Great folk music can be heard and learned at the 27th Annual Mountain Dulcimer Music Fest on March 6, 7 and 8. Concerts, jams, an open stage, and workshops in mountain dulcimer playing are featured. This event, sponsored by the Dulcimer Association of Albany, takes place at Calvary United Methodist Church, 15 Ridge Place, Latham, New York. Featured performers Nina Zanetti and Heidi and John Cerrigione will perform in concert Saturday evening. Complete information is available at www.DulcimerAssociationofAlbany.com/2015.
Tickets for the three-day festival or for individual concerts are available at the door. Festival admission includes all events: $75, or $35 for full-time students. Registrations and mountain dulcimer rental reservations may be made by contacting Lori Keddell, 518-762-7516, e-mail: lark119@citlink.net.
The festival is one of only a handful of such mountain dulcimer learning opportunities that take place each year in New York and New England. Players ranging from beginning to advanced can choose from a broad menu of workshops taught by eighteen talented and experienced instructors. Events start Friday afternoon with workshops from 3 to 5:15 pm. Doors open for registration at 2 pm. A concert by the instructors Friday at 7 pm provides a quality sampling of many styles of performance, followed by a choice of slow or fast jam sessions.
Saturday registration starts at 8:30 am and classes run all day. New players can rent mountain dulcimers. An open stage for all interested musicians starts at 4 pm.
The Saturday evening concert features Nina Zanetti and Heidi and John Cerrigione. Tickets for this 7:30 pm concert only are $12 and $5 for children 12 and under and are available at the door.
Nina Zanetti, National Mountain Dulcimer Champion of 2008, is especially fond of the “softer side of dulcimer” and shines with Shaker tunes, American folk hymns and Irish harp melodies. This Guilderland resident plays regularly at churches, historic sites, and community events and has taught workshops at dulcimer festivals throughout the country. She has made several recordings and tablature books.
Heidi and John Cerrigione, of Ellington, Connecticut, present the best of traditional music and old time sentimental songs, played on mountain and hammered dulcimer, guitar, autoharp, banjo, and string bass. They blend their voices in songs drawn from many traditional sources, including fiddle and dance music of early America, the British Isles and Switzerland. They have taught week-long classes and festival workshops for the past 15 years at various programs across the country and have many recordings, as a duo, as half of the quartet Doofus, and with Atwater-Donnelly.
Refreshments and pre-ordered lunches will be available. There is also a sales area with recordings, books, and other music-related items and a sales corral of gently used musical instruments of all sorts. Dulcimer builders George Haggerty, Bernd Krause, Jeremy Seeger, and Dwain Wilder will have beautiful hand-crafted dulcimers for sale.