BOSTON House Camp 2017 TEACHING STAFF

|| HOSTS ||

LAURA CORTESE & KRISTIN ANDREASSEN - CO-DIRECTORS
YUKON & COLLEEN STUBBLEBINE - homeowners

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|| THEME ||

OLD-TIME MUSIC & SOCIAL CHANGE

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|| INSTRUCTORS ||

MIke & Ruthy | Avi Salloway | Pierce Woodward | ELLIE BUCKLAND | ISA BURKE | LAURA CORTESE | KRISTIN ANDREASSEN

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|| CAMP STAFF ||

All of our camp staff are crucial to creating the loving and supportive community that is Miles of Music. 

TIMOTHY TUCKER - CHEF | SHEENA OZAKI - ADMISSIONS DIRECTOR | SHAWNA KELLEY - INSTRUCTOR LIAISON |
LAUREN BALTHROP - COMMUNICATIONS CZAR |GINA LESLIE - GRAPHIC DESIGN ▽

|| INSTRUCTORS ||

Laura Cortese has built a distinguished career as an Americana fiddler, songwriter and vocalist. She is now one of the most in-demand musical collaborators on the folk circuit. She grew up in San Francisco, CA and moved to Boston, MA to study at Berklee College of Music, immersing herself in the city's vibrant indie music scene and enjoying a busy touring-and-studio career which included appearances with Band of Horses at Carnegie Hall and Pete Seeger at Newport Folk Festival. She tours internationally with her band, the Dance Cards. The group is bold and elegant, schooled in the lyrical rituals of folk music and backed by grooves that alternatively inspire Cajun two-stepping and rock ’n’ roll hip swagger. The band was selected from a pool of 400 bands to tour with the US State Department's American Music Abroad program. In 2014 & 2016, the band toured India, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Bangladesh, Estonia, Ukraine, Greece and Montenegro to perform and teach as artist ambassadors. Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards have also appeared at venues and festivals throughout the US, UK, Sweden & Canada pairing sophisticated string arrangements (two fiddles, cello & bass) and rich vocal harmonies with poignant and powerful singing.  www.thisislauracortese.com

Kristin Andreassen is a singer, a songwriter and a percussive dancer who combines those skills in musical performances that are both “inventive” (The New Yorker) and “haunting” (NPR’s Folk Alley). Before releasing her 2015 album Gondolier, she toured as a member of some the most respected acoustic groups of the 2000s: the stringband Uncle Earl, the "folk noir” singing trio Sometymes Why, and the Appalachian clogging troupe Footworks. Kristin's songs range from the playfulness of her #1 children’s hit "Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes” to emotive soundscapes as heard on Showtime’s The Affair and in this shadow art video collaboration with 2016 Miles of Music instructor Anna Roberts-Gevalt. An experienced teacher and square dance caller, Kristin is a true believer in the transformative power of music camps for all ages. She’s been on staff at a dozen such camps including Ashokan Fiddle & Dance, the Augusta Heritage Center, Voiceworks, Southern Girls’ Rock Camp in Memphis, Rockygrass Academy and the inaugural Wheatland Music Camp. Kristin studied creative writing, history and community development at Montreal’s McGill University, and she is nearly as surprised as her parents that she seems to have found a career where she employs all three of those skills in balance. www.kristinandreassen.com

Mike + Ruthy met in NYC in 1998 and never looked back. He's a poet considered "one of the best songwriters of his generation" (LA Weekly). She's a chanteuse who grew up in the American roots underground, the daughter of GRAMMY-winning fiddler and educator, Jay Ungar. These two believe in the transformative power of a great live concert. They write top-tier songs, tour with their kids and peerless five-piece band, and perform for audiences worldwide with a charm and onstage ease that may make you think they’re your new best friends. Folk music at it’s core, the band is amplified by rock elements - a sound they’ve taken to calling rural rock. Their latest release Bright As You Can (Thirty Tigers) brought them to new heights in 2015, spending 15 consecutive weeks in the Americana Radio top 40, with accolades from the likes of the Boston Globe ("One of the year's standout Americana albums”) and Wall Street Journal ("The 14-song collection spans folk, bluegrass, vintage country and just about everything else that falls under the catch-all heading of ‘Americana.’”) Mike + Ruthy also host a bi-annual folk roots festival in the Hudson Valley called The Hoot.  More info at hoot.love

Avi Salloway is a musician, activist, and educator based in Cambridge, MA. He grew up learning music directly from American folk legends, Pete and John Seeger, and from an early age, was exposed to music’s power to bring people together. Avi is the bandleader and principle songwriter for Billy Wylder. He spent the past three years touring worldwide with Bombino, the Tuareg guitar virtuoso from Niger, Africa. 

Avi has co-written, produced, and recorded on 11 albums and performed in 25 countries around the world, including concerts at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Montreal Jazz Fest, Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center. He has also collaborated and performed with renowned artists including Jack Johnson, Bombino, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Low Anthem, and Pete Seeger. Avi serves as the Global Ambassador for Heartbeat, the Jerusalem based non-profit organization that unites Israeli and Palestinian youth musicians to develop critical awareness and harness music’s power to transform conflict. “Salloway’s traveled the globe, teaching in the Middle East and absorbing myriad worldly musical influences. All of which inform his new project, Billy Wylder, which fuses disparate styles, from worldbeat to art rock, with his Americana roots.” –Seven Days http://billywylder.com http://live.heartbeat.fm

Pierce Woodward got hooked on fiddle music while playing bass in The Mammals and banjo in The Jolly Bankers.  He has released two albums of original, politically driven songs, and spent a season touring with Mad River Theater Works.  While living in New York City 2005-2010 he founded Band Together, a project that paired traditional musicians with human rights activists in the subway stations of Manhattan. He brought his fiddle with him for a year of education work in South Sudan in 2011, and found a few old time music fans there, as well.  These days he can be caught playing music at farmers markets, vigils and contra dances around Boston’s north shore, in his middle school reading and writing classroom in Lawrence, or in his living room with his wife and three tiny daughters. Pierce on YouTube 

Ellie Buckland and Isa Burke are 2/3 of the band Lula Wiles. Both raised in Maine in musical families, they have been singing and making music together ever since meeting as kids at Maine Fiddle Camp. Both Ellie and Isa attended Berklee College of Music, where they studied fiddle and songwriting. Together and separately, they have taught lessons and group classes in singing, songwriting, stage performance, fiddle, guitar, and old-time/bluegrass/roots music. As performers, they have traveled across the Eastern United States performing with Lula Wiles, and have also appeared as sidewomen with numerous artists in the Boston area. Both Ellie and Isa's musicianship is deep-rooted yet imaginative, driven by a love of good songs and the joy of collaborating with each other. http://www.lulawiles.com/