Instructors at the Ceilidh Trail School of Celtic Music

Fiddle & Piano & Stepdancing

Instructors For Week 1 - June 30th - July 4th 2008
Listen	Jerry Holland Jerry Holland is a fiddler strongly rooted in Cape Breton, Scottish and Irish dance music traditions. An active performer and recording artist, many of his own tunes have entered the traditional repertoire around the world. His tunes, books and recordings have remained influential wherever Celtic music is played. He has taken his music to many parts of the world. Those places include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Scotland, Finland, Germany, Mexico, England, France, USA, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, PEI, New Brunswick, Quebec, Alberta, Ontario and NWT. Jerry has devoted his energies to the music life of Cape Breton Island. He is an emotional performer; his concerts and recordings are always memorable. We are thrilled to welcome Jerry back to the Ceilidh Trail School of Music! www.jerryholland.com

Listen	Kimberley Fraser Kimberley, a 23 year old native of Sydney Mines, has been step dancing ever since she can remember. She started studying traditional Cape Breton fiddling at age six and at age nine she began taking lessons in Cape Breton piano accompaniment. Kimberley now enjoys teaching fiddle, step dancing, and piano privately at home as well as at various workshops. Kimberley has been a featured performer in Spirit of the Island at the Louisbourg Playhouse in 1998, 1999, and 2000. During the 2000 Celtic Colours International Festival, Kimberley was presented with the annual Tic Butler Memorial Award for significant contribution to Cape Breton culture. Later that year, she released her debut CD entitled, Heart Behind the Bow. In 2002, Kimberley appeared in Cape Breton singer Aselin Debison's TV Special Sweet is the Melody which aired on CBC in Canada and PBS in the United States. Kimberley is equally in demand for her piano skills. In 2003, she was the accompanist for Cape Breton fiddler Glenn Graham on his tour of British Columbia, and toured Sweden with Cherish The Ladies in May 2004. In August 2005 she performed at Tønder Festival in Denmark.

Listen	Brenda Stubbert Brenda was raised in Point Aconi, a small Cape Breton fishing and mining community a few miles from North Sydney and Sydney Mines. The Northside is known for its rich musical traditions and the Stubbert household had regular musical visitors including fiddlers Winston Fitzgerald, Johnny Wilmot, Joe Confiant and many others. Brenda grew up surrounded by music and by the time she was five she was dancing and playing the piano. A short while later, about age eight, she started on the fiddle, an instrument her father, brothers and uncles all played. Her father, Robert, could be described as an Irish player while her uncle Lauchie played and composed with a Scottish style. Although strongly influenced by her family's music, Brenda's style borrows elements from all the great players she has associated with. Her sound is full of trills and other embellishments, yet remains both lively and relaxed.

	Shelley Campbell bio coming soon.
Instructors For Week 2 - July 14th - July 18th 2008
Listen	Jerry Holland Jerry Holland is a fiddler strongly rooted in Cape Breton, Scottish and Irish dance music traditions. An active performer and recording artist, many of his own tunes have entered the traditional repertoire around the world. His tunes, books and recordings have remained influential wherever Celtic music is played. He has taken his music to many parts of the world. Those places include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Scotland, Finland, Germany, Mexico, England, France, USA, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, PEI, New Brunswick, Quebec, Alberta, Ontario and NWT. Jerry has devoted his energies to the music life of Cape Breton Island. He is an emotional performer; his concerts and recordings are always memorable. We are thrilled to welcome Jerry back to the Ceilidh Trail School of Music! www.jerryholland.com

	Andrea Beaton One of Cape Breton's most promising young fiddlers, Andrea Beaton comes by her music honestly. Listen to her play, the power of her bow, the drive and swing of her timing, the crispness of her attack. She's making a name for herself in dance halls, concerts, ceilidhs, and festivals. Like the compelling tradition she represents, her reputation is growing, spreading beyond the island. Andrea Beaton seems destined for great things. She's the youngest of generations of Beaton musicians. Her father, Kinnon, is one of today's most influential Cape Breton fiddlers, and you can hear some of his timing in Andrea's playing. Her mother, Betty Beaton, is one of the great piano accompanists of her generation, contributing to that remarkable Beaton timing. Her paternal grandfather, Donald Angus Beaton, was one of the strongest and most popular players of his generation, and you can hear some of his power in her playing. Her paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Beaton, is a strongly rhythmic piano player, with a great love of the music. And so it goes, back and across the generations. Cape Breton is an extraordinarily musical place, and Andrea is increasingly in the forefront of her generation. Her music is at once her own and deeply rooted in the tradition associated with the Mabou Coal Mines. And, like her father and grandfather, she is a composer in the tradition, adding fine new music to the island's repertoire.

	Kendra Mac Gillivray For over twenty years, Kendra MacGillivray has brought fiddle music to life with her incredibly energetic performances with the fiddle. As a former Highland dancer, Kendra aims to make her fiddling lively and danceable with upbeat jigs, polkas and hornpipes, beautiful swaying waltzes and slow airs or selections of rhythmic strathspeys and reels that build in speed and intensity. She’s even been known to make a few steps while fiddling at the same time in high heels! Kendra has been teaching Celtic Fiddle Lessons for sixteen years - She started teaching group and private lessons, on a weekly basis, in her hometown of Antigonish, NS, then private lessons at the Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts in Halifax, NS and now she is teaching privates in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. She has given numerous workshops and master classes to students of all ages and levels all over Canada. Kendra teaches many different types of tunes - slow airs, marches, strathspeys, reels, clogs, hornpipes and jigs. In private lessons, she teaches tunes suitable to each student based on their level and what they want to learn. She also educates her students on the composers and history of the music along with teaching them to play the instrument. Kendra teaches tunes mostly from the Scottish and Cape Breton repertoire. Most tunes are very old traditional melodies and compositions of Scotland fiddlers such as James Scott Skinner and Niel Gow. Other tunes are more contemporary compositions by Cape Breton fiddlers such as Brenda Stubbert, Jerry Holland as well as her own compositions. Kendra also studied Classical violin with Bob Murray, Classical piano with Sr. Rodriquez Steele and Highland dancing with Janice MacQuarrie, all from Antigonish.

Listen	Dwayne Cote Dwayne Cote was born on November 20, 1969 and grew up in Grande Greve, Richmond County in Nova Scotia. His mother Gladys Stone Cote, who continues to reside in Grand Greve, was a renowned dancer, instructor and performer in the Maritimes in the '70's and mid- eighties. His father is the late Gordon Cote, a celebrated Celtic fiddler who in recent years performed with Bobby Brown and The Cape Breton Symphony. Dwayne has been performing since the age of four, entertaining audiences with his guitar and violin skills. His first professional debut was at the age of twelve, as a guest soloist with The Cape Breton Fiddlers Association at the Rebecca Cohn in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. At the age of fourteen, he performed with a musical group of young individuals, " The New Generation." This group of twelve focused on Celtic music and other members of the group included, Natalie Mac Master and Lucy Mac Neil of the Barra Mac Neil's. This group played before the Pope in 1985 to critical acclaim. During the late Eighties and early Nineties, he performed on television and radio with such celebrated performers as John Allan Cameron, Graham Townsend, Jerry Holland and Dave MacIsaac, to name just a few. His international musical performances included guest appearances at the university of Cork in Ireland, The Juhmarah Resort in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and many cities in the United States. He includes as his major influences Angus Chishom and Winston Scotty Fitzgerald. Both would be proud of the way he brings their music to life and you feel like they are in the room with you when you hear him play accompanied by Maybelle Chisholm Doyle, Angus Chisholm's niece. Dwayne Cote is deemed to be one of the most unique violinists and fiddlers in Atlantic Canada. He uses a distinct classical tone, that he has developed through Professional exposure and his own initiative through self-education. In short his musical tones are inimitable and seldom forgotten.

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info@ceilidhtrail.com