The Chattanooga Dulcimer Festival will be held at the Mountain Arts Community Center March 27-29. Workshops for hammered dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, and voice will take place all day Friday and Saturday. In addition to instruction, concerts will be held at the MACC both Friday and Saturday nights at 7pm and are open to the public. Tickets are $10 at the door. All concert proceeds benefit the MACC.
This year's instructors include: Dan Landrum, Katie Moritz, and Lisa Ferguson teaching hammered dulcimer; Butch Ross, Aaron O'Rourke, and Stephen Seifert teaching mountain dulcimer; and Trish Wileman will teach voice.
Meet the Instructors:
Dan Landrum's hammered dulcimer playing has taken him from street performing
in Chattanooga to Olympic Ceremonies, Presidential Inaugurations, and
multiple festivals around the country. Mr. Landrum played as a soloist in the Yanni
Live tour, performing on stages in hundreds of cities from the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles to New York's famed Madison Square Gardens. He and his wife, Angie, are the publishers of Dulcimer Players News magazine.
Katie Moritz and Lisa Ferguson will be co-teaching hammered dulcimer classes. 2013 National Hammer Dulcimer Champion, Katie Moritz has been playing music for over 20 years. She is a multi-instrumentalist whose area of expertise is the hammered dulcimer. Her style of playing ranges from American old-time, to modern pop, and original compositions. In 2010 Ms. Moritz met and teamed up with Ms. Ferguson to begin working on their debut album, Kaleidoscope, a CD of dulcimer duets filled with energizing melodies and driving rhythms. Ms. Ferguson was the 2009 winner of both the Southern Regional Dulcimer Championship and the National Hammered Dulcimer Contest.
Aaron O'Rourke is a headliner at many dulcimer festivals across the country and an author of seven instructional books for mountain dulcimer. In 2010, he won the National Mountain Dulcimer Competition held at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Ks. Mr. O'Rourke is also a past winner in the Florida Old-time music competition held in Dade City, Fl. and the Southeastern Regional Dulcimer Contest in Mountain View, Ar. He has headlined many folk and progressive acoustic music festivals in the Southeast including the Florida Folk Festival, Gamble Rogers Folk Festival, and Stringbreak Festival. Mr. O'Rourke is also an in demand Irish rhythm guitar player.
Stephen Seifert has been a featured performer and teacher of the mountain dulcimer at festivals all across the United States, as well as at The Tono American Music Festival in Tono, Japan. Mr. Seifert has performed as a soloist for the Nashville Chamber Orchestra and the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. He was an adjunct instructor at Vanderbilt's Blair School of Music from 1997 to 2001. Mr. Seifert has released dozens of instructional DVDs, CDs, and books. He, along with Mr. Landrum, have produced hundreds of hours of instruction for their online school, DulcimerSchool.com.
Butch Ross had been a touring singer/songwriter when he was given a mountain dulcimer as a birthday present. At first, the instrument was a curiosity but before too long it became his instrument of choice. Since then Mr. Ross has become an in demand performer at folk and dulcimer festivals throughout the US and Europe. Mr. Ross, along with Trish Wileman, organized the first Ukulele Festival at the MACC last month. It was a huge success.
Trish Wileman has held leading roles in theater, opera, oratorio, musical theater, and is currently assistant director of Music at Signal Presbyterian while working toward an M.A. in Choral Conducting. She is a performance/voice coach and a frequent judge for area vocal contests. In 2012, Ms. Wileman directed Jim Pfitzer’s one-man show, Aldo Leopold: A Standard of Change, currently on tour across the US. She recently directed The Robin Woman: Shanewis, the film version of Barber's A Hand of Bridge, and Twisted Roots. She is vocal producer on Mr. Ross' latest album People, Places, Things, and co-teaches The Art of the Singer/Songwriter course with Mr. Ross.
For more information, contact: Angie Landrum of Dulcimer Players News at PO Box 278, Signal Mountain, Tn. 37377, or 423-886-3966, or angie@dpnews.com.