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I am both a musician and a storyteller and interweave songs, tunes
and tales into all my programs.
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(click
any picture on this page for a larger image)
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I believe in audience
participation and community celebrations and think of myself as
a creative facilitator as well as a performer. I tell traditional
and personal stories from my Celtic-American heritage and play the
Scottish bagpipe, fiddle, banjo and guitar.
I grew
up in a singing family and began performing with my parents
at age three. My parents, George and Gerry Armstrong, were known
as the "mom and pop" of the Chicago folk music scene
and raised me and my older sister with table graces sung at
mealtimes, lullabies at bedtime and musical celebrations at
the changing of the seasons.
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My parents
with Studs Terkel at WFMT, 1956
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Rebecca
and me with "bagpipes"1963
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I began my storytelling
and instrument playing at a young age. When I was two-and-a-half I
told my first story, my version of Goldilocks
and the Three Bears. When I was five, my sister and I made bagpipes
out of balloons and tinker toys but it wasn't until I was thirteen
that I officially began learning to pipe. I attended Donald Lindsay's
Invermark College of Piping in upstate New York for a number of summers
during my teens. Since then I've opened festivals, piped at funerals,
weddings, birthday parties and graduations, given lessons to beginners
and continued to attend bagpipe summer schools whenever I can.
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Learning
a tune from Michael Gorman,1965
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I fell in love with the
fiddle, and with the fiddle player, when I was eight. Michael Gorman,
from county Sligo Ireland, was eighty years old when he was a house
guest of my parents for two weeks, and started me on my fiddler's
path.
I began giving fiddle lessons
at age thirteen and in my twenties took the Suzuki Book 1a teachers
training. I quickly realized fiddling and violin training are worlds
apart from the very beginning so didn't continue with Suzuki Teacher
Training. However, I've taught fiddle and folk dancing as an enrichment
teacher at many Suzuki Institutes across the country since 1986, including
Institutes in IL, UT, PA, NH, MA, VA, KS and CO.
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Fiddling
for a dance with Suzannah on my back, 1983
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I attended Berea College
in Kentucky from 1975 to 1977 and played fiddle for the Berea College
Country Dancers.
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Opening
the Sweet Chariot Festival, Swans Island, ME 2001
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I've given fiddle workshops
and singing games/dancing workshops at Berea Christmas School, John
C. Campbell Folk School, Pinewoods, Augusta Heritage Arts Workshops
and Buffalo Gap Family Camp.
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With
Georgia Rose and Suzannah during the Big
Move
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I moved with my daughters
(Georgia Rose and Suzannah Park) from Swannanoa, NC back to Chicago
in 1984. I worked for Urban Gateways (an Arts in Education agency)
for about five years and then became my own booking agent. I am still
my own agent except for working one week each year with the wonderful
women at Class Acts in Washington D.C.
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At
home in Maine, March 2001
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My daughters and I moved
to Jamaica Plain, MA in 1997 and then in the Summer of 2000 I moved
to Belfast, Maine where I plan to roost for a long time!
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