Ling Kwan

 http://www.hudsonpromusica.com/

Ling Kwan was born in China into a musical family. Her father taught her to play the piano at age 5, which provided a solid foundation for later cello studies, which began at age 9. She attended the Academy for Performing Arts in Hong Kong, where she majored in cello performance and was active as both a chamber musician and orchestral player. As a member of various groups, she performed in China, United States and Europe. Ling came to the United States to study economics at Bard College in 1990. As fate would have it, Ling instead took the opportunity to study cello with Professor Luis Garcia Renart, who had worked with masters such as Pablo Casals and Mstislav Rostropovich. She then completed her masters at Ithaca College in cello performance.

Upon returning to the Hudson Valley, Ling devoted herself to passing her knowledge to the next generation of young cellists in the area and has since built up a successful private teaching studio. She has also worked as an adjunct professor at Bard College, Dutchess Community College, Ulster Community College and Marist College. She has worked with the children at Mountain Laurel Waldorf School for the past 14 years, bringing them to a level of artistry rarely seen in elementary education.

Ms. Kwan has been the principal cellist of the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra since her graduation and has performed with the orchestra as a soloist on various occasions. 

She performs with her classical trio. Check them out here: www.hudsonpromusica.com

Joakim Lartey

joakimlartey.com

Joakim Larkey is a life long musician who grew up in Ghana, a very musical country. He started playing music, mostly imitating drummers, when he was 10 or 11 years old. He came to the US to study Biology (and minor in Ethnomusicology) at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie.

Among his influences, he says,

"I was later and still influenced by the late Ghanaian drummer and composer Kofi Ghanaba aka Guy Warren of Ghana, Fela Kuti, James Brown, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, among many others... I would also add some musicians I play with today to the mix - such as Chris Lane, Ted Orr, Thomas Workman, Phoebe Legere and others such as Bob Marley, Lee Scratch Perry, Bjork...."

Joakim was the frontman of  world beat band "Futu Futu". This was a musical highlight in his career, playing for an audience of about 300,000 at Woodstock '94 to major critical acclaim. He described to me some of the discrimination he faced as they toured.

"There were some interesting and scary moments in some venues and towns as we rolled through the countryside... Racism and bigotry was alive and well back then as it is today. I think my bandmates helped mold me into who I am today by giving me the space to express and train myself. I think I also learned how to feel comfortable playing to predominantly white audiences. It reinforced my personal outlook of openness to all..."

Joakim uses his studio to compose new music. "Compositional inspiration sort of just happens but being in nature and among people and tracking contemporary issues in the news adds to inspiration...I tend to lean towards improvisation and so find new unintended compositions after jams and such."

Joakim currently has musical projects with Chris Lane and on occasion plays with (sound healer and musician) Thomas Workman and (Ted Orr's funk band) Blue Food, Joakim works as a counselor to children and a trainer of teachers and school staff as well as a storyteller and drum teacher in schools. 

Check his website out here www.joakimlartey.com

Virgil Fowler

 Virgil Fowler lives in West Saugerties and has been playing his guitar for forty years. Here he is, with one of his favorites.

 I've known Virgil for many years and whenever I think of him, I picture him noodling around on his guitar, playing a blues lick or picking out a tune. When he was younger, he traveled the country with his wife, staying at different communes. Virgil talks about the culture of the bard and traveling musician being alive on the "hippie communes" where he and others would essentially be welcomed to play for their supper, and stay for a while to bring music and merriment to the others building houses and infrastructure, farming, or doing other chores. Virgil used to be part of a local band, Home by Midnight, but not in recent years due to some health problems.

Steve Bernstein

New Paltz resident Steve Bernstein is a music teacher and performer with the Bernstein Bard Trio. He teaches chorus and recorder ensemble at Mountain Laurel Waldorf School in New Paltz. He also teaches guitar and mandolin privately and performs as a mandolin / harp duo with me on occasion.

Steve has been playing guitar since he was a teenager. His brother brought a guitar home from college and left it out on the couch for anyone to play. Steve played it and took to it. His brother left his guitar for Steve to play and later bought Steve his own guitar for his birthday. Like many of the musicians I have interviewed, he mostly taught himself how to play. He learned to transcribe music from records to create arrangements for his students to play. He has arranged a four-part tunebook of Celtic Music and original compositions for recorder, which is offered through Waldorf Publications. He has been playing professionally, mostly with his brother Mark, since they were both in their twenties.

 Steve was in his twenties when he started playing the mandolin. When I asked him how he chose the mandolin, he said he was inspired by the sound of David Grisman and his mandolin. He heard Grisman and Jerry Garcia together and wanted to play mandolin in that blue-grass, old timey way. The sound of the mandolin added a different timbre to the music and complimented the other guitars in his band.

 Steve spoke a little about why he loves to play music. He spoke of the moments of magic that are created when musicians come together to play. These moments can be reached through improvisation. Steve describes a moment on The Bernstein Bard Trio's CD during Scarborough Fair], when the trio starts to improvise together and a magical moment is created. It's moments like these, he says, that led him to become and sustain him as a musician.

Maeve Gilchrist

I was lucky to catch Maeve Gilchrist at The Falcon in Marlboro, NY last night. She was sitting in with cellist, singer and songwriter Ben Sollee.

Maeve grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland, in a family of musicians. She has been playing the clasarch (celtic harp as we call it here in the States), for twenty years. By the looks of her, she must've started quite young.

For those of you who don't know, the celtic harp is not a shrunken down version of the large elaborate orchestral harps we've seen, but a traditional instrument. This one is made by Thormahlen Harps. This is the Ceili model. Closer examination of the harp reveals fluorocarbon strings which are more practical for changing weather and the touring musician than traditional gut strings.

Her music goes way beyond the whimsy, etherical music commonly associated with harp music. She played this beautiful song last night, as a solo.

Maeve teaches harp at the Berklee College of Music, the school that gave her a full scholarship to attend when she was 17 years old. She studied jazz, merging her "two worlds of folk and improvisation" (http://www.berklee.edu/people/maeve-gilchrist). She lives in Brooklyn, NY. Check out her website here: http://maevegilchristmusic.com/

Jimmy Giampa

Jimmy Giampa is a percussionist who lives in West Saugerties, NY. I have had the pleasure of playing with Jimmy a couple times at local venues in Woodstock. He is subtle and steady, and knows when to let go and when to reign it in. These are qualities that make, in the author's humble opinion, an excellent drummer.

Jimmy began playing drums when he was a teenager, in the 1950's. He started with pots and pans, he said. He taught himself how to play. His cousin was a jazz drummer and Jimmy would watch him play. He couldn't play much at home, he says, as he lived in a 6-family apartment house in the Bronx. He would lock himself in the closet at school so he could play without being interrupted. Then he "started playing in the park with the latin guys - you gotta learn that clave," he says. From there, he started playing with latin bands in the 1960's.

In the late 60's, Jimmy came upstate with a friend of his who was working on a demo at Karmic Gardians. Jimmy did carpentry work at the studio. This was somewhat of a sister studio to Micheal Jeffries' Electric Ladyland recording studio in NYC. Jeffries was Jimi Hendrix's manager and in 1971, he asked Jimmy to come down to record on Looking Glass's 1971 hit "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl").

Brandy
Jimmy went to the studio, and without having heard the track before, laid down a conga track in a couple takes.

He reflects that he was playing with some hot latin bands in New Jersey and New York at the time and says that the "Brandy" track was easy and tame in comparison with what he had been accustomed to playing.
He toured with Vassar Clements.
His favorite of all the musicians he played with was American folk and bluegrass songwriter and musician (and former West Saugerties resident) John Herald.

 

Joe Elmo

Joe Elmo is a Woodstock, NY based songwriter and guitar player. I caught up with him at a mutual friend's home in Woodstock.

Joe started playing guitar when he was 17 years old. He was at a friend's house, he said, and his friend was playing the keyboard. There was a guitar in the corner and his friend suggested he pick it up.
"Nah," he replied. But then something changed and he decided to pick it up. He liked it, he really liked it. And he understood it. He could play. 

I asked him if he ever took lessons. He told me that after he picked up the guitar, he arranged to have a lesson with his cousin, who had played for a long time. He met with his cousin and arranged to take another lesson a few months later. When it was time for his second lesson, his cousin said he had nothing new to teach him: Joe could already play better than his cousin.

Joe plays by ear. He never learned to read music. But he did learn where all the notes are on the guitar. When I was jamming with him, he had a keen sense of music theory, including chord progressions (including 9ths, 7ths, walking bass, etc.) and he would call them to me so I could play along. When I started to call a chord progression, he corrected me right away when I mistakenly called a B flat chord a B minor. 

 "Things are going good," he tells me. He has a recording contract on the table right now with plans to tour Europe with his original music and band.
When I asked him who has influenced him, he lists off many of his friends as well as Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones.

Peggy Lynn

 

I caught up with Adirondack folk musician Peggy Lynn at Camp Huntington, in the heart of the Adirondacks. Peggy has been making a living through her music for twenty plus years.  She is beautiful, talented and has an absolutely gorgeous voice that is both strong and delicate. She wavers and slides and holds her own gentle vibrato in this northern country and does the music more than justice.

Peggy started playing the guitar when she was twenty years old. Her older brother was a popular tenor when she was growing up and she never wanted to be compared to him, but the music was living in her too. She was often asked, she said, to sit in with folk performers and so she naturally picked up the guitar and taught herself to play it. She started writing songs and at the age of 32 recorded her first album. Her website, http://www.quercusmusic.com/music, shows ten albums to her credit to date.

She is an Adirondack woman. She frequents places like this one, Camp Huntington, and other of the Great Adirondack Camps.

I was fortunate to be at two performances here with her, where she graciously asked me to sit in. The first performance she was accompanying her husband, Dan Duggan, master hammered dulcimer player and nationally touring artist and educator. While I was sitting in with the duo, and Dan was calling out dances, Peggy leans over to me and says, "I'd rather be dancing." Soon after, she did just that. She got up and led one of the dances. The two brought a good old fashioned super fun time to many people who have never had the pleasure of olde time dances before.

Two nights later, Peggy led a song circle, her beautiful voice filling the room. Every note hanging in on the birch bark ceiling like it was a deliberate decoration of the Adirondack camp.

Most interestingly to me, is that Peggy has an entire album about Adirondack women. She relayed to me how after she wrote her first song about an unsung Adirondack woman, Lydia Smith, wife of the Adirondack legend Paul Smith, of Paul Smith College namesake. Lydia, apparently had been the driving force behind most, if not all, of her husband's endeavors: making investments, teaching their sons how to run the hotel, and many other behind the scenes, but vital doings that made her husband the highly respected man he was. Nobody every said anything about Lydia, until Peggy Lynn wrote a song about her. Since then, audience members and others have encouraged Peggy to write about other formerly unsung Adirondack heroines. She has an entire album about these women. The music is authentic and at times breathtaking, and the lyrics are humorous and poetic.

Peggy Lynn is about as authentic as it gets: she lives in the Adirondacks, writes music about the Adirondacks and performs in the Adirondacks. She is keeping the Adirondack traditional music scene alive by her contributions and preserving the old songs as well. She is a gem of traditional music and culture.

Mike Clip Payne Part oNe

I first met Mike 'Clip' Payne one afternoon in Woodstock, NY. I was playing music outside my friend's place, where Clip happens to be a neighbor. I was playing some new songs for my friend when he comes out and says something about a record.
"No record," I said.
"You will," he replied. I liked him right away.

I asked him if he was a musician and he laughs, a big full belly laugh. He's good at those. Turns out he is a career musician, with 40 years of experience performing, writing and grooving with George Clinton and Parlament Funkadelic. (Oh yeah, I think, I've heard of you guys.) He takes me inside his home and shows me, just in case I'm having a memory lapse, videos of his band, P-Funk.

"Ok," I say, "but what do you play?"
"I don't really play an instrument," he says.
"Well, what do you do on stage," I ask.
"I try not to be on stage these days," he says.
"Well, ok, but if I'm at a Parliment show and I'm looking for you, where do I find you?"
He laughs, one of these eye creasing, belly laughs again. Then he takes a puff of his smoke and goes onto Facebook and puts the question out there to his friends.

 OK, so  he's the narrator, keeps the low end tight, found in the crowd possibly playing the fool. One reply to this thread takes us here:

 Clip is that deep resonate MC. "We're a freak show," he tells me. He likes to be in the crowd or leave the stage for a bit, or be singing from the sides. He keeps it interesting.
 I see a couple of these machines.

I figure out Clip is a producer, a creator of funkadelic music and writes hooks. He writes pop music, he says.

He's pretty funky. I jam with him for a few hours. He plays this:

And creates beats on his computer live. Sometimes it works, sometimes we just get through it (me on a nylon string guitar and all), but all in all its definitely funky. And fun. He tells me that my choruses are like poetry and he laughingly contrasts this with hooks he writes, like the late 70's smash hit "Flashlight":

 These days, when not touring with Parliment Funkadelic, Clip has other bands he produces. He has a podcast,  a history and a future. Stay tuned for part 2 in which Clip tells us about how an early music experience watching a Motown recording session when he was 9 years old changed his life, about bad music deals and working for the man... And how he's keeping the funk alive.

Musician's Tea Beginning to Brew

Greetings My Friend,

I am a songwriter, harpist, and guitarist. I love to play music and jam with other musicians. I decided

to create a post based on my curiosity and passion for music and interest in musicians. I have several musical friends and acquaintances and I will be bringing them to you, through pictures and a brief synthesis of my interviews and conversations, sometimes over a cup of tea, often in their homes, mostly right here in the Hudson Valley between Woodstock and New Paltz. We will explore these musicians' creative processes, their instruments, inspirations, aspirations (or lack of) as well as brief biographies in their musical lives. I will display photographs of the musicians and their instruments, sometimes while playing, hopefully in a natural relaxed state.

Photograph by Christine Fromm

This subject is fascinating to me, be the musicians pro, on the verge, semi-pro, or hobbyists. Because my interest in music is far reaching and expands beyond one or two types of music, I will be featuring musicians who play music from many different genres. Some of the musicians I have in the line up are: career musician Clip from the international touring band Parliment Funkadelic, Steve Bernstein from the Hudson Valley's own Bernstein Bard Trio, newly signed rock guitarist/songwriter Joe Elmo, and life long sometimes pro musicians Jimmy Giampa (congas), Virgil Fowler (guitar) and Wave (hand drum player and maker). I will bring in my avant guard composed father-in-law, Dary John Mizelle as well. I plan to bring you some female musicians too, like virtuoso cellist and friend
Ling Kwan and an international singer-songwriter (and former bandmate of mine) tba. Maybe my mother-in-law, pro classical bassist Diana Gannet will make an appearance as well.

I hope to present these performance artists in a casual, down-to-earth way, with simple photographs

photograph by Christine Fromm

that hopefully capture some of the beauty and depth of the experience of making music, without the bright lights and stage dimension. Come on in and have a cup of tea as we explore the multi-faceted world of musicians. Please feel free to join in the conversation by leaving comments. I love comments and hope to hear from you soon.

Kind regards,
Veronica