Artists

BOXWOOD CANADA 2012

The Boxwood Festival and Workshop returns for its 17th year in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, bringing together an amazing group of artists from across the spectrum of traditional folk (Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, French Canadian, Appalachian, Ozark & Old-Time) baroque, and renaissance music & dance for a week of classes, performances, sessions and social dancing. The deep connections between traditional music, song, dance, language and food are at the heart of our program as musicians, dancers and singers alike experience and discover the fire that connects their traditions. The breadth, scope and versatility of this group of artists will inspire, astound, and challenge the way you think about music. Join the party with us in Lunenburg!

The following artists will be presenting classes for all levels and will be featured in concert during the week.

Emer MAYOCK - Irish flute, Whistles, and Uilleann Pipes

Emer Mayock is a musician and composer from Co. Mayo. She began to play traditional music during her childhood on a range of instruments including the Flute, Low Whistles, Fiddle and Uilleann Pipes. She has produced two CDs: 'Merry Bits of Timber' in 1996 and 'Playground' in 2001- the latter continuing her interest in writing new music and containing mostly her own compositions. Emer's love of the Flute in particular has lead her to bring it to centre stage on her recordings and at live concerts.
She has worked with among others, traditional musicians Donal Lunny, Paddy Glackin, the late Michael 0' Domhnaill, Cormac Breathnach, Flook!, Grada, harmonica player Mick Kinsella, guitarist John Doyle, singer Damien Dempsey, jazz musician Michael Buckley, French music producer Hughes de Courson, Breton harpist Alan Stivell, The Irish Chamber Choir, Italian baroque ensemble il Giardino Armonico (with whom she recorded a cd of Vivaldi's music), Greek singer Eleftheria Arvanitaki and the Grammy nominated Afro Celts.

In recent times Emer has continued to travel widely both with her own music and as a collaborative musician including concerts in China where she performed a new work by Chinese composer Jia Daqun and in Ireland collaborating with British musician Nitin Sawhney and the Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan for The Festival of World Cultures, Dun Laoghaire. Emer has written and recorded arrangements for traditional and Jazz musicians as part of radio producer Gerry Godley's 'Translations' programmme on RTE Radio One and has also had the pleasure of presenting a nine-week series on Radio One entitled 'The Wider Embrace', a non genre-specific program exploring music from a range of diverse sources. In the past few years other highlights have included concerts with legendary Sligo musician Peter Horan and a concert series in the USA. Emer composed the music for 'Winter Pictures', a play for children which has toured Wales and completed a run at The Ark in Dubln and Glor Irish Music Centre, Ennis, a series of highly successful concerts throughout Ireland with Breton musician Jean-Michel Veillon, a new collaboration with jazz musicians Francesco Turrisi (Piano, Accordion, Percussion), Nick Roth (Saxophone), Cellist Kate Ellis and Percussionist Robbie Harris. The band known as Tarab has emerged from this collaboration where the repertoire includes many of Emer's compositions as well as traditional music from Ireland, Turkey, North Africa, Bulgaria and the Middle East. Emer is currently working with Uilleann Piper Mick O'Brien and Fiddle player Aoife O'Brien exploring and recording tunes from the Goodman Manuscripts collected in Munster in the 1880s.

 

Brad LEFTWICH- Old-Time fiddle, banjo & songs

Brad is one of the foremost old-time musicians in the United States, highly regarded for performing and teaching authentic, traditional-style fiddle and banjo. His music is a direct link to the traditions of the southern Appalachian and Ozark mountains. He grew up hearing the old-time music of his father, grandfather, and great-uncle, and learned from many of the last great traditional musicians from the turn of the 20th century including his most influential mentor, the legendary fiddler Tommy Jarrell of Mount Airy, North Carolina.. A well-known fiddler, banjo player, and singer, Brad has been performing and teaching traditional music for some 30 years. Recordings of his music appear on the County, Copper Creek, Rounder, and Marimac labels, and he has published instructional materials with Homespun and Mel Bay. He tours internationally and has performed at venues from Merlefest to the White House. Brad will bring to Boxwood his immense depth of repertoire and unnderstanding of the American Old-Time style. He'll be performing with his wife and longtime musical partner Linda Higginbotham on banjo

 

Rachel BROWN - baroque flute, recorder

Best known for her moving and virtuosic performances on a huge range of flutes and recorders, Rachel Brown is an acknowledged authority on historical performance practice, an inspirational teacher and an entertaining and illuminating speaker. As a soloist Rachel has recorded extensively and toured in Europe, Japan and North America. Her dazzling recordings of the Quantz and C.P.E. Bach Concertos, Telemann Fantasias and Quantz and Handel Sonatas have won international acclaim. With the London Handel Players she has recorded three discs of Handel’s chamber music, described as ‘perfection itself’.
Equally at home in the wind section, Rachel has had a long and distinguished career as principal flute with Kent Opera, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Hanover Band, the Kings Consort, Collegium Musicum 90, Ex Cathedra and the Brandenburg Consort.
A dedicated teacher, Rachel has given masterclasses in Europe, North and South America, and New Zealand, and is currently professor of baroque flute at the Royal College of Music in London. She is author of the Cambridge University Press handbook to The Early Flute and has composed cadenzas for the new Bärenreiter edition of the Mozart Flute Concertos. Following great interest in her research, Rachel has published two volumes of her favourite Quantz sonatas, supported by subscribers worldwide.

 

Patsy SEDDON - Celtic harp, Scottish & Gaelic song

Patsy Seddon is one of Scotland's favourite and most innovative celtic harp players.  A versatile and experienced musician, she also sings in Gaelic, English and Scots, and also plays the Scottish fiddle in a variety of settings. As a harpist, She has been playing Scottish Harp for over forty years and is one of Celtic music's most innovative harp players, known for her work with the duo Sileas, the group The Poozies and other ensembles including Clan Alba. She was the first principal tutor of Scottish Harp at the RSAMD (Now The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), helping to set up the Scottish music degree which began in 1986. She has also taught at numerous short courses including every year since 1982 at the Edinburgh International Harp Festival and many Feisean including the very first one in Barra in 1981. She has an honours degree in Celtic Studies and was one of the first musicians in residence at the School of Scottish Studies, the folklore department at Edinburgh University. She has been training and working in Kodály methods through The British Kodály Academy and NYCoS (National Youth Choir of Scotland), completing the course Sound Progressions. This popular method which respects folk music informs her harp teaching. Through all of this Patsy has inspired a generation of harp players.

Matthias MAUTE- recorders, baroque flute, composer
Sophie LARIVIÈRE - recorders & baroque flute

Matthias Maute & Sophie Larivière are co-artistic directors of Montreal's innovative and renowned baroque group Ensemble Caprice:

Matthias has achieved an international reputation as one of the finest recorder and baroque flute players of his generation, as a composer and as director. His solo career has soared since winning First Prize in the soloist category at the renowned Early Music Competition in Bruges, Belgium in 1990. He made his debut at Lincoln Center in New York in December 2008. In 2003 and 2005, he was the featured recorder soloist at the Boston Early Music Festival. Mr. Maute is also esteemed for his artistic direction of Ensemble Caprice, for whom he produces ingenious and fascinating programs. With this ensemble he regularly appears at major festivals world wide. In Canada he has performed at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Festival international du Domaine Forget and Elora Festival among others.
To these achievements he has added choir and orchestra direction, to which he has dedicated a large portion of his time in the past several years. In this regard he has focussed more and more on large scale projects, directing among others such works as Bach’s B Minor Mass, G. F. Haendel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks and J. D. Zelenka’s Miserere. Under his direction Ensemble Caprice was awarded the prestigious 2009 JUNO Award for Best Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral performance for its CD Gloria! Vivaldi’s Angels on the Analekta label. Matthias is also a highly regarded composer of contemporary music.

Sophie is a member of Ensemble Caprice and has been its Artistic Co-Director since 1997. In this capacity, she helps to enrich the creative direction of the ensemble in its quest for musical discoveries that blend virtuosity with expressivity. With Ensemble Caprice, Ms. Larivière has appeared in numerous concerts, in particular in Israel (Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Arts Festival), Europe (Vienna, Berlin, and Stuttgart), the United States (Chicago, Los Angeles and the Boston Early Music Festival) and Canada (Edmonton, Grande Prairie and a Debut Atlantic tour). An eloquent performer, Ms. Larivière is regularly invited to appear with early music ensembles, including Arion, the Opéra de Montréal, Le Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, La Nouvele Sinfonie, the Theatre of Early Music, Rebel (New York), Les Violons du Roy (Quebec), the New York Collegium Musicum and Le Concert Spirituel (Paris). Ms. Larivière has made recordings on the Analekta, Virgin Classics, Atma Classique, Antes Edition and Interdisc labels.

 

Barry PHILLIPS - cellist, composer, arranger, producer

A musician of astounding breadth and versatility, Barry is a cellist, arranger, composer, and recording engineer based in Santa Cruz, California. He tours as cellist with sitarist Anoushka Shankar and recently arranged and played cello for guitarist Martin Simpson in England and fiddler Sarah-Jane Summers in Scotland. He received a master of music degree in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and has been musician, arranger, and producer of recordings of Celtic/American folk music for the Gourd Music label since the 1980s. Recordings include three discs of American Shaker tunes with guitarist William Coulter; a recording of colonial American tunes, The World Turned Upside Down; his first solo recording of mainly Celtic music, Cello; and his second solo release, Tråd, featuring Scandinavian tunes for bowed strings. Since 1996 Barry has been a student of Ravi Shankar and has assisted him in several compositions including music for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and for the Concert for George (George Harrison celebration at the Albert Hall), where Barry also played cello.

 

Chris NORMAN - director, flutes, small pipes, song

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia into a music loving family, Chris Norman's influential work for the past 30 years as performer, composer, recording artist and teacher has won him worldwide recognition. His flute playing has appeared on more than 40 award winning recordings and can be heard featured on the Oscar winning soundtrack of Titanic and other Hollywood films including, Soldier, and the Stone of Destiny. Chris is founder and director of the Boxwood Festivals and Workshops taking place in Canada, New Zealand, and Europe which have inspired thousands of musicians of all ages.

 

David GREENBERG - Cape Breton violin, Baroque violin

David Greenberg's double career as both a baroque violinist and traditional fiddler began at an early age. David studied baroque violin with Stanley Ritchie at Indiana University's Early Music Institute, and moved to Canada in 1988 to join the Toronto-based baroque orchestra Tafelmusik. With Tafelmusik for 10 years, David performed orchestral, chamber, and solo roles in North America, Europe, and the Far East, and on more than forty recordings. David also plays the vielle (medieval fiddle). He won first prize at the Erwin Bodky International Early Music Competition in 1988 with the Medieval Quintet, and he recorded vielle soundtracks for Atom Egoyan's film The Sweet Hereafter. David has gained the reputation in Cape Breton music circles as being one of the few people from outside the Nova Scotia island to have achieved a fluent command of the Cape Breton music idiom. With his wife, Kate Dunlay, he published Traditional Celtic Violin Music of Cape Breton, The DunGreen Collection.

 

Marie BOUCHARD - harpsichord, continuo, keyboards

Marie Bouchard graduated from McGill University and the Lille Conservatory in France, Her teachers included John Grew, Hank Knox, Jean Boyer and Noëlle Spieth. While in Europe, she participated in accompaniment workshops with Roy Goodman and Jos van Immerseel, through the European Community Baroque Orchestra. She has since been invited to accompany major ensembles like the MSO, Les Violons du Roy, Tafelmusik, the Opera Atelier of Toronto, the Toronto Consort, and the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal. Marie Bouchard is also very active as a baroque chamber player. She was a member of the quartet Les Boréades from 1991 to 1998 and of Aradia until 2002. Beside concerts with her ensemble Trillium Baroque of Ottawa, she is a member of the Montreal-based ensemble Les Voix Baroques, with which she toured in the Maritimes in 2003, and the Prairies in March 2004. She took part in 2 CD recordings released in 2003: an all-Buxtehude program with Aradia, and an English lamentations' program with Les Voix Baroques. The latter CD won first prize at the Cannes International Classical music awards. With Toronto's Opera Atelier, she has helped, as répétitrice, in the preparation of Monteverdi's Poppea, Charpentier's Médée and Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. Her summers are filled with various music festivals in Quebec City, Domaine Forget, Lanaudière, Ottawa and Elora. These concerts can be heard regularly on CBC and Radio-Canada.

Eamon O'LEARY - guitar

While growing up in Dublin, Eamon developed an interest in Irish music through his friendship with the Mayock family, noted traditional musicians originally from County Mayo. When he moved to New York City in 1992, he met guitarist John Doyle and fiddle player Patrick Ourceau, among others, and has since become a fixture in the city’s thriving Irish music scene. Eamon has toured extensively throughout Europe and North America, performing with many of Irish music’s great players, including Paddy Keenan, Mick Moloney, Tommy Peoples, and James Keane, and has recorded with singer Susan McKeown and flute player Emer Mayock. In addition to his performance schedule, Eamon has taught at numerous music programs including the Augusta Heritage Center, the Catskills Irish Arts Week, and the Alaska Irish Music Camp. In 2004, he and Patrick Ourceau released a live recording, Live at Mona’s, documenting their many years hosting a Monday night session on New York’s Lower East Side.

 

Adrianne GREENBAUM - flute technique, Klezmer

Adrianne is a nationally acclaimed klezmer and classical flutist. As a klezmer she is the founder and leader of "FleytMuzik," an ensemble with flute, violin, cimbalom and bass, and of "The Klezical Tradition" klezmer band where she performs on both flute and keyboard and leads Yiddish dance. She has been on the faculties of Living Traditions’ KlezKamp, KlezKanada, and Boxwood, was a premier participant with FleytMuzik at the KlezMore Festival in Vienna, and presents master classes in the art of klezmer performance to classical flutists. She has also performed with "Kapelye", with Adrienne Cooper in performances at the International Jewish Festival in Amsterdam and NYC‘s Jewish Museum and as accompanying artist with numerous cantors in concert as both pianist and flutist. As a clinician interested in sharing klezmer music with young people of all ages and backgrounds she also presents school workshops and directs three student klezmer ensembles in Connecticut and Massachusetts. "The Klezical Tradition" has won many awards for its recording Family Portrait, including Top 10 CD’s from both Moment Magazine and the NY Jewish Week. The band was also chosen to be included as a feature in the ABC-TV documentary A Sacred Noise: The New Jewish Music.

Edmund BROWNLESS - voice

Edmund was born in Norwich, England and sang as chorister in the choir of Hereford Cathedral. After emigrating to Nova Scotia he studied music at McGill University in Montréal, where he received B. Mus. and M. Mus. degrees in voice. Later, he studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland and had lessons with Cornelius L. Reid in New York. As a soloist he has performed throughout Europe and North America and sings on many recordings, notably with the Bach Ensemble (Joshua Rifkin), Sequentia Köln, Ensemble Gilles Binchois (Dominique Vellard), and the Clemencic Consort (René Clemencic). He teaches voice (Early Music) at Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt am Main and is the director of Das Consort Franckfort.

 

Matthew OLWELL - Irish stepdance, clogging, bodhran

Matthew Olwell has been performing and teaching as a dancer and percussionist at festivals and theaters across North America and Europe since 1996. He was immersed in a world of music, dance and theater from an early age, traveling with his family’s wooden-flute making business. He has studied with some of the finest teachers in percussive dance, including Baakari Wilder, Donny Golden, Eileen Carson, and The Fiddle Puppets. In 2010 Matthew was accepted to the first ever tap program at Jacob’s Pillow, where he studied with, among others, Harold Cromer, Derick K. Grant and Dianne Walker. Matthew danced for nine years with the Maryland-based Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, with whom he performed in Riverdance. In 2006 he co-founded Good Foot Dance Company, and now teaches and performs often in community arts events in his native Charlottesville, VA. Matthew has performed with Lunasa, Tim O’Brien, Matapat, David Munnelly, Corey Harris, Liz Carroll, and Bassekou Kouyate. In 2005, Matthew and his brother Aaron Olwell recorded and released a CD of their band; Hell on the Nine Mile.  In 2007, Matthew appeared in a music video that mixed elements of clogging and kung fu by Rounder recording artists Uncle Earl. Recently he has toured with Eileen Ivers in Beyond the Bog Road. In 2010, Matthew and Emily Oleson were co-program directors for the Augusta Heritage Center’s Dance Week, and founded THE BEAT RETREAT, a percussive dancers co-op and professional development session in Charlottesville, VA.

 

Marlys NORMAN - classical, modern dance & Pilates

Marlys began her formal dance training in Baltimore, MD at age eight. She studied ballet and modern dance at the Peabody Preparatory until her junior year of High School when she decided to pursue dance professionally. Marlys moved to Carlisle, PA in order to study at the prestigious Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet under the direction of Marcia Dale Weary. After two years of training in Pennsylvania, Marlys was invited to dance with the professional company Ballet Austin as a trainee dancer. She has spent two years with the company in Austin, TX and has recently earned a place in the Alonzo King Lines Ballet located in San Francisco where she will begin dancing this fall.

 

Patrick OLWELL - flutemaker

We are delighted to have Patrick Olwell returning. Patrick is one of the world's most reknowned makers of Irish flutes. Seamus Egan, Matt Molloy, Mike Rafferty (to name only a few) and numerous happy non-celebrity flute players in America and overseas are playing his instruments. In England, Ian Anderson ( of the band Jethro Tull) plays Olwell bamboos and a wooden flute in the key of G#. And Brian Finnegan (currently playing in the band Flook!) is a virtuoso player of Olwell bamboos. Patrick ­ a Cincinnatti native - lives and works in Nelson County, VA south of Charlottesville. His shop is located in the tiny, ghostly quiet town of Massies Mill, VA in the upstairs of an old bank building built in 1921. Patrick started making flutes in the 1970s. What began as a repair and restauration job of antique flutes soon led to his first keyless bamboo flutes. He started making wooden flutes in the early 80s. His instruments (bamboo and wooden flutes) are of exquisite beauty and quality. The wooden flutes are made of African blackwood, rosewood, cocus, or boxwood. They come keyed or unkeyed, with a lined or unlined headjoint, in keys of D, Bb, C or whatever the customer requires. Olwell flutes integrate a characteristic powerful "bark" with the warm sound of a wooden instrument. Patrick's flutes are an optimized "fusion" combining centuries of experience by the old flutemakers in London, New York and France with Patrick's new technological approach and autodidactic sense of experimentation and innovation.