AlgomaTrad 2016

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The 13th Annual Algoma Traditional Music, Dance, and Heritage Arts Family Camp 2016 (AlgomaTrad 2016) is open for registration. The camp runs from Sunday evening, August 14 to Saturday morning, August 20.  Interested parties can check out complete information about AlgomaTrad 2016 at www.algomatrad.ca, and can register on-line at the same time or download a Registration form and mail it in.

AlgomaTrad 2016 will occur at locations throughout the hamlet of Richards Landing on St. Joseph Island including the Centennial Grounds, the Legion Hall, the St. Joseph Island Central Public School, and the Old Town Hall. As is customary, workshops will occur during the day from Monday to Friday in vast array of choices, including fiddle, piano, whistle and flute, guitar, clawhammer banjo, bagpipes, singing, Ottawa Valley-style Stepdance, contra, square and Irish set dancing, community arts, basketmaking, and much, much more. Evenings will feature concerts, dances, song circles, sessions and a fundraising live/silent auction.

Complete AlgomaTrad 2016 staff bios and photos can be found on the website. AlgomaTrad is pleased to have the following great Canadian artists teaching and performing as part of the Camp this year:

Virtuoso Canadian fiddler Pierre Schryer is no stranger to the area, a world-renowned artist returning to the Island to share his vast experience;

Traditional songster, multi-instrumentalist, and artist Ian Bell  is a longtime leading light of the Canadian folk music world and a recent recipient of a Norfolk County Heritage & Culture Lifetime Achievement Award;

Singer and fluteplayer Allison Lupton is a newcomer to AlgomaTrad this year. Alison was awarded top honours from Folk Music Ontario for her song “One More Day” in the 2015 FMO Songs from the Heart competition;

Champion Canadian stepdancer and world music percussionist, Ariel Hyatt, will offer Turkish drumming and middle-eastern rhythms as well as Ontario Old-Time stepdance instruction. Ariel received a Canada Council for the Arts Professional Development Grants in 2014 and 2015 to study in Istanbul, Turkey, and continues to push the boundaries of stepdance by incorporating these rhythms into her work.

Anne Lederman is an internationally renowned fiddler/singer/composer who plays everything from Old-time Canadian, to French Canadian, Métis, Scottish, Irish, Klezmer and Balkan styles of music. In ’85 and ’86, she produced a landmark CBC recording of the Métis fiddlers of Manitoba, released again in 2004 in a double cd set.

Basketmaker Sheila Ziman, from the Haliburton School of the Arts, fills out the heritage craft part of the program with an immersive weeklong workshop in Natural Materials Basketry. See some of her work here.

Other staff members are: the ever-amazing multi-instrumentalist James Stephens, a core member of the AlgomaTrad organization; fiddler, singer, and hambone-ist Teilhard Frost (Sheesham Crow of the incredible  Sheesham and Lotus and Son, ); fun-and-fabulous dance callers Myra Hirschberg and Tom Calwell from Peterborough; the one-and-only, coolest double bassist and singer Joseph Phillips (Pierre Schryer Band, London Symphony Orchestra) who moves just as comfortably from trad music to classical to Tom Waits;  cellist, violist and all around awesome string chopper Lea Kirstein; and fiddler/violist Chelsea Sleep, a mainstay of the BC fiddle scene and leader of the Bad to the Bone youth fiddle group. All the members of local award-winning group The O’Schraves are on staff as usual and the most excellent piper Paul McClelland from Deep River has once again generously offered to give instruction on the Highland Pipes and tin whistle.

AlgomaTrad 2016 is excited to have the Thinking Rock Community Arts organization  involved at the camp again this year. The AlgomaTrad community and staff will be working under the auspices of a grant from The Canada Council of the Arts to provide a musical score for TRCA’s  multi-community, intergenerational community arts project, Rivers Speak, which is scheduled to be performed across the North Shore in 2017. Ruth Howard, artistic director of Jumblies Theatre Company from Toronto will also be helping with the Rivers Speak collaboration with several members of Jumblies. Ruth, a committed Irish set dancer, will also be offering instruction in Irish Set Dance (the Irish version of square dancing).

Registrants can sign-up for the entire camp experience, which includes all workshops, lunch, Gathering and evening activities, or they can sign-up for individual weeklong classes. Schedules will be available on the website mid-July. Camping is available and included at the Centennial Grounds for full registrants Any youth camping will need to be accompanied by a parent or guardian over 18. The website also provides information for other accommodations available on St. Joseph Island.