Hey Days Staff
Brad Foster (MA) has danced and taught English country, contras and squares, and morris and sword for more than 40 years. He is well known for sharing the joy found in dance, and has taught throughout the US, Canada and Europe, including at Pinewoods, Ogontz, Buffalo Gap, Timber Ridge, Berea, Mendocino, John C. Campbell Folk School, Augusta, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, and Lady of the Lake. He is Executive and Artistic Director Emeritus of the Country Dance and Song Society, after 28 years as Director. He is also founder of the Bay Area Country Dance Society as well as co-founder of their English and American dance weeks.
Brad currently plays concertina for That Long Tall Sword, a team dancing longsword in Western Massachusetts. In the past, he danced with and played for The Marlboro Morris Men and Berkeley Morris, and danced with Guiding Star Clog Morris, The Bouwerie Boys, The Pinewoods Morris Men, and Westwind Folkdance Ensemble in both southern and northern California.
Brad will lead ECD classes and play for English clog dance.
Brooke Friendly (OR) is known for her warm yet commanding personality, her ability to convey directions concisely and clearly, her creativity, and her sense of humor and whimsy. She has a strong sense of what makes for a good community and she makes the learning experience fun and relaxing. A dancer for more than 30 years, she co-leads a weekly English and Scottish dance, calls Contra and family dances, and teaches country dance in a variety of settings: college academic credit, older adults, and K-12 students. Brooke has been on staff at camps, weekends, festivals, balls, and workshops throughout North America, including CDSS English Week at Pinewoods, and was program director for Bay Area Country Dance Society English Week.
A dance choreographer, she, with her husband Chris Sackett, has published four books of dances (Impropriety Vols. 1-4) and produced four CDs with the band Roguery (Shira Kammen, Jim Oakden, Anita Anderson, and Dave Bartley). Theatre choreography credits include Southern Oregon University Department of Theatre Arts productions of Entertaining Strangers (with Chris), Dancing at Lughnasa, and Caucasian Chalk Circle; and Oregon Cabaret Theatre’s world premiere of Parcel from America.
A founding member (1981) of The Heather and the Rose Country Dancers, a statewide organization of English and Scottish dance in Oregon, Brooke will join the board of the Country Dance and Song Society as secretary in April 2014. Previously, she was on the CDSS board and executive committee for six years (2001-07) and served on the CDSS Youth Task Group.
You can find more information on her books, CDs, and teaching at BrookeFriendlyDance.com.
Brooke will lead an ECD class, teach an ECD choreography class, and facilitate a choreographers testing session.
Gene Murrow (NY) has been an English country dancer and musician since 1965, and has taught and called since 1988 at clubs, workshops, festivals, camps, and balls throughout the U.S. as well as Britain, Europe, and Japan. He has frequently chaired Early Music Week, English-American Dance Week, and English Dance Week for the Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS).
In 1996, he organized the Amherst Assembly, a week-long conference devoted to a scholarly and practical look at the origins and evolution of the county dance. Sought out for his deep understanding of both music and dance and for his exceptional clarity when teaching, Gene has written a resource guide and training curriculum on musicianship for English country dance leaders, which served as the basis for week-long seminars at Pinewoods, Berea, and Mendocino camps at Early Music Week.
Gene has served on the Board of Directors of CDSS and Early Music America and is the Executive Director and Founder of Gotham Early Music Scene.
In addition to oboe and recorders, Gene plays concertina, accordion, and crumhorn. He holds a degree in music from Columbia University with studies at Juilliard, Class of '68. He has performed on four recordings as a member of MGM and produced the CDS Boston English Country Dance series featuring Bare Necessities.
The dances Gene leads are favorites with "newbies" as well as folks with decades of experience, since he succeeds in approaching English country dances as works of art, striving "to make their richness of structure, musical form, texture, and affect enjoyable and appreciated by dancers of all abilities."
Gene will lead ECD classes and teach a musicians class.
Judy Erickson (MA) is foreman of the groundbreaking dance troupe Orion Longsword. Her compelling choreographies combine traditional steps and figures with innovative elements including Appalachian stepping, jazz, and other American styles. In the step dancing world she is an accomplished dancer, choreographer and teacher, blending elements of Scottish, Appalachian, English clog and French-Canadian step dancing to develop her own steps and styles, both structured and improvisational. In recent years her step dance choreography has been an integral feature of Boston's Christmas Revels. Judy is also a past foreman of Muddy River Morris.
Judy will teach longsword, longsword choreography, and morris dance.
Anita Anderson (WA) is an extraordinary English country and contra dance pianist, playing with Roguery, Tricky Brits, Bag o' Tricks, and other Northwest bands. She is also a superb dancer, and this informs her playing, to the dancers' delight. She brings a large bag of tricks to her piano playing, with influences from doo-wop, baroque, ethnic, and vintage dance music--all in attentive service to the dancers. Over the years, she has presented musicians' workshops at several camps, including BACDS English Week at Mendocino and Lark in the Morning. She also teaches private dance piano lessons. Anita is an excellent singer, Scandinavian musician and dancer, and composer of contra and English country dance tunes.
Anita will play for ECD.
Dave Bartley (WA) plays mandolin, guitar, cittern, and other plucked string instruments. He has written over 300 tunes for English dance, contra dance, and couple dancing. With Roguery, Tricky Brits, KGB, and over a dozen other bands, Dave has played throughout the US and Canada, as well as parts of Europe and Australasia. Drawing from a musical experience that stretches from classical training to classic rock, Dave also currently plays in French cabaret, Big Band era swing, and Greek rebetika bands. From the mischievous to the profound, you never know what he's going to do next, but you can be sure you'll enjoy dancing to it. Dave's website
Dave will play for ECD and teach a tune writing workshop.
Sande Gillette (WA) has both feet firmly in the two worlds of dance and classical music, combining technical skill and raw talent with an all-consuming passion for fiddling. As a dance musician she plays inventive English country dance and contra fiddle with Tricky Brits and Bag o' Tricks. As a classical musician she plays violin in the Seattle Symphony (maybe you caught her at Carnegie Hall with them). Her dual lives provide lucky dancers with superb fiddling music. Sande embodies her band's split personality-one moment her instrument sings through an intricate melody in perfect intonation, while a minute later she's sawing through an old-timey classic.
Sande will play for ECD and teach a band workshop.
Eden MacAdam-Somer (MA) is one of the most exciting and multitalented young musicians performing today. With roots in classical music she has also grown to love traditional fiddling, jazz, and folk music from around the world. Now, from symphony halls to coffee houses, she beguiles her audiences with a style that is truly her own. Her music transcends genre through soaring violin and fiddling, vocals, and percussive dance. Eden has been on staff at many dance events around the country.
Beginning her classical studies at the age of four, it was as a teen that Eden became an active member of the traditional music and dance community. She is a past winner of the MTNA and the Lennox Young Artists Competitions. She has been a featured soloist with symphony and chamber orchestras, jazz and swing bands, and Eastern European and American folk ensembles and has performed and taught across the United States and internationally.
Eden received a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the groundbreaking Contemporary Improvisation (CI) department of the New England Conservatory of Music. She joined the faculty of the Contemporary Improvisation Department at the New England Conservatory of Music in 2012. Outside the classroom, she maintains an active performance and recording career with Boston area bands, the Sail Away Ladies, and the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and continues to tour, both as a soloist and with the duo NotoriousFolk.
Her compositions include numerous works for solo performer on voice, violin, and body percussion, such as Jump for Joy and Rumi Songs, a partially composed, partially improvised song cycle, hailed by the New York Times as reflecting “astonishing virtuosity and raw expression.” fiddlegarden.com
Eden will play for ECD, teach an improvisation class, and lead singing.
Judy Linsenberg (CA) is recognized as one of the leading exponents of the recorder in the U.S. Director of the acclaimed Baroque ensemble, Musica Pacifica, whose eight recordings on the Virgin Classics and Dorian labels have received international acclaim, she has performed throughout the U.S. and Europe, including solo appearances at the Hollywood Bowl and Lincoln Center; and has been featured with such leading ensembles as the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Opera, Philharmonia Baroque, American Bach Soloists, the Los Angeles Opera and the LA, Portland and Seattle Baroque Orchestras. A Fulbright scholar to Austria, she was awarded the Soloist Diploma with Highest Honors from the Vienna Academy of Music. She has been a visiting professor at the Vienna Conservatory and Indiana University's Early Music Institute in Bloomington and has taught at Stanford, the SF Conservatory and early music workshops throughout the U.S. www.linsenberg.com
Judy will play for ECD and teach a class in early music.
Mindy Rosenfeld (CA) is fluent in the music of several eras, playing early and modern flutes, whistles, fifes, crumhorns, harp, and diminutive bagpipes called Hümmelchen (“little bumblebee”). She is a founding member of the highly respected Baltimore Consort, with whom she tours extensively, and since 1989, of San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (“the nation’s premier early music ensemble”—New York Times). Mindy has recorded extensively, and appeared in Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, BBC Proms (Royal Albert Hall), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), and both Carnegie and Disney Halls. Principal Flutist and soloist with both the Symphony of the Redwoods (California) and the Mendocino Music Festival (California), as a guest artist Mindy has performed with American Bach Soloists (San Francisco), Portland’s Trinity Consort, Magnificat (San Francisco), the San Jose Symphonic Choir, San Francisco Bach Choir, Golden Gate Men’s Choir, Ukiah Symphony (as soloist), Modesto Symphony and numerous other Bay Area ensembles. www.mindyrosenfeld.com
Mindy will play for ECD.
Jon Berger (CA) has played for morris, sword, English country, and contra dance in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1976. Formerly with Berkeley Morris, he now plays for Apple Tree Morris in Sebastopol. Jon also plays in Flashpoint, a Santa Rosa-based contra dance band. He is well known for his powerful music, and, while playing for morris, his ability to maintain a connection between the music, the dancers and the dance. His recordings include two albums with Persons of Quality. Jon is also a former member of Tempest, a Celtic rock band that plays for an entirely different style of dancing.
Jon will play for longsword and ECD.
Rebecca King (CA), our 2014 program director, is a versatile dance pianist, conductor, and composer, whose strong classical training and love of jazz show in her rhythmic and lyric piano accompaniments. Rebecca plays for English and contra dance in the greater San Francisco Bay area and has been on staff at west coast dance camps, weekends, and balls and at Pinewoods. By day, she teaches music in the Sonoma Valley schools. Rebecca can be heard on Cowboy Dancing by Ray Bierl, on BACDS' CD Swinging On The Gate in which she was executive producer, and Farnicle Huggy and Next of Kynaston with Persons of Quality. www.rebeccakingmusic.com
Rebecca will play for ECD.
Alan Roberts (WA) is our sound engineer for
the week. He is a regular sound engineer at dance events in Seattle and has been on staff at CDSS weeks at Pinewoods.
Sandy Eastoak (CA) studied art at Antioch College in Yellow Springs OH, and apprenticed with Yugoslavian potter Lou Fish in Castries, St. Lucia. She received an interdisciplinary MA from the University of Oregon, writing her thesis on “Art and Environmental Consciousness.” She studied art therapy at Lane Community College, and landscape painting at Pacific Academy of Fine Art.
She had her first solo show at the University of Oregon Museum of Art in 1977. Since then her work has appeared in over 200 group and solo shows in Berkeley, Bodega Bay, Forestville, Garberville, Guerneville, Occidental, Pt. Reyes, Rohnert Park, San Francisco, San Geronimo, San Rafael, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, and Sonoma, CA; Avon & Simsbury, CT; Muncie, IN; Taos, NM; New York, NY; Coos Bay, Eugene, & Sunriver, OR; & Woodstock, VT. She is represented in public and private collections in 25 states and 19 countries. In 2007, she joined other artists to start Sebastopol Gallery. She has published six chapbooks of her poems and two books of her original songs. www.sandyeastoak.com
Sandy will teach a watercolor painting workshop.