Hey Days Staff 2021
- Luke Hillman/Berkeley Morris
- Matt Simons
- Paul Hutchinson
- Rebecca King
- Renée Camus
- Sharon Green
- Shira Kammen
Alex Cumming (UK/MA) is a traditional singer, accordionist, pianist, and ceilidh dance caller hailing from Somerset, England, now living in Greater Boston, MA, USA. He has danced longsword with the Newcastle Kingsmen. Alex performs songs and tunes from around the United Kingdom and America with a great depth of knowledge of the tradition. He has made his mark on the folk scene with his rhythmic danceable accordion style, strong voice, and his fun and engaging stage presence.
Alex is an experienced teacher and workshop leader. He runs workshops in longsword, border and Costwold morris, singing, and music for many schools and some of the top folk festivals and organizations including CDSS (Country Dance and Song Society), Sidmouth Folk Week, Towersey Festival, NEFFA (New England Folk Festival Association), Folk Arts Center of New England, and Folk South West.
Along with solo performances and calling, Alex is a member of award winning a Capella quartet The Teacups (UK), fiddle and accordion duo Alex Cumming & Nicola Beazley and Ceilidh band Dyer:Cumming’s (UK). Alex regularly performs and records with Faeta Female Vocalist of the Year winner, Ange Hardy (UK) and BBC Young Folk Award winner James Findlay (UK). You may also see Alex out on stage with Contra dance bands Reelation (USA), Mystic River Trio (USA), Whirlwind (USA) and Four Idiots (UK).
As well as performing live, Alex has starred in prime time TV shows including BBCs Edwardian Farm and played live sessions for BBC Radio. In 2014, Alex obtained a BMus Hons. in Folk & Traditional Music from Newcastle University, the only degree program of its type in England.
Alex is currently on the Board of Directors at the Folk Arts Center of New England and is Interim Music Director at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford, MA.
See alexcumming.weebly.com for more information.
Alex will give a presentation titled The Songcatcher: Olive Dame Campbell and will be the guest on the Saturday morning HTDS 5 Things.
Brad Foster (MA) is the founder of the Bay Area Country Dance Society as well as co-founder of our English and American dance weeks. He has danced and taught English country, contras and squares, and morris and sword for more than 50 years. He is well known for sharing the joy found in dance, and has taught throughout the US, Canada and Europe, including at Pinewoods, Ogontz, Buffalo Gap, Timber Ridge, Berea, Mendocino, John C. Campbell Folk School, Augusta, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and Lady of the Lake. He is Executive and Artistic Director Emeritus of the Country Dance and Song Society, Program Director for the New London Assembly, and runs the New Home Ball. Brad is also Executive Director of 1794 Meetinghouse, a beautiful hall with wonderful acoustics in a lost corner of Massachusetts with summer conerts and a year-round chorus.
Brad was recently a musician (concertina) for That Long Tall Sword, a team dancing longsword and the Horn Dance in Western Massachusetts. Earlier, he danced with and played for The Marlboro Morris Men and Berkeley Morris, and danced with Guiding Star Clog Morris, The Bouwerie Boys, The Pinewoods Morris Men, and Westwind Folkdance Ensemble in both southern and northern California.
Brad will give a presentation on Mendocino English Week - Founding and Early Years.
Brooke Friendly (OR) is known for her warm yet commanding personality, her clear and concise teaching, her creativity, and her sense of humor and whimsy. She has a strong sense of what makes for a good community and she makes the learning experience fun and relaxing. A dancer for more than 30 years, she co-leads a weekly English and Scottish dance, teaches ECD callers workshops, calls Contra and family dances, and teaches country dance in a variety of settings: college academic credit, older adults, and K-12 students. Brooke has been on staff at camps, weekends, festivals, balls, and workshops throughout North America, England, and Australia.
Recently she taught two online courses for CDSS on Global/Positional Calling.
A dance choreographer, she, with her husband Chris Sackett, has published six books of dances (Impropriety Vols. 1-6) and produced seven CDs with the band Roguery (Shira Kammen, Jim Oakden, Anita Anderson, and Dave Bartley).
A founding member (1981) of The Heather and the Rose Country Dancers, a statewide organization of English and Scottish dance in Oregon, Brooke recently completed six years as Secretary of the board of the Country Dance and Song Society. Previously, she was on the CDSS board and executive committee for six years (2001-07) and served on the CDSS Youth Task Group.
You can find more information on her books, CDs, and teaching at BrookeFriendlyDance.com.
Brooke will teach a four-day Callers Workshop on Global/Positional Calling.
Carol Marsh (DC) After completing her Ph.D. dissertation on early 18th-century English dance sources, Carol expanded her research into English country dance and its continental relatives. She has published extensively on early music and dance; and after retiring from teaching at the University of North Carolina Greensboro she continues to give lectures and workshops at dance history conferences in the US and Europe.
Carol will give a presentation on the History of Dance and Music Notation.
Charlie Hancock (CA), pianist and accordionist, is equally adept playing for English country, Scottish country, contras, and display dancing. Performed with brilliance, drive and clarity, his music is infused with jazz, swing, and Irish influences. He is a member of several Bay Area dance bands, including the Raggedy Annes, and has recorded with Sylvia Herold, Holly Tannen, and Cathie Whitesides.
Charlie will play for an ECD dance party.
Dave Bartley (WA) plays mandolin, guitar, cittern, and other plucked string instruments. He has written over 300 tunes for English dance, contra dance, and couple dancing. With Roguery, Tricky Brits, KGB, and over a dozen other bands, Dave has played throughout the US and Canada, as well as parts of Europe and Australasia. Drawing from a musical experience that stretches from classical training to classic rock, Dave also currently plays in French cabaret and Big Band era swing bands. From the mischievous to the profound, you never know what he's going to do next, but you can be sure you'll enjoy dancing to it. Dave's website
Dave will teach a three-session tune composing workshop.
Gene Murrow (NY) has been an English country dancer and musician since 1965, and has taught and called since 1988 at clubs, workshops, festivals, camps, and balls throughout the U.S. as well as Britain, Europe, and Japan. He has frequently chaired Early Music Week, English-American Dance Week, and English Dance Week for the Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS).
In 1996, he organized the Amherst Assembly, a week-long conference devoted to a scholarly and practical look at the origins and evolution of the county dance. Sought out for his deep understanding of both music and dance and for his exceptional clarity when teaching, Gene has written a resource guide and training curriculum on musicianship for English country dance leaders, which served as the basis for week-long seminars at Pinewoods, Berea, and Mendocino camps at Early Music Week.
Gene has served on the Board of Directors of CDSS and Early Music America and is the Executive Director and Founder of Gotham Early Music Scene.
In addition to oboe and recorders, Gene plays concertina, accordion, and crumhorn. He holds a degree in music from Columbia University with studies at Juilliard, Class of '68. He has performed on four recordings as a member of MGM and produced the CDS Boston English Country Dance series featuring Bare Necessities.
Gene will give two presentations: History and Sources of English Country Dance Music and The Invented Style.
Jeff Warner (NH) is among the nation’s foremost performer/interpreters of traditional music. His songs from the lumber camps, fishing villages and mountaintops of America connect 21st century audiences with the everyday lives–and artistry–of 19th century Americans. His songs, rich in local history and a sense of place, bring us the latest news from the distant past.
Jeff grew up listening to the songs and stories of his father Frank Warner and the traditional singers his parents met during their folksong collecting trips through rural America. He accompanied his parents on their later field trips and is the editor of his mother’s book, Traditional American Folk Songs: From the Anne and Frank Warner Collection. He is producer of the two-CD set, Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still, the Warners’ recordings of rural singers, many of them born in Victorian times. “The scion of one of the nation’s most eminent families of folksong collectors, he represents a tradition that is fundamentally unbroken since preindustrial times” (Stuart Frank, Senior Curator, New Bedford Whaling Museum).
He has toured nationally for the Smithsonian Institution, taught at Pinewoods, Ashokan and Swannanoa summer music programs and recorded for Flying Fish/Rounder, WildGoose and other labels. His 1995 recording Two Little Boys received a Parents’ Choice Award. Jeff is a past president of the Country Dance and Song Society, a founding officer of the Folk Alliance, and a producer of the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival. www.jeffwarner.com
Jeff will lead two singing sessions: Old Time Fun and Frolic and Songs of Sailors and the Sea.
Jeremy Carter-Gordon (MA) is a teacher, performer and scholar of traditional music and dance. He teaches traditional dance and harmony singing, plays banjo, and tours with the Windborne Singers and vocal duo Far Distant Shore. Well known as an enthusiastic, clear, and knowledgable teacher of rapper and sword dances from around Europe, he has taught workshops and classes in seven countries and six states, as well as at dance camps such as CDSS English and Campers Weeks.
In 2011-2012 Jeremy spent a year studying, recording, and dancing with European hilt and point sword dance groups on a Watson Fellowship. He visited over 30 teams in 10 countries, learning about the wide variety of sword dancing on the continent. Jeremy offers workshops in these unusual dances, from Spain to Italy, Germany to Croatia, and more. He also offers lectures and presentations, which draw upon a year of videos, photos, notation, dancing, and of course amazing stories!
He holds a Masters in Dance Knowledge, Practice, and Heritage.
Jeremy will give a presentation, with video illustrations, on Continental Longsword.
Jim Oakden (CA) is our program director. He started playing piano and clarinet at an early age and stumbled into early music from the classical music scene. After six years performing early music, he discovered the world of traditional and ethnic music. Having diverse tastes, he has played in many bands and performs on an absurd number of instruments, including accordion, mandolin, several styles of bagpipes, recorders, whistle and zurna (to name but a few). A dancer himself, he specializes in playing for dancers in a bunch of bands for ECD, contra, morris, Irish, Breton/French, Greek, and Bulgarian. He has been on staff at myriad dance camps throughout the country. In addition to the PoQ CDs, his recordings include 7 albums with Roguery.
Jim will play for an ECD dance party and co-lead, with Shira Kammen, Name That (Playford 1651) Tune.
Jon Berger (CA) has played for morris, sword, English country, and contra dance in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1976. Formerly with Berkeley Morris, he now plays for Apple Tree Morris in Sebastopol. Jon also plays in Flashpoint, a Santa Rosa-based contra dance band. He is well known for his powerful music, and, while playing for morris, his ability to maintain a connection between the music, the dancers and the dance. His recordings include three albums with Persons of Quality. Jon is also a former member of Tempest, a Celtic rock band that plays for an entirely different style of dancing.
Jon will play for an ECD dance party.
Kalia Kliban (CA) has been part of the California Bay Area traditional dance scene since the mid-80s, performing and teaching in a wide range of styles. At dance camps and festivals across the country she has taught morris, longsword, English and American clogging, English country dance and contra, and she's a regular contra and English caller in the vibrant Bay Area dance community. Her welcoming and relaxed teaching style has helped dancers of all levels experience the joy of traditional dance. Kalia was a caller for one of the Country Dance and Song Society Centennial tour stops.
Kalia will call an ECD dance party.
Kate Barnes (MA) has been playing piano, flute and assorted other instruments, in more genres, in more interesting locations, for longer than most of us can remember. Kate keeps herself busy with teaching, recording, publishing music books, composing, ceramics, and wisecrackery. She has played for traditional dancing since 1971, and has been invited to most major English, contra, square, and vintage dance events throughout the United States, performing for dances and concerts, leading ensemble workshops, and generally acting in a crazy and often undignified manner. Averaging over 250 engagements per year since 1980, she is arguably one of New England’s busiest musicians, and has also played for festivals and tours in England, France, Denmark, Shetland, Scotland and Czechoslovakia.
In addition to Trio Picante, she works with the bands Bare Necessities, The Latter-Day Lizards, Third String Trio, Yankee Ingenuity, Big Bandemonium, Dark Carnival, Crazy Quilt, and The Dactyls and has performed with many traditional greats including Seamus Connolly, Joe Derrane, Cathie Ryan, Chris Norman, Alasdair Fraser, Rodney Miller, and Joe Cormier.
Publications include English Country Dance Tunes (Volumes One, Two, and Three), a widely used collection of English traditional dance music, A Little Couple Dancemusik, a collection of 400 traditional couple dance tunes, and Interview With A Vamper, an instruction book of piano techniques.
Recordings include Sous le Ciel de Paris with Third String Trio, Sleeping On a Rock with The Latter Day Lizards, Kitchen Junket and Heatin' Up The Hall with Yankee Ingenuity, Bare Necessities, Take A Dance, Nightcap and at least 10 others in the Boston CDS Centre Dance Series with Bare Necessities, Airplang and Airplang II with Rodney Miller, BLT (Barnes, Lea & Tomczak), Soir et Matin with Kerry Elkin, Yankee Dreams and Moxie with Frank Ferrell, Shape Shifting with Jeanne Morrill, Cascata de Lagrimas, Between Two Worlds and Gypsy Wine with Mary Lea, and Twelve-Gated City, The Great Waltz and Childsplay: Live with Childsplay. canispublishing.com
Kate will teach a three-session music workshop on Accompanying English Dance.
Linda Tomko (CA) is a historian, dancer, and embodier of dances past. She danced and taught at, later co-directed with Wendy Hilton, the Stanford Summer Workshop in Baroque Dance and its Music, and she has collaborated in concerts of early 18th-century dance and music with period music bands including Musica Pacifica, La Monica, the Utrecht Early Music Festival Band, and Thornton Baroque Sinfonia. From 2002 to 2017, she edited the Dance & Music book series for Pendragon Press. She is professor emerita of Dance at the University of California, Riverside.
Linda will give a presentation on Early 18th-Century Dance Cousins.
Luke Hillman and Berkeley Morris (CA)
Luke picked up a concertina in 2015 and woke up the next morning with mild amnesia and wearing strange, colorful clothes. In his spare time, he is a chicken tender.
Luke, and others from Berkeley Morris will lead a music session of morris tunes from BerkMo repetoire.
Matt Simons (UK) is a dancer, musician, and scholar based in South Lincolnshire, UK. He holds a Ph.D. in History and is part-time lecturer in Modern British History at De Montfort University, Leicester. He is a member of several morris sides, including Cambridge Morris Men, Devil’s Dyke MM, Peterborough Morris, and most recently Dolphin MM. Matt’s doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Morris Men: Dancing Englishness, c.1905–1951’, comprises a series of intellectual biographies examining five key protagonists in the morris revival with reference to contemporary ideas of national identity.
Matt will give a presentation on The Womene of the Costswold Morris Revival.
Paul Hutchinson (UK), member of the much-loved duo Belshazzar’s Feast, has been touring the world for 25 years. Appearances on television and radio gained them many plaudits including a nomination for Best Duo at the BBC Folk Awards in 2010. He is regarded as one of the top accordionists in the country because of his unique, refreshing, and at times ‘classical’ approach to playing. He is also an experienced workshop leader.
Paul's keen interest and knowledge of 17th and 18th century music culminated in a book of tunes published by Faber Music in 2019. The Maniac CD, a selection of his composed variations based on the original tunes, was released in 2019.
Other CDs include Clarion (Pagoda Project). Their debut album, which featured his compositions, received five star reviews from the music press. His latest recording Petrichor, features musician friends from around the world and was produced during the lockdowns in 2020.
Check out Paul's website.
Paul will teach a two-session music workshop based on his book Sixty Country Dance Tunes 1786/1800
Rebecca King (CA) is a versatile dance pianist, conductor, and composer, whose strong classical training and love of jazz show in her rhythmic and lyric piano accompaniments. Rebecca plays for English and contra dance in the greater San Francisco Bay area and has been on staff at west coast dance camps, weekends, and balls and at Pinewoods. By day, she teaches music in the Sonoma Valley schools. Rebecca can be heard on Cowboy Dancing by Ray Bierl, on BACDS' CD Swinging On The Gate in which she was executive producer, and three albumns with Persons of Quality, and Nearer & Farther--a solo piano album which includes many of her own tunes. www.rebeccakingmusic.com
Rebecca will play for an ECD dance party and lead an ECD tunes session.
Renée Camus (CA) is a dancer, writer, and teacher who has taught many styles of dance, including English country dance, English and Appalachian clogging, Irish step dancing, morris, ballroom, swing, and historical dance styles, especially those from the Victorian and Ragtime eras (waltz, schottische, mazurka, one-step, tango, maxixe, etc.). She has a bachelor’s degree in musical theatre from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in dance history from American University. She has performed with Orion Longsword, Ha’Penny Morris, the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers, Footworks, PedAntics, and a brief stint with Dancing on Common Ground. She also founded and directed her own dance company dedicated to preserving and presenting historical social dance, called Centuries Historical Dance, and produced the DVD Dancing through the Centuries: Dawn of a New World, serving as writer, director, narrator, choreographer, and dancer.
Renée has taught at colleges and dance studios and at many dance camps around the country, including Pinewoods, Berea, Cumberland, Terpsichore’s Holiday, Flying Cloud Academy’s Vintage Dance Week in Cincinnati, and the Newport Vintage Dance Week in Rhode Island. She is a regular caller (and designed and maintains the website) for Culver City English Country Dance, and she recently began writing her own English country dances (published on her website). During the pandemic, she offered classes in ECD style and technique and in clogging, as well as teaching for Russian dance festivals.
Renée will give a presentation on English Clogging Past to Present.
Sharon Green (CA) has been organizing English dance weekends and weeks on both coasts since 1991, her most recent venture being BACDS’ Virtual Fall Frolick in November 2020. In addition to organizing, Sharon calls, choreographs, and adapts dances for solo and couple dancing. (Three days into California’s March 2020 lockdown, Sharon transformed the classic dance Maiden Lane into Maiden Alone in what may have been the first recorded adaptation of an English Country Dance for solo performance.) In April 2020 she and Kalia Kliban joined forces to create the Odd Sundays English dances on Zoom, for which she has been calling ever since. For invitations to future Odd Sundays English sessions, please email sharon@bacds.org
Sharon will call an ECD dance party.
Shira Kammen (CA), a multi-instrumentalist (primarily violin, vielle, and viola) and vocalist, has spent most of her life exploring the worlds of early and traditional music. She is a favorite at dance camps and events around the country. A member for many years of the early music ensembles Alcatraz, Project Ars Nova, and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with Sequentia, Hesperion XX, the Folger and Newberry Consorts, Anonymous 4, the Boston Camerata, the Balkan group Kitka, and the Oregon, California and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals. Shira is the founder of Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to performance on river rafting trips. She has performed and taught in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Morocco, and Japan, and on the Colorado, Rogue and Klamath Rivers. Shira happily collaborated with singer/storyteller John Fleagle for fifteen years, and performs now with many ensembles, among them the English Country Dance band Roguery. Shira has recorded many albums in a variety of styles of music and has played on several television and movie soundtracks, including 'O', a modern high school setting of Othello and ‘’The Nativity Story’. Some of her original music can be heard in an independent film about fans of the work of JRR Tolkien. The strangest place Shira has played is in the elephant pit of the Jerusalem Zoo. You will find more information at shirakammen.com.
Shira will play for an ECD dance party, lead three singing sessions, and co-lead, with Jim Oakden, Name That (Playford 1651) Tune.