Flute & Pennywhistle

Jody Johnstone has been a fixture in the Irish music community in the
Belfast area for over a decade. She co-leads the Irish session at the Homeport
Tavern in Searsport on Thursday nights. Jody’s first intensive whistle study
was with Thomas Johnston in Ennis, Ireland. On returning from Ireland she
sought out Nicole Rabata for private lessons.  She attends the Catskills
Irish Arts Week regularly and studies whistle with with Mary Bergin, Joanie
Madden and Kathleen Conneely here or in Ireland every chance she gets.  A
recent vacation on Joanie Madden’s Musical Bus Tour of Ireland in which she
got to play with Joanie any number of times was a highlight of her lifetime.
Jody plays locally with Jim Hyland and Chris Brinn as The Strayaways and has
appeared on stage many times at the Maine Celtic Celebration and will do so
again this year.

A longtime Maine Fiddle Camper, Jody has previously assisted teaching
beginner whistle and is delighted to be on staff this year.

email: [email protected]

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 over 50 years. In the 70’s, he was a founding member of the Roaring Jelly dance band and the Common Ground quintet. Back then, he played occasionally with Dudley Laufman and the Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra. He spent over 20 years as the hired music director of two long-standing community dance bands (the Berlin Country Dance Orchestra and Oh, CONTRAire!), and has recorded with a number of traditional musicians, including Tony Saletan, Jay Unger, Jerry Robichaud, and Trapezoid. He has played for many well-known dance callers, including Dudley Laufman, Ted Sanella, Larry Jenkins, Tony Parkes, and Lisa Greenleaf

He was a co-founder of The Music School at the Emporium, then in Cambridge, MA, and was the Director of the school for the first four years. As the lead old-time banjo instructor, he taught over 400 musicians how to frail a banjo. He has been on staff several times at Pinewoods, and has led instructional workshops at many festivals including: Fox Hollow, the National Folk Festival at Wolftrap, NEFFA, the Five College Folk Festival, and the DEFFA Festival.

In the past at Fiddle Camp, Sandy has taught pennywhistle and five-string banjo. This summer he will be leading the Great Horned Ukestra in its daily late-afternoon rehearsals, and also leading them at the Country Dances each evening. (Remember to bring a ukulele and/or a horn!)

15 Pipers Way, New Harbor, ME 04554 • Landline: (207) 677-6647

A self-described “tune hound,” Jim DiCarlo has been playing Irish music on whistle and wooden flute for contra dances, at sessions, and in the hallways of music festivals for the past 25 years.  He loves learning new tunes and has even composed a few of passable quality.  A long-time member of the Maine-based, not-entirely-traditional group Wake the Neighbors, he played alongside Lissa Schneckenburger, John Cote, Jessie & Greg Boardman, Ed Howe, Anthony Shostak and Alfred Lund.  (more…)

Brad Hurley has been playing traditional Irish music on whistle and wooden flute since the late 1970s, and has performed in dozens of concerts, weddings, dances, theater productions, and festivals in New England and eastern Canada. Brad has taught flute and whistle for many years, and his online guide to the Irish flute is a popular resource among flute players around the world. He currently performs on flute and 12-string guitar in a duo with his partner Claire Boucher, a traditional singer from southwestern Brittany. (more…)

Darryn Petersen began playing the whistle and uilleann pipes twenty four years ago, after being inspired by a Seamus Ennis album he bought on a whim. His first lessons were with Jim Daily and the St James The Great chapter of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann in Glasgow, Scotland, and then with All-Ireland piper Patrick Hutchinson in Providence RI. He is greatly interested in the musical styles of the great pipers of the early and mid twentieth century, such as Seamus Ennis, Tommy Reck, and Willie Clancy. Although his day job restoring Maine’s early homes keeps him quite busy, he still finds time to haunt local sessions, and particularly enjoys sharing tunes with Fiddle Camp instructors Tamora Goltz, David Stimson, and Sharon Pyne.

Sharon has been a student of tin whistle and wooden flute since 1977 when she attended the Willy Clancy Summer School while working in Ireland for the year. On her return to Boston to care for her grandmother, she studied with master flute players in the Hanafin /Cooley Comhalthus branch. She move to Maine to raise her children and became a member of the Portland Ceili Band and Ladies of the Lake. She runs a music studio in Bath, Maine where she teaches flute and whistle and Music Together. For a few months every year since 2000, she happily lives and breathes Maine Fiddle alongside director Doug Protsik.  Sharon can be contacted at [email protected] or 207-522-3900.

Multi-genre flutist Nicole Rabata fell in love with Irish traditional music while living in Cork city in the south of Ireland in 2000. She spent several years in County Clare, and has since performed in the USA, Europe and Asia, including International Flute Festivals in Stockholm and Lund (Sweden), Temple Bar Trad Fest in Dublin, the Hebridean Celtic Festival in Scotland, Interharmony International Music Festivals in Italy and Germany, Acadia Trad Fest, the National Flute Conventions in Phoenix, NYC and San Diego, WOMAD Festival in the UK and the Festival Interceltique du L’Orient in Brittany among others. She has been featured on BBC Glasgow and her solo recording has been featured on NPR. She spent two months in residence at the Gandhi Ashram in India where she directed the music program. She has been on the music faculty at Colby College for two decades and is a Trevor James Flutes performing artist.

Mark Roberts has been part of a number of groundbreaking bands in traditional music including; The Red Clay Ramblers, Touchstone, The Sevens, The Clayfoot Strutters and Childsplay. His flute and whistle playing also features prominently in the soundtrack to John Sayles’s film The Secret of Roan Inish.  Mark can be heard on numerous recordings including his duo recording with Dan Compton, The High Caul Cap.  Mark is excited to be helping out with the whistle class at this years MFC, you can also find him and his mop in the dinning hall after lunch, don’t worry there are plenty of mops.