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I’m really looking forward to teaching at the Mike Block String Camp this summer! Enrollment is already half-full, so visit http://www.mikeblockstringcamp.com/ today if you’re interested. Here are the instructors for 2012:
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Zach Brock - heralded as “the great bright hope for jazz violin”, Zach has a virtuosic and emotive voice that embraces many influences. |
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Hanneke Cassel - U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion, and a leading creative voice in Celtic music, The Boston Globe described her as “Exuberant and rhythmic, somehow both wild and innocent.” |
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Joe Craven – the “Musical Madman” will make music out of any object, strings or not! Long-time member of the legendary David Grisman Quintet, he has also performed with Stephane Grapelli and Jerry Garcia. |
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Rushad Eggleston - The Sneth Goblin is a Grammy-nominated cellist fluent in many folk genres, and the inventor of some of his own. If you want your mind blown, check out his power-rock trio, Tornado Rider, in which he also "sings" and "dances". |
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Brittany Haas – Fiddle player in the wildly popular Crooked Still, an Alternative-Bluegrass band based in Boston, Brittany also plays Appalachian mountain music better than it was ever meant to be played. |
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Jefferson Hamer - Offering vocal, guitar, and mandolin classes, Jefferson is a folk-rocker if there ever was one. In addition to developing his own personal songwriting, he is deeply rooted in the traditional song of America and the British Isles. |
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Victor Lin – a versatile Jazz pianist, violinist, and bassist, this musical prodigy received a Doctorate in Jazz Education at Columbia University, where he still teaches. |
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Lauren Rioux - Past President of Maine ASTA, and ground-breaking teacher combining Classical Music and Old-time fiddle styles, she also tours with the Republic of Strings. |
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Mike Block –Multi-genre cellist, composer, educator, and Juilliard graduate who has toured regularly with Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O’Connor, and Darol Anger. |
ANAIS MITCHELL & JEFFERSON HAMER ~ BALLADS
Anais Mitchell (RBR recording artist whose latest folk opera Hadestown was the UK’s best-reviewed album of 2010) & Jefferson Hamer (Brooklyn-based songwriter, accompanist, and traditional player) come together to arrange bold new versions of the old British and Scottish “Child” Ballads (those collected by Professor Francis James Child at the end of the 19th century). These are timeless stories of passion, deceit, violence and the supernatural, lovingly arranged for clarity, poetry, and the American ear. Melodies too are re-imagined and delivered in close harmony accompanied by two acoustic guitars. Anais & Jefferson’s collaborative debut release is slated for 2012.
upcoming Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer “Ballads” shows:
I’m really excited to be teaching voice and guitar next week at the 2011 Mt. Shasta Fiddle Camp, located in beautiful Mt. Shasta, California. I’ll be working alongside an incredible lineup of teachers and performers including Tristan and Tashina Clarridge, Roger Tallroth, Sean Watkins, Tony Trischka, Darol Anger, Bruce Molsky, Maeve Gilchrist, Brittany Haas, Vishal Nayak, and many more!
I’m leaving camp early for a California tour with Anais Mitchell, the particular downside of which is I will miss the stellar 7th annual Summer String Summit at the College of the Siskiyous in Weed, CA, in the beautiful Kenneth Ford theater. Show is at 7:30. Buy tickets online at http://www.BrownPaperTickets.com.
Here’s a clip from last year’s concert with me, Tashina Clarridge, Maeve Gilchrist, Sarah Jarosz, and Paul Kowert.
Bay Area residents should also check out the post-camp String Explosion concert at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley on Saturday, July . Featuring Darol Anger, Roger Tallroth, The Bee Eaters, Jeremy Kittel, Brittany Haas, and more: http://www.thefreight.org/string-explosion.
These photos were taken by M’Adele Miller at the 5/7 GALA NYC Debut concert at the Brooklyn Lyceum.
Cellist Mike Block started up a new concert series in Brooklyn called the Gala NYC. I was pleased to be a part of the debut concert on May 7. Here’s a reprint of the review from the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/arts/music/gala-nyc-at-brooklyn-lyceum-review.html?_r=1
Genres and Styles Without Borders, in a Brooklyn Series
By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
Published: May 10, 2011
The border-hopping proclivities of classical composers and performers have become more pronounced in recent years, resulting in a freewheeling blend of genres and styles. Gala NYC, a new series (the name means Global Art, Local Audience) founded by Mike Block, a Juilliard-trained cellist and disciple of Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project, aims to promote this healthy eclecticism by combining performers from varying disciplines.
The inaugural concert on Saturday evening in the warehouselike space of the Brooklyn Lyceum featured Mr. Block; Anastasia Khitruk, a Russian violinist; Jefferson Hamer, a folk singer and songwriter; John Hadfield, a percussionist; Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian clarinetist; Kyle Sanna, a guitarist; and Josh Meyers, a bass player. There was a pleasantly informal, spontaneous air to the proceedings, a jam session of sorts. The musicians explained the genesis of their various collaborations.
Some reflected the Middle Eastern heritage of Mr. Azmeh, like a traditional Arab piece in which a haunting, evocative clarinet melody unfolded over gentle cello and percussion accompaniment. Mr. Block introduced the work as the evening’s first installment of a trilogy about men suffering in love. Mr. Azmeh’s clarinet wailed rhapsodically in a rocking arrangement based on Syrian wedding music and floated soulfully in a work inspired by the morning after Thanksgiving.
The lineup included effective arrangements of the traditional folk song “Barbara Allen” and Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concerto in A minor. Ms. Khitruk offered a passionate rendition of a virtuosic work, “The Golem,” written for her by Michael Colina, and Mr. Hamer demonstrated his appealing voice in several selections.
The event concluded with audience participation: three women relayed memorable (and prosaic) details of their lives, to an improvised accompaniment.
Dear friends,
This has been a big spring for new recordings! On March 22, Laura Cortese and I re-released a limited pressing of our electric duo debut, “Two Amps, One Microphone“. It’s now available in both digital download and physical CD format from our favorite on-line source for independent music, bandcamp. Click here to preview and order the album on-line!
February saw the release of my first solo record in almost 7 years! “This Ragged World We Spanned” is a 7″ vinyl record which includes a voucher for a free digital download, available on-line from bandcamp. My heartfelt thanks go out to Jacob Silver and Media Blitz Records, who put out the record on their Brooklyn label. Media Blitz also features recordings by my talented friends Aoife O’Donovan and Mike Merenda. Read more about Media Blitz Records here!
June 12-17, I’m excited to be teaching at the Miles of Music Camp located on beautiful Lake Winnipesaukee, NH. Founded by my musical compatriots Laura Cortese and Kristin Andreassen, and featuring an all-star cast of instructors, this all-ages camp will combine instrumental instruction, songwriting and singing, outdoor recreation, and general merriment and revelry! Spots are filling fast, and this promises to be an incredible week of fun and musical enrichment. Visit the miles of music website for more details and registration information.
I’ve got lots of exciting live shows in the next few months, including a New England tour with word-wise songwriter Robert Sarazin Blake, shows with Cambridge’s finest Session Americana and Kris Delmhorst, a spot teaching guitar at Big Sur Fiddle Camp and follow-up West Coast Tour with Fiddler extraordinaire Tashina Clarridge, a live performance singing the role of Orpheus in Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown, and an acoustic feature in an incredible cross-genre gathering of world-reknown jazz, classical, and folk musicians called GALA NYC, May 7th at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Scroll down to see the schedule!
As always, it’s great to hear from everyone. Please email me your thoughts and questions, and I look forward to seeing you at my shows this spring!
~jefferson
follow me: http://www.twitter.com/jeffersonhamer
blog and website: http://www.jeffersonhamer.com
listen and buy music: http://www.jeffersonhamer.bandcamp.com
like on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jeffersonhamermusic
NE shows with Robert Sarazin Blake and the Powderkegs:
Monday, 4/18
Portsmouth, NH
Red Door
Jefferson Hamer solo, and playing with Robert Sarazin Blake and The Powderkegs
8:00
Tuesday, 4/19
Cambridge, MA
Lizard Lounge
Jefferson Hamer playing with Robert Sarazin Blake and The Powderkegs
opening for Lake Street Dive
8:00
Wednesday, 4/20
Portland, ME
Space
Jefferson Hamer solo, and playing with Robert Sarazin Blake and The Powderkegs
8:00
Thursday, 4/21
Biddeford, ME
Oak and Axe
Jefferson Hamer solo, and playing with Robert Sarazin Blake and The Powderkegs
8:00
Session Americana and Kris Delmhorst:
Friday, 4/22
Fall River, MA
Narrows Center for the Performing Arts
Session Americana and Kris Delmhorst
8:00
Saturday, 4/23
Glover, VT
Parker Pie
Session Americana and Kris Delmhorst
8:00
Spring Tour with Tashina Clarridge:
Monday, 4/25 – Friday 4/29
Big Sur, CA
Big Sur Fiddle Camp featuring Tristan and Tashina Clarridge, Natalie Haas, Jeremy Kittel, Jordan Tice, and many more! For registration information, write to taclarridge@gmail.com.
*email for tickets and show information*
Monday, 5/2
Bear Valley, CA
Phil (Bear Valley) powderbears@gmail.com
Tuesday, 5/3
McKinleyville, CA
Holly (McKinleyville) molamola13@hotmail.com
Wednesday, 5/4
Bend, OR
Nancy (Bend) westsidefarm@yahoo.com
looking ahead:
Friday, 5/6
Marblehead, MA
Me & Thee Coffeehouse
Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown featuring Tim Gearan, Amy Correia, and Jefferson Hamer
8:00
Saturday, 5/7
Brooklyn, NY
Brooklyn Lyceum
GALA NYC
Tuesday, 5/10
Cambridge, MA
Toad
Jefferson Hamer, and Robert Sarazin Blake
7:00 *early show*
Friday, 5/13
Portland, ME
One Longfellow Square
Session Americana and Kris Delmhorst
Saturday, 5/14
Session Americana and Kris Delmhorst
Northhampton, MA
Iron Horse
Wednesday, 6/8
Whately, MA
Watermelon Wednesdays
Jefferson Hamer, Tashina Clarridge, and Maeve Gilchrist
Thursday, 6/9
Stone Mountain Center for the Performing Arts
Laura Cortese and Jefferson Hamer
Sunday, 6/12 – Friday, 6/17
Miles of Music Camp
Miles of Music Camp is a mind-blowing week of classes, jams, dances, general inspiration and free time on a gorgeous island in New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee.
Open to musicians of all ages and abilities, the camp is a place for creativity and the exchange of skills & ideas in the roots music community.
Released in 2010, Two Amps, One Microphone is now available online at http://lauraandjefferson.bandcamp.com in both physical CD and digital download formats.
 Laura Cortese and Jefferson Hamer first played music together in a Boston club during the winter of 2008, taking refuge backstage while a February snowstorm raged outside. Now three years into their collaboration, following successful tours of the USA, Scotland, and Denmark, this close-working duo has grown into an explosive big-stage act. They sing harmony vocals around a single large-diaphragm microphone, trading original songs and instrumental melodies on electric fiddle and electric guitar. This unorthodox, no drums approach puts the spotlight on their powerful voices and the subtleties of their close musical interplay. They work in tandem, strutting on and off mic, reacting instinctively to improvised cues, weaving complex rhythms from riffs and melodies. The music crescendos, releases, then builds again, creating a dynamic sound that belies their numbers; one west-coast promoter recently remarked, “it sounds like there’s four of you up there.”
Their new album, “Two Amps, One Microphone,” was recorded live in the studio without overdubs or production tricks. Gutsy and uncluttered, it features nine original songs, a Gram Parsons cover, and a stirring remake of the classic folk ballad “Barbara Ellen.” From the driving pulse and slashing chords of the opening track, to the sultry slow-burn of closer “Wade On In,” Laura and Jefferson assemble a unique groove for each song, one eighth-note at a time, in an orchestrated give-and-take of fiddle and guitar. Obliged to create an entire musical landscape with just two instruments, they depend on spontaneous interplay and coordinated shifts in volume as essential compositional tools. Electric amplifiers have a formidable dynamic range, and they play with the full sweep of this touch-sensitive capability to infuse depth and breadth into their arrangements. The quiet parts are really quiet, such as the fingerpicked intro to Jefferson’s ballad “This Ragged World We Spanned,” but when the guitar explodes into the post-chorus open E-minor chord, saturated with amp strain and long-bowed fiddle, it is easy to forget that only two people are making all the racket. It’s a studied mayhem, as the agile dance-fiddle outro to Laura’s catchy pop tune “Pine” attests, deep-rooted in traditional folk and rock traditions.
Both musicians are bonded by an equal affinity for traditional and more contemporary, popular styles of music. Jefferson’s first band Single Malt Band was a three-piece acoustic combo that put original songs, arrangements of Fairport Convention medleys, and Irish jigs alongside covers of artists with as little in common as David Bowie, Bill Monroe, Richard Thompson, and Professor Longhair. It was a fun, dance-friendly, and often scatterbrained proving ground, but the instrumental demands of such a diverse trio tightened up Jefferson’s guitar chops, and his musicianship took on depth and versatility. Ten years later with Laura Cortese, his electric hybrid-picked guitar weaves rhythm and lead parts around the vocals and fiddle, keeping the driving bass notes steady with a pick, while his fingers play chords and melodies on the treble strings.
Laura grew up studying with Scottish fiddle master Alastair Frasier, and for almost a decade she has been a fiddle and voice instructor at his legendary music camps in California: Valley of the Moon, and Sierra Fiddle Camp. She is a graduate of the Berklee School of Music, and co-founded the Boston Celtic Music Festival in 2004. Over the course of three solo albums and several EP’s, her repertoire moved beyond traditional music into original pop, folk, and indie territory. Throughout this evolution, she has continued to perfect an assortment of rhythmic fiddle techniques best-suited to accompany her voice. In her song “Overcome”, she holds the fiddle sideways like a guitar and strums it percussively with her bare fingers. It propels the rhythm forward like a tuneful, melodic drum set, and the fiddle’s treble register sits in perfect compliment to Jefferson’s bottom-heavy, drop-tuned guitar textures. When she finally takes up the bow at the end of the song and plays a soulful, legato-rich solo, it’s not only exciting but somehow uncanny, as if we hadn’t already been hearing a fiddle all along, but some other indie-friendly trinket like a glockenspiel, omnichord, or hurdy gurdy.
 Performing as an electric string duo seems bold, particularly on a big stage, but it’s refreshing to hear the clarity of vocal harmonies and instrumental tones produced in a setting where every note matters, unobstructed by the P.A.-swallowing wash of a drum kit. In this regard, what Laura and Jefferson do is more akin to their folk ancestors than the voltage-enhanced sounds of their rock and pop contemporaries. The rhythm of traditional acoustic dance music informs their grooves, and a taste for the distilled poetry of real-life experience lives on in their original lyrics. A well-worn traditional ballad like “Barbara Ellen” ought to be a model of creative reinterpretation- grounded and respectful, yet subtly accomplishing something new. The fact that this track stands proudly, and integrates fluidly alongside the original songs on “Two Amps, One Microphone,” points to the British, Irish, Scottish, and American folk luminaries who inspired its rhymes and melodic colors. So charged, Laura Cortese and Jefferson Hamer write new songs worth remembering and put them in a familiar but subtly distinct frame, reshaping and realigning the congruence between acoustic and electric music, shining a bright light for the next generation of will-be folk rockers.
Click Here to visit Laura Cortese’s Website
 My friends and musical collaborators Laura Cortese and Kristin Andreassen have created a new kind of music camp, one designed for instrumentalists, singers, and songwriters. I’m thrilled to be teaching June 12-17 at the Miles of Music Camp on picturesque Lake Winnipesaukee, NH. Some great friends of mine are also teaching, and registrations are going fast! Visit http://www.milesofmusiccamp.com/index.htm to get more info and register!
I’m happy to be heading to California to teach guitar and songs at the Big Sur Fiddle Camp. Set on the beautiful California coast, this gathering of musicians of all ages is run by some good friends of mine. In the past couple years I’ve been fortunate to get to know many inspiring players associated with the west coast fiddle camp community, camps like Valley of the Moon, Shasta, Sierra, Big Sur. These camps have been happening for years and have given rise to some of today’s exciting young players in old-time, Irish, bluegrass, and progressive acoustic music. They’re all run by extraordinarily talented and generous instructors, and everyone has a great time. There’s still room for a few last-minute signups. For more info, check the camp website:
http://bigsurfiddlecamp.com
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