Midwinter Festival - 2018 - Workshops
Leon Grizzard, with Dan Foster
Guitar Accompaniment, Western Swing Style
1pm to 2pm, Room 104
Leon will present two western swing tunes with old time guitar parts: Stay all Night and Faded Love. Stay all Night, which has a breakdown fiddle introduction, showing the accompaniment with cowboy chords (first position chords), then in Texas old time fiddle accompaniment style, and then the Eldon Shamblin take on it. Faded Love (Darling Nellie Gray), with the same three styles presented. Time permitting, I'll add Right or Wrong in Eldon Shamblin style, discussing cycle of dominant seventh chords progressions. Tablature for the Texas old time and Shamblin versions will be provided.
Ryan Gould
Bass Workshop
1pm to 2pm, Room 102
Fundamentals of playing the stand-up bass. A variety of techniques will be demonstrated, so bring your basses or just observe!
Alexa Dee
Deep Roots: History and Songs of Migrant Texas Cedar Choppers
1pm to 2pm, Room 105
For nearly 100 years a small but infamous sect, better known as Cedar Choppers, camped, worked, and played, relatively undisturbed by outsiders, amongst the rugged hills of Central Texas. Much like their Appalachian ancestors, Cedar Chopper's camped in tight knit groups, where strangers were unwelcome, in effect insulating customs, allowing for a unique blend of Appalachian, Texas frontier, and cowboy cultures, as well popular culture from radio and community square dances. Journey back to that nearly forgotten time with an inside perspective along with sixth generation Texan and Cedar Chopper descendent Alexa Dee, as she shares her family's songs and history.
Danzversity
Afro-Cuban dance.
With Ricardo Jesús Maga Rojas, Jaymie Orozco Howard, Tony Howard
2pm to 3pm, Room 102
Join us while we take you on an adventure in learning about the history of this beautiful culture and dance. We will have fun exploring the movements and rhythms of Afro-Cuban music. This workshop will have you exploring basic moves of Afro-Cuban traditions that you can take to any dance floor. Our goal is to give you an insight to the beauty of Afro-Cuban movements, while having fun exploring and interpreting the dances. We want to make sure that you leave feeling enriched with history, dance and culture. Join us!
Lindsay Haisley
Autoharp
2 pm to 3pm, Room 104
The worshop will cover "care and feeding" of this interesting instrument, including tuning and string and felt replacement. We'll move on to styles and techniques of playing and repertoire, demonstrations of songs, and other topics as participants wish. The plan for this workshop isn't prescriptive, and discussion and Q/A will be guided, as needed, by those attending the workshop. Handouts with lots of information on resources, autoharp festivals, etc. will be available. Lindsay Haisley was a 2004 inductee into the Autoharp Hall of Fame.
Bob Leibman
Dance and music of the Balkans
2 pm to 3pm, Room 105
Bob Leibman spent a considerable amount of time in villages in Macedonia and East Serbia, studying wedding customs and dance. Most of his folk dance teaching is of the dances he learned from villagers. Although he teaches dances that range in level of difficulty, most are easy enough for the majority of folk dancers to learn and enjoy. His more difficult dances are suitable for exhibition purposes.