Off-season period music workshops begin Saturday, Dec. 3, at New Salem

Blast email sent to members of the Prairieland Dulcimers mailing list with press release enclosed - symbols in my email address are written out in CAPS to discourage spam.

Hi everybody -

It's nearly December already, and Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon we'll have the first of this year's off-season workshops in period music at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site. I'm pasting more details below. If you have Jean Ritchie's "Dulcimer Book," please bring it and tune to DAA. (But you don't need a dulcimer!) We'll talk about how and where to find songs in old books, and how to transpose them to "D for dulcimer." And I'll bring in a song by Irish poet/songwriter Thomas Moore that young Abraham Lincoln and the Rutledge kids sang at Rutledge Tavern. It's called "The Legacy," and if you want to hear it there's a very nice solo by Denise Myriam Cannas backed by harp and violin on YouTube at ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fHVVAoVJv4

I don't think it sounded quite like that at Rutledge Tavern, but it's a really nice song.

Hope to see you there Saturday!

- Pete



Period Music Workshops at New Salem
A series of off-season workshops in music appropriate for playing in New Salem’s historic village will begin Saturday, Dec. 3, and continue through the first Saturdays in January, February and March 2012. Volunteer interpreter Pete Ellertsen will coordinate the workshops, to be held from 10 a.m. to noon in the Visitors Center at Lincoln ’s New Salem State Historic Site.

This year’s workshops will focus on tunes and techniques for playing the mountain dulcimer in “Songs and Tunes of the Wilderness Road ” by Ralph Lee Smith and “The Dulcimer Book” by Jean Ritchie. Both books are available from online booksellers, and Smith’s can be ordered on his website at http://www.ralphleesmith.com/ . In addition, we’ll talk about how to find songs appropriate to New Salem in books like Carl Sandburg’s “Songbag,” John Lair’s “Songs Lincoln Loved” and David S. McIntosh’s “Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks” and transpose them for the dulcimer in open modal tunings.

You don’t have to play the dulcimer to take part, and singers as well as people who play other instruments have joined the workshops in past years. You don’t even have to be particularly musical! In addition to the songs, we will discuss how to relate musical performance to “Big Picture” core interpretive themes at New Salem and different ways of involving visitors in the music. Weather permitting, workshops will be held Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011; and Saturday, Jan. 7, Feb. 4 and March 3, 2012.

For information, please contact Pete Ellertsen in Springfield at 217-793-2587 or by email at peterellertsen(AT)yahoo(DOT)com.


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