western Swing and runs his own festival in Guthrie, OK. He also runs the Double Stop Fiddle Shop in Guthrie, OK.
- April Verch is one of the top Canadian fiddlers and step dancers on the scene. She made an appearance on this year’s Opening Ceremonies at the 2010 winter Olympic Games.
- Sara Caswell, one of the great jazz violinists in the world today. She has performed at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops this season and was featured with them on NBC-TV as part of the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular. She is currently on faculty at Manhattan School of Music in their preparatory division.
- Judy Hyman, an old-time fiddling powerhouse and Emmy award winner. She was the founder of the Horse Flies and has toured extensively and recorded with pop singer Natalie Merchant.
- Jeremy Kittel, a national award-winning performer of Scottish, Irish, Jazz and American music, and a current member of the Turtle Island String Quartet, is one of the best young players on the scene right now.
- Bruce Molsky, a Grammy nominee and master of the old-time fiddle tradition and repertoire. He has toured extensively through the US and Europe.
- Tracy Silverman, a wonderful electronic violinist, and the performer of Pulitzer-Prize winning composer John Adams’s electric violin concerto, The Dharma at Big Sur. He currently teaches jazz and rock violin at Belmont University in Nashville, TN.
- Shane Cook, a member of the PBS hit show Bowfire is a US Grand National Fiddle Champion, and a 3-time Canadian Open National Fiddle Champion, and an extraordinary Canadian fiddler.
- Daniel Carwile, A Texas Style fiddling expert and one of the best practitioners of the style is also a Champion Fiddler, and teacher of his own large private studio in Kentucky.
- Angella Ahn, the violinist in the very successful Ahn Trio with her sisters Maria and Lucia, is a wonderful classical violinist who trained at Juilliard. Earlier this year the Ahn Trio premiered Mark O’Connor’s triple concerto with orchestra; ” March of the Gypsy Fiddler.”
- Christian Howes is a powerhouse jazz violinist. He has played in Bill Evans’ jazz ensemble for several years and is a frequent player on the jazz scene of New York City.
- Jim “Texas Shorty” Chancellor grew up playing Texas-style fiddle in Dallas with his family and studied with Benny Thomasson. He is now one of the most important fiddlers and great legends in the Texas Old-Time fiddle style.
- Yale Strom, violinist and composer, is a pioneer among revivalists in conducting extensive field research in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans among the Jewish and Roma communities. He is also a filmmaker, writer, photographer, and playwright.
- Kevin Burke is a legendary Irish fiddler, and performed in the seminal Irish group the Bothy Band. He lives in Portland now, performing on the international circuit and teaching Irish fiddle.
- Kelly Hall-Thompkins is a violinist in chamber and orchestra performance. Ms. Hall-Tompkins was the winner of a 2003 Naumburg International Violin Competition Honorarium Prize. A passionate chamber musician and humanitarian, in 2005 Ms. Hall-Tompkins founded and directs a charity series called Music Kitchen-Food for the Soul, bringing chamber music performances to NYC Homeless Shelters.
- Martin Hayes is one of the great Irish fiddlers on the scene. He is the recipient of many awards, most recently the prestigious Gradam Ceoil, Musician of the Year 2008 from the Irish language television TG 4.
- Matt Glaser is an American jazz and bluegrass violinist, the former Chair of the String Department at the Berklee School of Music, and now founder of the new American Roots Music Program there.
- Pam Wiley, is a gifted teacher of young children. For 40 years she has taught Suzuki being certified in the method and having an audience with Shinichi Suzuki on several occasions. Today she has adapted the O’Connor Violin Method to her own studio in Charleston and she conducts Teacher Training Seminars for the O’Connor Method around the country including UCLA, Berklee College, University of Miami and others.
- Federico Britos is a versatile Grammy Award-winning violinist, classically trained but equally at home playing jazz or Latin dance rhythms. He has played in the Mambo All-Stars, led by the late Israel “Cachao” Lopez. He’s also played with Cuban pianist Bola de Nieves and jazz masters Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington.
- Rachel Barton Pine is one of the most sought-after violin virtuosos today, performing in the classical, baroque, and heavy metal genres. She appears on the cover of Strings Magazine this Spring.
- Joe Deninzon has established himself as a versatile electric and acoustic violinist. He leads the Joe Deninzon Jazz Trio and has recorded and performed with a variety of artists including Sheryl Crow, Everclear, Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple, Smokey Robinson, Johnny Mathis, Les Paul, Phoebe Snow, Jane Monheit, and recently with Bruce Springsteen at Madison Square Garden.
- Kenji Bunch is a violinist and composer, hailed by the New York Times as “a composer to watch.” A graduate of the Juilliard School, he was most recently one of three composers selected nationwide to inaugurate the Meet the Composer “Magnum Opus” Project.
- Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin is a film composer, arranger, and violist. As a film composer, he has composed, produced, and recorded scores to three feature films and over a dozen short films. He performs in Ljova and the Kontraband, a chamber-jam ensemble playing semi-improvised compositions in a mix of Eastern European and Gypsy-inspired melodies, Latin rhythms, and jazzy improvisations.
- David Wallace is a violist, and a senior teaching artist at the New York Philharmonic. While obtaining his doctorate at Juilliard, he did his doctoral thesis on Texas Style Fiddling. He plays and composes for the viola in many styles.
- Matt Haimovitz is a cellist and a pioneer in classical music, inspiring music lovers from concert halls and clubs to outdoor festivals and intimate coffee houses. He has a visionary approach, bringing a fresh ear to familiar repertoire, championing new music and initiating new collaborations and innovative recording projects.
- Ben Sollee is a creative cellist in the folk, bluegrass and jazz genres. He also has refined a way to strum the cello while accompanying his singing. He plays with Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck in the Sparrow Quartet. He got his start at age 17 in the Folk Boy Orchestra, of the radio program WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. He has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.
- Maya Beiser, cellist, has created new repertoire for the cello, commissioning and performing many works written for her by today’s leading composers such as Tan Dun, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, and Mark O’Connor, among others. She performs internationally, most recently appearing at the Sydney Opera House, and the World Expo in Nagoya, Japan.
- Patrice Jackson is carving a name for herself as a talented and charismatic young cellist. She was awarded first place in the Senior Laureate Division of the national Sphinx Competition and was the recipient of the 2002 Yale University Aldo Parisot Prize. Since then she has performed with numerous orchestras around the country, including the Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, and Mississippi Symphonies, as well as the Philadelphia Orchestra.
- Sebastian Baverstam is a 2009 winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition. He has soloed with orchestras domestically and abroad since the age of seven and is a past winner of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition and the Johansen International Competition.