Surviving Sore Fingers

So Saturday morning, we got up and joined the crowd for 8am breakfast in the cafeteria. Now the Kingham School where we were gathered is one of those very typical British boarding schools. Founded in the mid-19th century, it's now co-ed but aside from that I expect that it is very much the same as such schools have been for many years, and I also expected rather uninspiring food. As it turned out, this was not the case: these kids eat very well, and although the menu for the weekend was stereotypically British, everything was well-prepared, tasty and attractive. Can't ask for much more when you've got musical friends and students surrounding you, eh?

Heather, Nadine and I were splitting the tutoring duties for the weekend, and since we had about 25 students they were split into two groups, one of beginners and one of ïmprovers"who were mostly intermediate and advanced-intermediate students, many of them quite good musicians. I was off for the first session while Nadine warmed up the improvers so I visited with old friend Mike Fenton, the Autoharp Hall of Fame member who has long been at the heart of the autoharp community in the UK. Mike taught the early UK Autoharp events, and over the years, folks like Sue, Heather and Nadine have continued to drive them, teaching many of the workshops as well as administering them, and bringing in people like myself for some variety and also to give themselves a chance to learn from others. (I should comment that both Nadine and Heather have in past years competed in the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering and each has placed in the top three at least once as I did this past summer).

Once we'd had our tea break (yep, in England it's tea -- coffee is something that is created from hot water and powder from a jar :-)), I spent an intensive hour with the improvers working on Irish polkas. Very good fun -- as always, we started with rhythm, and gradually progressed from playing the rhythm to playing the melody line to integrating the rhythm into the melody. Pretty intensive work, but my intent was not only to teach them some nice music, but to lay the groundwork for the other workshop sessions I'd be teaching that weekend. So after lunch, we did a workshop on "Singing With The Autoharp"and once again I started by talking about and demonstrating layers of rhythm. We messed with one of my old favorites for an hour, Stephen Foster's "The Glendy Burke," a nice accessible song that makes a great addition to one's jam repertoire.

So we had another tea break, and afterwards Nadine hosted kind of an open-mic sort of sharing session. Nadine, Heather and I each played a short set for the group, demonstrating our very different styles and giving the group a chance to see what could be done with the instrument. I was free to leave after that to prepare for the concert, but I decided to stay and was very glad I did. This was a chance for students to get up and perform something for the class. Three or four did, and I'd be hard-pressed to say what was the best: each one got up and sang a song or played a tune that they'd been working on. Some really beautiful singing with extremely tasteful accompaniment came out from these oh-so-shy-and-self-deprecating students. I knew that UK Autoharps had been hosting workshops for years, but this was the first chance I'd had to see the impact of all that great teaching that attendees have clearly been avidly absorbing. Really a lovely experience, and I was privileged to see those beautiful, intimate performances.

After supper, it was time for the big concert -- all the tutors were expected to get up on stage and strut their stuff. John, the organizer, had in mind that Nadine, Heather and I ought to do something together, but given the fact that our styles are so different, this would have been difficult even if we had played together like that often. So we decided to use the designated 20-minute Äutoharp Extravaganza" time to each play two songs or tunes of our own choosing. That worked out great. Since Sore Fingers is primarily a bluegrass-oriented event with a bit of American old-time thrown in for good measure, we all tried to choose things that would resonate with the audience. Mike Fenton is well-known and much loved in this community, so Nadine played his "Polly Swallow"and followed that by singing John McCutcheon's "The Red Corvette"-- if you haven't heard it, look it up on the web and at least read the words. Definitely a "guy song"and a good choice for this audience. Heather came up and played a spirited and delicate version of Arkansas Traveler, a fiddle tune familiar to this audience, followed by Star of the County Down, a well-known waltz played with great beauty. Then I got up and did my eclectic contest arrangement of the spooky modal fiddle tune Cold Frosty Morning to tickle the old-time crowd and followed that by singing Kate Long's "Who'll Watch The Home Place?"a song written by an autoharper, but made famous by bluegrass artist Laurie Lewis when she recorded it and it was the IBMA Song of the Year in 1994. I'm definitely no Laurie Lewis, but I figured if Kate liked my singing of her song then it ought to be good enough for this group :-)

Anyway it was all very well received, and the rest of the concert was good fun. The two old-time tutors did a nice 20 minute set, demonstrating that it's possible to make interesting music even with someone you've only had an hour or so to rehearse with and never met before if you've got good rhythm. And then the bluegrass tutors, 10 or so of them, took the stage and for an hour regaled the audience in various pickup band combinations with one or the other taking the lead and his/her bandmates playing backup and breaks. And afterwards we did what all crazy musicians do: we got together in the bar and jammed until the wee hours.

That night the jam where I was sitting was a little crazy -- there were other jams within earshot so it was hard to hear and difficult to keep the rhythm steady. And we had mad mandolinist Chris playing with us -- I teasingly nominated him for the Sore Fingers Weekend Speed King because he had a tendency to encourage everything to go much too fast. We did have a bass player with us, but when he took a break, all chaos broke loose, so I put down my autoharp (it was too hard to be heard anyway) and picked up the bass. Two or three hours later, I had officially earned my sore fingers for the weekend, but at least we played at a more comfortable speed for the rest of the evening. And my autoharp students were amazed that I could pick up an instrument that they didn't even know I played and proceed to play all those songs that I'd never heard. It might not have been about autoharp, but it was a good object lesson the next day when we talked for a while about playing in jam sessions when you don't know the tunes and haven't got the music in front of you.

Sunday after breakfast, I had a wonderful nearly two hour session targeted at the more advanced players. We spent the time learning about playing rhythms for Israeli dance tunes, and really dug into äctualising" several piece that I had brought with me. It really was all about rhythm again, and about learning to allow those rhythms to express themselves as the melodies were played. And by the end of the session, several of the students really had caught on, and everyone had learned something. I teased that I am expecting that when I came back in a couple of years I would ask to hear all of them playing those tunes properly for me :-)

Sunday afternoon wound down with another sharing session. For me the highlight was Siegfried, the German member of UK Autoharps, who had come (at my request) with some German folk tunes to share after I had teased him several months back about his penchant for playing American pop tunes from the 20's to 40's. In a style very much his own that reminds me of harpsichord playing, he stepped us all through several of those tunes introducing his playing with amusing translations of the words to each song.

After the sharing session, Nadine led us in playing a lovely OÇarolan tune together, and then it was time for tea :-) During tea, I chatted a bit with the old-time fiddle tutor, Pete Cooper, and expressed regret that we hadn't had a chance to play a few fiddle tunes together. But it turned out that he had some time, so after tea we sat down and shared tunes and chatted for a few minutes. More good fun: Pete is not a purely old-time guy, and I've got a purely old-time style, so he enjoyed hearing and playing along with my very West Virginian versions of tunes he was familiar with, and I appreciated hearing his interpretations.

So that was the weekend. Great fun to be a tutor for the UK group -- it's rare to have such a friendly, attentive, and dedicated group to work with. Well, except for bad boy Paul who livened up the class considerably on Saturday -- but he's such a nice guy that I think I'll forgive him for participating with such a twinkle in his eye. Next chapter: adventures in Utrecht.