I just got back from Augusta yesterday. I had an amazing week in terms of teaching and personal attention. As there were only two students in the class (myself and a young guy from Jackson, Miss) for the two instructors (Jerry O and Elliott Grasso), we each had three hour private lessons with both teachers every day. Wow.
I’ve got four full 90 minute cassette tapes of tunes to work on for the year. Jerry is always helpful and gracious, but I hadn’t seen nor heard Elliott since he was 13 (and he was quite an accomplished piper already)…tok isn’t kidding by calling him the “Mozart of the pipes.”
He is absolutely an incredible musician; words fail to describe his playing!
Louise Mulcahy was also there teaching the whistle class, I didn’t get to hear much of her piping except for on the concert. However, I did speak to her at length regarding pipes, etc and she is also a lovely person.
There were only two negatives regarding the week. The demographic has drastically changed (too many camps competing for students) and the majority of the students were beginners, with very few intermediate players and no advanced ones, so there were no decent student sessions to speak of (on the plus side, I got to bed relatively early every night!).
Session etiquette was a problem with a few obnoxious beginner students who were completely and totally clueless as to how to behave…One spoiled a great session (Jerry Holland, Jerry O and John Skelton) by picking up a bodhran and banging away out of time…
But overall a great week. I’ve got enough tunes to work on to keep me busy for a long loonnnggg time!
Session etiquette was a problem with a few obnoxious beginner students who were completely and totally clueless as to how to behave…One spoiled a great session (Jerry Holland, Jerry O and John Skelton) by picking up a bodhran and banging away out of time…
– Janice
I’m curious to know if anyone took the time to point out the problem(s) that they were causing.
Well Brian, since you asked, I did nicely tell said boorish student that what she was doing was completely inappropriate (not to mention that if she’d been in a pub in Ireland she’d have been thrown out!). Oh- and get this- she’d never even picked up a bodhran before trying to play with Jerry, Jerry and John. But I was sorry that I did tell her (New Year’s Resolution-quit trying to save teenagers from acting and looking stupid!). She found me later on and screamed at me for 5 minutes, finishing with a loud “FK Y.”
This kid was clearly disturbed and had been behaving erratically all week…there were stories about her behavior from all the classes she’d been in. I was told that I did the right thing by talking to her, but I’ll think twice about it before I do so again…
Yes, I got pics of everybody, but as I’m a technodummie I don’t know that I’ll be able to post them.
The humidity in West Va is always a problem-but my new set was fine during the day with a little bridle adjustment. Night was a different story-too cold and clammy, my reed shut right up and sounded awful. Everybody else had the same problem except for Jerry, who plays on a really hard reed/setup (you should have heard him belting out Old Time tunes at 1:00 AM with the fiddlers). I’ll quote Elliott on the weather and what it does to his setup- “I hate this place!”
