Featured Artists
Kara Barnard
Workshops
- 17-Playable Flat-Picked Versions of Jam Tunes - INT-ADV ... Fri 3:30
- 35-Learn the Way Grandpa and Grandma Did - NOV ... Sat 10:00
- 46-A Bunch of Capo Tunes and Tips - INT -...Sat 1:30
- 57-Arpeggios to Improve Tunes You Already Play - ADV ... Sat 11:30
Kara Barnard has entertained audiences from coast to coast and internationally. She has 7 recordings, played countless studio sessions, appeared on national television programs, and has been featured in articles in publications including Guitar Player Magazine.
Kara has spent the last few years focusing on teaching and creating events that would allow other musicians to grow and shine. She celebrated her successes by entering and becoming the 2022 National Mountain Dulcimer Champion, and is touring, performing and teaching at festivals across the country.
Kara teaches guitar, mandolin, banjo and dulcimer and has a teaching roster of 48 private, in-person students each week plus group lessons at a local YMCA.
Kara Barnard developed the Silver Strings program, teaching residents living in assisted living facilities how to play mountain dulcimer. The Silver Strings program includes curriculum Kara created specifically to serve a demographic often challenged by memory loss, hearing and vision loss, arthritis and paralysis due to strokes. The program currently serves campuses in Indiana and Kentucky and has placed over 220 dulcimers in the hands of their residents.
Kara created the Indiana State Fingerstyle Contest in 2010, bringing contestants from all over the world to compete each July in Nashville, Indiana. Many of those contestants go on to compete in the International Competition during the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas each September.
Multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, Kara Barnard is once again making new friends at festivals and events around the country and has a new batch of songs to be released in 2024.
Stephen Seifert website
Nate Pultorak
Stephen Humphries workshops (HD)
- 33-Develop Hand Interdependence with a Hymn – MID-ADV ... Sat 10:00
- 43-Accents and Rudiments – ADV ... Sat 11:30
- 62-Developing Good Rhythm – BEG-MID ... Sat 3:00
ALL
- 59-Live Looping – ALL INST ... Sat 1:30
Nate Pultorak got hooked on hammered dulcimers at an early age, and got deeply enough into it to win the 2019 National Hammered Dulcimer Championship. His palette ranges from bluegrass and folk, to classical, to pop, classic and progressive rock, and his cinematic songwriting style. He seeks to push the boundaries of what the dulcimer can do by incorporating looping, tapping, plucking, and capturing multiple notes with one hammer. Nate lives in the northern reaches of New York State.
Website: www.natepultorak.com
Other Artists
Sasha Bogdanowitsch
Carolyn Brodginski was a quick study when she finally got her hands on a mountain dulcimer after four decades playing guitar. The sweet sound, and many voices of the dulcimer opened a new musical world and opportunities. It wasn’t long before the dulcimer was integrated into the sound of her band, and she began teaching privately, at festivals, and at St. Francis Hospital where she worked as a therapeutic musician from 2015 until Covid hit in March of 2020. Since 2020, she has been a regular song leader, and two-time mystery guest in Pat Clark’s weekly “Send In The Music” jam. During the pandemic, she also learned to play the Celtic harp. An award-winning singer/songwriter, four of her original songs have been featured in the music sampler of Dulcimer Players News, including her latest song, “Sherry’s Diamonds,” a harp/dulcimer duet, which was in the August 2022 edition.
Workshops (MD)
- 24-Learning to Sing with Your Mountain Dulcimer – BEG ... Fri 4:45
- 37-A Classical Approach to the Dulcimer – ADV ... Sat 10:00
ALL INSTRUMENTS:
- 49-Performance Ready ... Sat 11:30
Cliff Cole
Cliff Cole fell in love with the hammered dulcimer at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1985 and he’s been hammering on ever since. He started off as a drummer playing rock, jazz, and blues, and
then carried that musical experience and sense of rhythm over to the hammered dulcimer and folk music. Rounding out his musical expression, Cliff studies acoustic guitar, plays the blues harp,
and enjoys singing.
He has taught workshops at many dulcimer and folk music festivals, including Nutmeg, the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering, Pocono Dulcimer Festival, and French Creek Retreat.
Cliff performs as a member of Tachyonmetry, DayBreak, and the Dulcimer Boys. As a recording artist, his music can be found on Spotify and other music streaming platforms. He is a member of the
Nutmeg Team.
Workshops (HD)
- 11-Care And Feeding of Your Hammered Dulcimer – ALL ... Fri 3:30
- 32-Tunes You Already Know (Playing by Ear) – MID ... Sat 10:00
- 53-Why Not play Blackbird on the HD? – ADV ... Sat 1:30
Sam Edelston
Sam Edelston is on a quest to bring dulcimers into widespread public awareness. Though he's best known for his arrangements of many kinds of popular music on acoustic and electric mountain dulcimer, he has also been playing diverse music on hammered dulcimer for more than 30 years. (He's teaching hammered dulcimer at Nutmeg this year.) He loves his chromatic bass bridge on his hammered dulcimer as much as he loves the "half" frets on his mountain dulcimers.
Sam has performed and taught at festivals as far away as Kentucky, Minnesota, Louisiana, Colorado, and many online festivals, and his YouTube videos have been heard more than 1,000,000 times, in more than 190 countries. He also plays guitar and banjo, and is chair of this festival. Sam's first CD will be released this fall.
Workshops (HD)
- 51-Which Hand Should I Use? – BEG ... Sat 1:30
Ron Ewing
Judy, with her husband, Kirk, are the founders of the Camel City Strummers Dulcimer Club and the Triad Dulcimer Orchestra, both of which are in Winston-Salem, NC. In early 2021, they founded the First National Dulcimer Orchestra, which meets weekly over Zoom and performs at festivals by invitation. They are the directors of the Winston-Salem Dulcimer Festival which is held the first Saturday in May in Winston-Salem, and The Orchestra Symposium, which is held the last week of May in the beautiful mountains of NC.
Judy’s passion for the dulcimer has led to her teaching at festivals around the country and presenting at conferences and universities concerning the Mountain Dulcimer. She also enjoys working
with those interested in becoming effective teachers of the mountain dulcimer and other folk instruments. Judy has written 9 dulcimer music books, with more on the way! She lives in
Winston-Salem, NC
Workshops (MD)
- 26-Improving your Fingering – NOV-INT ... Fri 4:45
- 47-Creating an Ensemble Arrangement – INT-ADV (with Kirk House) ... Sat 11:30
- 54-Introduction to Jamming – BEG-NOV ... Sat 1:30
- 65-Introduction to Flatpicking – NOV ... Sat 3:00
ALL INSTRUMENTS
- 39-Playing in an Ensemble (with Kirk House) – ALL INST ... Sat 10:00
Tom Irving
Tom Irving is a dulcimer player and an innovator, always looking for better ways to do things. He is the creator of Possum Pads, as well as ergonomic noters and wrist rests for dulcimer players. Based in Massachusetts, where he is the leader of the New England Dulcimaniacs, Tom is a member of the Nutmeg Team.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086273433088
Workshops (MD)
- 14- Traditional-Style Playing with a “Noter” – BEG ... Fri 3:30
Sandy Lafleur
Marya Katz is a retired National Board Certified music teacher who still lives and breathes music in her daily life. She has led dulcimer workshops at many festivals, teaches private students, composes, and performs with the folk group Simple Gifts of the Blue Ridge. She recently taught a week-long workshop at Perelandra in NC; she will be teaching there again in June 2019. And somehow, she still finds time to direct the choir at her church and pull weeds from her gardens at home in Blacksburg, VA. She has had her original compositions published in Dulcimer Players News and online for the dulcimersessions.com magazine, and has published several books of traditional arrangements and original compositions. Her newest venture is a book of "practical" theory for hammered dulcimer players, titled "Building a House of Basics."
Workshops (HD)
- 12-The Joy of “Noodling” – MID ... Fri 3:30
- 23-Singing With the Hammered Dulcimer – ADV ... Fri 4:45
- 31-Hammered Dulcimer 101 – BEG ... Sat 10:00
- 42-Dance Tunes from Brittany – MID ... Sat 11:30
Ron & Dawn Jordan
Ron and Dawn Jordan are Wolf Hill Woodworking, located near Albany, NY. One year, when they were vending at the Old Songs Festival of Traditional Music & Dance in upstate New York, their booth was across from a hammered dulcimer builder, and they learned to love both the music of hammered dulcimers and the people who made and sold them. Ron took up the hammered dulcimer, and his favorite hammers were made by renowned hammer craftsman Bob Bedard. Bob taught Ron his techniques, and eventually when Bob retired in 2021, Wolf Hill took over making Bob Bedard hammers. They also make playing stands and accessories for hammered and mountain dulcimers, and more.
Workshops (OTHER)
- 68-How to Play Rhythm Bones - BEG ... Sat 3:00
Mary Grace Lee
Kirk House has been playing the dulcimer for 15+ years; for the last ten years he has specialized in the bass dulcimer. He is a certificated dulcimer teacher, through Western Carolina University (Dulcimer U program). Kirk plays several different styles and designs of bass dulcimer, including 3-string, 4-string, and double-bass. He performs as part of a duo with his wife Judy House, as well as a member of the quartet string section, "SASSy" and the multi-instrument quartet "PDQ." He recently helped found the First National (virtual) Dulcimer Orchestra, and directed the first “Orchestra only” dulcimer festival, the Orchestra Symposium. He regularly volunteers at the local Hospice, where he visits patients and plays gentle dulcimer music for them.
Other musical interests of Kirk's include mandolin, bowed dulcimer, ukulele, and shape-note singing. After teaching online at Nutmeg in 2021, Kirk is delighted make his first in-person appearance
here.
Workshops (MD)
- 16-Bass Dulcimer: Playing IN the Box – INT-ADV ... Fri 3:30
- 47-Creating an Ensemble Arrangement – INT-ADV (with Judy House) ... Sat 11:30
ALL INSTRUMENTS
- 39-Playing in an Ensemble (with Judy House) – ALL INST ... Sat 10:00
Tom Mackenzie
Don Kawalek has been passionately building stringed musical instruments since 1976. He makes banjos, guitars, mountain dulcimers, hammered dulcimers, and a variety of mandolins in his studio (a/k/a his sanctuary) in Bunker Hill WV. In a former life, he was a schoolteacher. This is his first time at Nutmeg.
Ellen Pratt
Ellen Pratt has been playing the dulcimer since 1999 and composing original music for most of that time. She enjoys both the quieter chord melody style using fingerpicking and the hard, fast
strumming of old-time music and jam tunes. Her most recent focus is arranging classical pieces and original tunes for ensembles, and she has published eight books of Ensemble Arrangements for
Mountain Dulcimer with a few more in the works.
Ellen is a member and ensemble book contributor for the First National Dulcimer Orchestra, she teaches at dulcimer festivals across the Northeast, and she co-coordinates the August Dulcimer Daze
in Vermont. When not playing music, Ellen is an elementary school teacher, and she also teaches dulcimer classes to 3rd and 4th graders after school.
Workshops (MD)
- 44-Mountain Dulcimer 102 – BEG ... Sat 11:30
- 56-DGD: Darn Good Ditties – INT ... Sat 1:30
OTHER
- 69-Two-Finger Thumb Lead Banjo ... Sat 3:00
Susan Trump
Jody Marshall, a native of the Washington, D.C. area, grew up in a musical family. Enchanted by the sound and visual appeal of the hammered dulcimer, she developed a passion for the instrument and was soon playing everything from traditional jigs and reels to Mozart, the Beatles, and beyond. Her performance credits include the White House, the Kennedy Center, and Wolf Trap’s Filene Center for the Performing Arts.
Jody was a founding member of the popular folk trios, Ironweed and MoonFire, and also performed extensively with the award-winning ensemble, Connemara. She is also a popular dulcimer teacher, and has been on the faculty of many festivals and arts workshops across the nation and overseas.
The Washington Post describes Jody’s music as “lovely, lively, and shimmering.” She has several recordings to her credit, and is also the author of a book of Christmas music for the hammered dulcimer, as well as two books featuring dulcimer duets.
Workshops (HD)
- 13-Riffing on Pachelbel’s Canon – ADV ... Fri 3:30
- 22-Hearing Chord Changes – MID ... Fri 4:45
- 41-Hammered Dulcimer 102 – BEG ... Sat 11:30
- 61-Instant Holiday Hits! –BEG ... Sat 3:00
Carol Walker
Carol Walker is a happily retired high school choral teacher (recipient of the NJ Governor's Teacher of the Year Award in 2003), and performs on mountain dulcimer, piano, harp, melodica, and upright bass. In 2022 she formed the New York Dulcimer Orchestra, based in the Lower Hudson River Valley. This 20-member ensemble enjoys presenting performances at libraries and retirement communities in NY and NJ. Carol's folkloric research single-handedly brought traditional music of the Isle of Man to the mountain dulcimer, leading to a CD of Manx tunes, "Alas, the Horse Is Gone," as well as two books of "Tailless Tunes." Carol's instructional works include the three "DNA* Dulcimer Ditties" book/CD sets, as well as DVD on the Homespun label. Carol published her 10th and 11th dulcimer tab books in 2023, and expects to release Volume Two of her Winnie-the-Pooh Songbooks Series in early 2024.
Workshops (MD)
- 27-Piedmont Fingerpicking – ADV ... Fri 4:45
- 34-Mountain Dulcimer 101 – BEG ... Sat 10:00
- 55-Keep Calm and KEEP GOING! – NOV-ADV ... Sat 1:30
- 66-Fiddle Tune Grab Bag – INT ... Sat 3:00
ALL
- 48-Hey! Where's the Beat??? – ALL INST ... Sat 11:30
Dwain Wilder
Dwain Wilder, founder of Bear Meadow Folk Instruments, has been building mountain dulcimers since 1991. He regularly gets orders from as far away as Europe, Great Britain, and the Far East. Dwain is also one of the few dulcimer builders who takes on apprentices and teaches them the craft. In addition to his instrument building, Dwain has also published poems in various periodicals and collections, and writes occasional essays on Zen practice.
Dwain will have his tools at Nutmeg. If you have a mountain dulcimer that needs work, email him at dwilder@rochester.rr.com .
Workshops (MD)
- 38-Dealing with the Troublesome Dulcimer - ALL ... Sat 10:00
Norm Williams
Norm Williams is co-founder of The Pocono Dulcimer Club, a coordinator of the Pocono DulcimerFest held each year in April in East Stroudsburg, PA; and co-founder of the Maiden Creek Old Time Music Festival held each July. He has taught at many festivals throughout the Northeast, and also works with individual students. In addition to mountain dulcimer Norm plays guitar, ukulele and banjo. Norm is a lover of Old Time music and performs solo and with the bands Wayfarers & Company, Tom & Betty Druckenmiller, and the Dulcimer Boys with Cliff Cole & Rob Yoder. He lives in Emmaus, PA.
Workshops (MD)
- 25-Whiskey – All Over Your Dulcimer! – NOV-INT ... Fri 4:45
- 45-What Can I Bring to the Jam? – NOV-ADV ... Sat 11:30
- 44-“Old Time” Songs & Tunes for Mountain Dulcimer – BEG ... Sat 3:00
ALL
- 19-Singing in the Tradition - ALL ,,, Fri 3:30
Nina Zanetti
Nina Zanetti is the 2008 National Mountain Dulcimer Champion. She comes to the mountain dulcimer from a diverse musical background, including choral music, violin, viola, piano, and shape note singing. She plays regularly at churches, historic sites, and community events and has taught at major dulcimer festivals throughout the country and online. Nina is especially fond of the “softer side of dulcimer” and has a strong interest in American folk hymns, Early Music, and ensemble playing. She has published ten books of tablature arrangements for mountain dulcimer. She is featured on Masters of the Mountain Dulcimer Play Music for Christmas (CD) and she has recorded a CD of solos and duets with Bill Collins, as well as two solo CDs, Beside Still Waters and Winter’s Light.
Workshops (MD)
- 15-Playing with a Partner – NOV ... Fri 3:30
- 36-Playing with Expression – INT ... Sat 10:00
- 67-What if It Were Easy? – INT-ADV ... Sat 3:00
ALL
- 29-Shaker Music for Everyone - ALL ... Fri 4:45
Vendors
Tom Irving - Possum Pads and other mountain dulcimer accessories
Don Kawalek - Mountain dulcimers and other instruments