Hi all.
well, I actually got it together to attend the Catskills Irish Arts Week and officially enroll in a class. While I usually like to take a class on an instrument I haven’t been playing very long (such as tenor banjo and fiddle), this year I opted to take Catherine McEvoy’s advanced flute class. So, I am wondering if any one on this forum has attended one of her classes or workshops? If so, would you mind telling me a little about her style of teaching? I have had classes with Kevin Crawford, Jean Michel Veillon (sp?), Paddy Keenan, Paul McGratten, and Chris Norman. All great players, varying abilities as teachers.
I always complain about teachers “just teaching tunes.” But when Catherine teaches tunes, her whole method of playing is built in, so I leave the workshop with a handful of tunes and my playing brought up a few notches.
As cocus says, paying attention is the key. She will play phrases at you and you’ll play them back at her, and your best bet is to try to copy them as exactly as possible. In the end you may not want to play like her, but you’ll be much better equipped to make such a decision.
I have ordered the Roscommon… styles cd ( don’t know if that is the first).
I like that she will play phrases and ask that they be played back. Of course, that’s exactly what every other teacher did. I guess what might make it different is if she actually stops you while playing the phrase and draws attention to the nuances of the phrase as opposed to just ‘getting the notes.’
I agree with cocus that Catherine is the best. Over the past fifteen years or so I’ve probably taken summer school classes with a dozen flute players, all of them top class, yet I keep coming back to Catherine. The only other ones in her league I’d say would be Marcas O Murchu and Kevin Crawford. You might be surprised to learn that many teachers at summer schools are reluctant to listen to the playing of individual students and offer a critique, probably because they don’t want to offend. Catherine is one of the few who will actually require that students play individually for her during class. There is no way to hide in the back or coast through the week. But if someone is serious about learning to play better by coming to a summer school, the opportunity to play, be heard and receive comments is invaluable, even though it may feel uncomfortable at the time.
A couple of years ago in the advanced class at East Durham, Catherine actually had everyone in the class of twenty play an entire tune for her to comment on. It took the entire morning to work through the entire class (and guess who got to be the very last one to play that day?) but I thought it was a tremendously worthwhile exercise. She hasn’t done that in the classes I’ve had from her since (perhaps she got negative feedback on it) but she always will have every student play for her at least once during the week, even if it’s only a couple of phrases. And if anyone asks for a critique, she is always glad to give it - even if her chauffeur Felix Dolan is standing by the door looking at his watch, ready to whisk her off to the next appointment.
i echo that sound about catherine mcevoy, had her last year at e. durham and she was wonderful.
equally wonderful was june mccormack. great attention to detail, great energy, didn’t get bogged down when faced with irrelevant or repetitive quesitons. and her choice of tunes was great (liked them better than catherine’s, but that’s a personal thing). and what a player.
Yeah, if you are a right-handed player and the teacher is left-handed, watching them is like looking at yourself in a mirror. Makes it a virtually seamless process to translate what they are doing into what you should be doing. I noticed this the first time I had a class with Catherine at Willie Week many years ago, although it took me a while to figure out why it was. At first, something just seemed right about it, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
