Wednesday, January 28, 2015

KRISTIN ANDREASSEN CELEBRATES FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF MILES OF MUSIC CAMP, COMBINING TRAD FOLK, SONGWRITING, AND PERFORMING INTO HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE

REGISTRATION OPEN NOW FOR ALL AGES CAMPS IN NYC, BOSTON, AND ON IDYLLIC NEW HAMPSHIRE ISLAND

‘GONDOLIER’ NEW ALBUM BY ANDREASSEN OUT FEB 17, WRITTEN ON THE ISLAND

“It all fell into place as soon as I saw the island. I could see it all,” remembers Kristin Andreassen, co-founder and co-director of the Miles of Music camp for all ages and all levels. The organization she and Laura Cortese started now hosts weekends in New York and Boston, and a week on a private island on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire that will celebrate its fifth year in 2015. The main event, the week-long NH camp has sold out each of the last two years.

Kristin was first invited to join a private group of songwriters on the island in 2010. Not only did she realize immediately that she’d found a home for her longtime dream (shared with fiddler/songwriter Laura) of a music camp, but she also wrote the bulk of her new album ‘Gondolier’ over the summers at a private retreat held by a group of songwriters on the property. (Now, the songwriters go the week before the campers.) “We piled instruments in a motor boat and cruised over to the island in the dark. By the next morning, I could picture where it would all be: in the Rec. Hall we’d have a band-in-a-box class where singers get to work with a staff rhythm section, we’d have one-on-one lessons on the porch by the water.”

Andreassen’s new album ‘Gondolier’ comes out February 17. She recently taped syndicated radio shows Mountain Stage, Woodsongs, and Music City Roots. Here is video from the latter performance of the song “New Ground."

She explains how Miles of Music is unique by saying, “We take a holistic approach to learning music. It’s not broken up by instrument, on purpose. People are playing real music with each other from the moment they start in the morning.” Campers are also coached on performance skills, including thinking about incorporating visual arts as they prepare to play their music at evening concerts. (Last year there was a resident dancer, a painter and a shadow puppeteer on staff with the mission to encourage collaborations between the arts).

The singer-songwriter explains, “Night-time revelry ranges from a square dance to people singing Katy Perry at full-band karaoke. It’s a ridiculous range of genres. We are conscious about that. We are bringing in old and new traditions, with the intent of exploring the essence of each thing and see how we might consciously pull things out of new and old traditions to make something new in the moment.”

Andreassen reflects, “This is how folk music is still transmitted in this country. I’ve taught at half a dozen folk camps, including some ’song school’ type camps where I’m teaching songwriting and some 'old time weeks' where I’m generally teaching clogging or square dancing.  Our camp is a combination of those approaches. Our camp teaches traditional music and creativity. We don’t blend those ideas together. We just think each can inform the other. And sometimes it’s just more fun to try old fiddle tune with electric bass and drums.”

Miles of Music Camp takes place on a private 43-acre rocky woodland island on Lake Winnipesaukee near Meredith, New Hampshire, at the *Three Mile Island Camp managed by the Appalachian Mountain Club. The camp consists of 50 small rustic cabins along the lake shore plus recreational facilities and a community dining hall. In between music classes, jams and concerts, campers can explore the woods, go for a swim in the lake, or canoe around the island.

2015 Island Camp dates:

Jun 13-19: Lake Winnipesaukee, NH

Miles of Music also hosts two weekend workshops in Kristin & Laura’s respective home towns, which happen to also be where a majority of the campers hail from. Those dates are:

Feb 6-8:  Boston, MA
Feb 27-Mar 1: Brooklyn, NY

Andreassen says of the June camp, “There are 110 people on the island, of whom at least thirty are teachers. One of the things that we've worked hard on is keeping the ratio of music teachers to music students.” Instructors include co-founder and co-director Laura Cortese, who performed at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden; Jefferson Hamer; Yep Roc artists The Stray Birds; Josh Ritter bassist Zachariah Hickman; winner of the 2013 Clifftop Appalachian Stringband Festival Fiddle Contest Clelia Stefanini; indie songwriters Heather Robb of the Spring Standards and Shane Leonard of Field Report; Louisiana cajun and swamp pop kings The Revelers; ace cellist Valerie Thompson; traditional square dance…and clogging mistress Christine Galante; “squarely convincing” (NY Times) singer-songwriter Michaela Anne; and Dinty Child, multi-instrumentalist from Boston’s legendary Session Americana. It was Dinty who first invited Kristin and Laura to the island since he’s the off-season manager of the facility.

“I get a strong sense of the community that we’ve created,” says the co-founder, continuing, “I’ve watched bands form from the people who attended camp. I feel some sort of impact on helping nudge other people’s creative projects along. I feel it every week, either when I go to my old time session at Lowlands [Bar in Brooklyn, NY] or when I play a show.”

She’s not just a co-director, but she’s also a client. She exclaims, “Also, I get to play my songs with really great musicians!”

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