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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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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
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.
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.
I
attended Berea College in Kentucky from 1975 to 1977 and played fiddle
for the Berea College Country Dancers.
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.
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.

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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