It was a roaring success! We had 17 people registered for the workshops and many spouses/friends also came along!! We started out on Friday night with an open house and an open stage. A lot of local people came by to see what all the hub bub was about. There was a fair bit of local coverage for the event. For the open stage part of the evening quite few folks got up to play. I think the most notable were the ones who came the farthest, Mark and Susanne Willy. They flew in from Colorado for this (Susanne was in the class at WCU last summer). They played some beautiful duets of concertina and bowed dulcimer.

Saturday, all day, was intense instruction for everyone. This time I tried something a little different. Since I had flat out beginners in with people who had been playing a number of years I had to come up with a way to keep the experienced players interested and not overwhelm the beginners. What I did was write up arrangements of tunes  for three different levels  which everyone could play together. Everyone left with all the parts to all the tunes as well as the
explanations of what to do with those parts. That way, as people improve they can move on to more challenging material    It worked really well.  By noon  on Saturday I had 17 people divided into three sections playing a neat arrangement of West Fork Gals and it was sounding pretty decent. The afternoon was much the same.

Saturday evening I did a concert with Jeff and Janet Furman. Some of you heard us play together at Unicoi  a year and a half ago. The concert went well and I think everyone had a good time. We all went back to the hotel to jam afterwards. Somehow we got into playing a lot of country music. I think we played Faded Love for about a half an hour. Lots of bowed dulcimers doing the Bob Wills fiddle section and Cammie, one of the owners of the SawBriar where we held the event, singing it beautifully. I stayed and jammed longer than I had intended.

We were all pretty bleary on Sunday but had class none the less. Over the course of the weekend I did a lot of tweaking of everyone's instruments, things like fret filing, new tuning machines, etc. Three people got new bowed dulcimers, several very fancy ones. I got more orders for , guess what, MORE BOWED DULCIMERS!   I think everyone had a good time and everyone was playing better than they did when they arrived. We will be doing it again next year. Stay tuned for more details.

I will doing a week long intensive class at Cullowee again this year (thank you Lois!) and  if anyone out there would like to join our merry crew, just let me know. The bowed section of the orchestra is growing and always looking for
more interested people!

Ken Bloom
 

Registration will begin on Friday from 6:00 to 8:00 at the SawBriar Club.

From about 8:00-10:00 Ken will do an introduction and have an open stage/open house format where anyone who wants to can get up and play and also have a time when people who live close by can come by and see the instruments and talk to the participants.  We are arranging for some jam rooms at the hotel. (See below)
  

Saturday, 9:00-12:00, workshop. 12:00-1:00, lunch. 1:00-5:00  more workshop. Dinner break. Saturday evening will feature a concert by Ken, Jeff, and Janet. Jamming afterwards back at the hotel.

Sunday, 9:00-12:00, more workshop and done. Ken wants to get in the maximum amount of techniques, practice, theory etc. so that people will come away from this workshop with plenty to work on and hopefully enough encouragement to keep on.

The cost is going to have to be around $75.00 per person to cover the expenses of lunch on Saturday, the building, sound system etc. The price will include all the handouts and maybe even (by then) a book, the concert and participation in the jamming  sessions.

Accomodations:
Best Western of Pilot Mountain, the Official Hotel of the Sawbriar Acoustic Stage