MEET THE INSTRUCTORS
April 11-12, 2015
Austin, Texas
Coracree
Old Time Fiddle/Clawhammer Banjo-Jane Rothfield
Clawhammer Banjo-Bill Quern
Old Time Guitar-Sarah Gowan and Allan Carr
Appalachian Style Clogging-Sarah Gowan
Coracree plays Garfield's Blackberry Blossom with Sarah Gowan clogging (plus Max the dog)
Jane and Sarah play Waiting for Sandy (J. Rothfield)
Sarah Gowan was raised in a household where art, music, dance, and performance were as much a part of daily life as breakfast. Some of her earliest memories are of the lively old-time fiddle music and spontaneous clogging sessions in the yard of her great-grandmother's house nestled in the Smokey Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. A performer at the age of six; she studied piano, cello, guitar, and dance. In her teens, Sarah rediscovered the traditional music of her youth, leading her back to square and contra dancing and Appalachian clogging. Her powerful old time and contra dance guitar playing comes from many years of listening to and playing music for dances, concerts and jams. Most at home in a dance hall, Sarah has been playing rock-solid rhythms and inventive arrangements for contra, square and English dances for nearly 20 years. Sarah has been performing and teaching the Philadelphia based FiddleKicks Cloggers since 2003, performing Appalachian clogging, flatfooting, Cape Breton step dance and English wood shoe. Sarah is also a prolific tune writer and her tunes can be heard at dances all over the country. In addition to playing with Coracree, she plays with the contra bands Rumpus and Live Wire, the English ceilidh style Big Phat American K-Lee Band, The English country dance band Boxwood, and the French dance music group Cabriole. She is a frequent leader of the Philadelphia open band SPUDS, the webwrangler of their online tune repository.
Allan Carr was born and raised in Aberdeen, Scotland in a musical family of singers, fiddlers, pipers and accordion players. He is one of Scotland's finest traditional singers, whose uniqure repertoire of songs, ballads and stories reflects the culturally rich region of his native North East of Scotland. His guitar playing reflects his Celtic music culture as well as the Old Time Music of the American south. Allan has been playing traditional old time music since meeting his fiddler wife, Jane Rothfield and has played with many of the top old time musicians in the country. He won 1st place Back Up Guitar in the Santa Barbara Fiddle Contest and loves to push the boundaries with his old time guitar playing while staying true to the traditional style. Allan has taught guitar at numerous music camps and festivals including Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Folk College, Janie's Jumpstart, Groove Camp, Old Songs Festival and Bedford Summerfest.
Jane Rothfield: Award winning clawhammer banjo and fiddle player, Jane Rothfield has been playing old time music for over 30 years and has taught banjo and fiddle to all ages and abilities. Janie has that rare talent in a banjo player of really knowing the tunes from the Fiddlers point of view and how to drive the rhythm and melody with a percussive power and subtlety! In addition to her private students, Jane has taught numerous group workshops at festivals (Old Songs, Philadelphia Folk Festival, Wheatland) and at music camps around the country (Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Groove Camp, Old Songs Camps, Folk College, Janie's Jumpstart, and Banjo Camp North). She is a prolific and award winning tune writer (2x winner of Best Non-traditional Tune at Clifftop Appalachian Music Festival), recording artist and she performs with numerous bands including Coracree (with Allan Carr, Bill Quern and Sarah Gowan), Great Big Taters (with Hilarie Burhans and Bernie Nau), Sugar Pie (with Kellie Allen, HIlarie Burhans and Sabra Guzman) and Panache Quartet (with Donna Hebert, Andrea Beaton and Veronique Plasse).
Bill Quern is a multi instrumentalist, dancer, dance teacher and tune composer who plays just about “everything”-His father filled the house with instruments for him and his 10 siblings to explore and Bill ended up mastering just a “few”-banjo (tenor and clawhammer, fiddle, melodeon and harmonica! Bill got interested in traditional American music styles while living in Boston, where he restored banjos at Sandy’s Music in Cambridge MA and he never looked back. His traditional musical influences range from Old Time, Celtic, French, English and Contra Dance music and he has been teaching, performing and playing for dances for over 20 years! He has toured in Europe and Asia and at festivals across the United States with a variety of groups. Bill is the head musicians for the Philadelphia clogging group, Fiddlekicks, and is the co-ordinator of Philadelphia’s open contra dance band SPUDS. Bill plays in a variety of bands, including Coracree, Rumpus, the Big Phat American K-Lee Band, Dancewiz, Boxwood, Live Wire and the French dance music group, Cabriole. His original tunes can be heard on Coracree’s debut CD, Dancing in the Sky.
