Teaching Staff Bios
Anna Rain
Anna Rain delights in the nexus of melody, movement, and community. As a dance leader, she channels the discipline of her day job as a certified Iyengar Yoga instructor, teaching efficiently and effectively, and calling every body to move confidently, with ease and grace. She is increasingly interested in how the skills one develops on the dance floor can translate into life wisdom. Anna also plays the recorder with her ECD bands Hot Toddy, Night Cap, and Betwixt & Between.
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Brad Foster
Photo by Marty Stock
Brad Foster was hoodwinked into attending his first dance while in middle school in Pasadena, CA and has been at it ever since, dancing and teaching English country, contras and squares plus morris and sword. He loves to share the the joy of dance and has taught throughout the US, Canada, and Europe, including at CDSS and Boston Centre programs at Pinewoods, plus Mendocino/Hey Days, Berea Christmas Country Dance School, John C. Campbell Folk School, and many more. He is a founder of the Bay Area Country Dance Society as well as co-founder of the Mendocino English and American Dance Weeks, and is Emeritus Director of the Country Dance and Song Society. Brad was honored with CDSS’s Lifetime Contribution Award in 2015 and an honorary membership from BACDS in 1993.
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David Newitt
David Newitt arrived at Swarthmore College in 1976 and was shocked and dismayed to discover a two year physical education requirement. Faced with the alternatives of football and "folk and square dancing" the choice was clear, and he has been dancing ever since. International folk dancing, English and Scottish Country Dancing, Morris and sword teams, contra dancing…all are wonderful community activities, and sharing them has been his passion for over 40 years.
Along with his fiddling wife Heather MacKay, David also enjoys playing music for English and Scottish dancing. They are founding members of The Humuhumunukunukuapua’a and Strathspey Society Band – the world’s best Hawaiian-themed Scottish and English Country Dance band.
Now retired, David used to spend his not dancing time studying pictures of people's insides, doing research on MRI, specializing in body parts that start with "b".
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Music/Sound Staff Bios
Audrey Jaber
You know Audrey Leigh Jaber (Knuth) is performing if the room is buzzing at a higher level. Her fiddling, featured in bands including The Free Raisins, The Gaslight Tinkers, Audacious (with Larry Unger), and Wake Up Robin, has electrified dance and concert halls across the US and Europe. Hailing from Honolulu and now living in California, she cut her folk teeth in the Boston area, attending Berklee College of Music and spending years exploring the thriving New England folk scene. Audrey’s fiddle playing is rhythmically lively and spontaneous; she's guaranteed to get you up and dancing. She specializes in English dance, New England, Celtic, and Old Time tunes (and did we mention she’s also an audio engineer?!). You might also have taken a workshop with Audrey, as she’s been on staff at various camps including various weeks at Pinewoods, Ashokan Northern Week, BACDS American week, New London Assembly and Halsway Manor. For more on Audrey, visit her at audreyleighjaber.com
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Ben Schreiber
Ben Schreiber (CA), a fiddler and tune writer rooted in the contra dance scene, brings a diverse musical palette influenced by his Midwest upbringing and years in the San Francisco Bay Area. Having started with the Suzuki method at an early age, Ben’s musical journey has been enriched through exploration of folk music. While best known for his contributions to contra dance bands like Uncle Farmer, the Dam Beavers, Offbeats, and Potent Brew, he also performs with the newly-established chamber-folk trio, Long Story Short. Ben’s musical experience also extends into English country dancing, where he is a regular presence at local ECD dances in addition to playing for workshops at various camps and weekends. Beyond music, he enjoys cooking, running, coding, and digital art/design.
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Chip Prince
Chip Prince, originally from New Hampshire (via Utah and NYC), is a lifelong pianist who also dabbles in euphonium, melodica, and Barbershop. Now “retired,” he used to conduct and/or play keyboards for Broadway shows in New York and on the road. He first found folk and square dancing in 1975 as a freshman in college but didn’t discover ECD and Contra until 2000. While in NYC Chip was a member of the English band Hudson Crossing and contra bands Gig Economy and Three Wise Guys. He was on staff at CDSS English Week at Pinewoods in 2018 and Hey Days in 2019 and 2022. When at home in Southern California Chip loves to play random gigs and make up band names with Audrey Jaber. He also occasionally jams with Chris Peoples and his Prickly Pears Celtic jam group in Rancho Mirage CA; all of us there are looking forward to the eventual development of a Contra/ECD scene in the desert.
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Christopher Jacoby
Christopher Jacoby (he/him) plays accordion, mandolin and guitar for Contras, English, and Scottish country dancing. He has performed in many bands and combinations over the years[1], but you might have seen him with: Audrey Jaber (and others), Wind Weavers, Ground Lift, Switching Protocols, Phoenix, and Last Exit. He can be heard on "Last Exit's Greatest Hits (by Last Exit)" [2], and the recently released "Remember Restaurants...?" by Audrey & Christopher. Christopher's non-dancing related hobbies include (but are not limited to): singing, sourdough and fermenting, Digital Audio & Audio Engineering, training computers to understand music, and workshop facilitation. He would be more than happy to talk to you about any of those things, should you end up at the same lunch table!
In addition to playing for Fall Frolick, Christopher Jacoby is our fabulous sound engineer.
[1] frequent conversation with his wife: "How many bands are you in?" "How do you define a band exactly? How many gigs do you need to play to be a band?"
[2] Only on CD! Contact Christopher for copies. You don't want to miss out, it's a great record.
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Jim Oaken
Jim Oakden likes dancing, and loves playing for dances: ECD (Persons of Quality, Roguery, The Whoots), contra, morris, Irish, Breton/French, Greek, Galician, Bulgarian, BalFolk… He performs on an absurd number of instruments, and for decades has been active in organizing and playing at music and dance camps. A current passion is helping to make whitewater river trips for musicians and dancers. In his other life Jim is a field-oriented marine biologist.
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Karen Alexrod
Karen Axelrod’s piano playing combines expressiveness, energy, lyricism and power. She is equally at home with styles ranging from traditional folk melodies to passionate tangos to old world French musette waltzes to English Country dance tunes and much more. Her playing is soulful yet touched with humor and whimsy. Her elegant and rich piano playing and her colorful, gorgeous accordion playing are enlivened by her off-beat humor. Karen plays with a number of bands, including Alchemy, Peregrine Road and 3rd String Trio.
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Shira Kammen
Multi-instrumentalist Shira Kammen has spent much of her life exploring the worlds of early and traditional music of all kinds. A member for many years of the early music Ensembles Alcatraz and Project Ars Nova, she has also worked with Sequentia, Hesperion XX, the Boston Camerata, storyteller/harpist Patrick Ball, singers Azam Ali and Joanna Newsom, the Balkan group Kitka, Anonymous IV, the King’s Noyse, the Newberry and Folger Consorts, The Compass of the Rose, Vajra Voices, Calextone, the Oregon, California and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals, and is the founder of Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to providing music on river rafting trips. She has worked with students in many different settings, among them teaching summer music workshops in the woods, coaching students of early music in such schools as Yale University, Case Western, the University of Oregon at Eugene, and working at specialized seminars at the Fondazione Cini in Venice, Italy and the Scuola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. Shira conducts a chamber chorus called Gallimaufry, and co-directs a women’s vocal ensemble, WAVE, and currently is music director for the California Revels. In the English Country Dance world, she is a member of the band Roguery and is always delighted to play music for dancing. She has played on a number of movie and television soundtracks, when weird medieval instruments are needed.
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