August Week I

Mia Bertelli grew up in the mountains of New Mexico, singing at every chance she could get. Her love of song led her to Vermont at the age of fifteen, where she dove into the polyphonic singing camps of Village Harmony like a penguin into the sea. Since then she has been filling kitchens, streets, concert halls, vegetable gardens, and public restrooms with song, both in the northeast and overseas. Her irrepressible inclination to harmonize and great love of playful nuance have mostly gotten her into all the right sorts of trouble, so she counts them among her blessings.   (more…)

Baron grew up playing the mandolin in Maine and recently graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts with a degree in music performance and ethnomusicology. Versed in traditional fiddle music, bluegrass, and jazz, he is known for his rhythmic experimentation and unique harmonic sense on both the mandolin and the tenor guitar. Baron plays with fiddler Julia Plumb in their duo Velocipede(www.velocipedemusic.com).

A trained teacher, Andrea Cooper has taught everything from computers to clawhammer banjo. Andrea caught the Irish music bug while she was living in Toronto. Since then, her tin whistle teaching and playing has taken her to places as far as Eek, Alaska and Weiser, Idaho.

Andrea was the resident tin whistle teacher at Randal Bays’ Friday Harbor Irish Music Week in the Pacific Northwest for 7 years where a student described her classes as “the icing on the Jackie Daley cake”.

Andrea has been on staff at various music and dance camps including Pinewoods and Algoma Trad. She is thrilled to be back at Maine Fiddle Camp.

Sandy has been playing for contra dances for nearly 50 years.  In the 1970’s, he was a founding member of the Roaring Jelly dance band (which is still going strong) and the Common Ground quintet.  Back then, he also played occasionally with Dudley Laufman and the Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra.  He subsequently spent over 20 years as the founder and director of two long-standing community contra dance bands, both of which are also still playing for monthly dances:  the Berlin Country Dance Orchestra (Berlin, MA), and Oh, CONTRAire! (Westford, MA).  (more…)