Coaches: Tina Chancey (bowed strings), John Tyson (recorders), Bruce Hutton (banjo, guitar, mandolin, lap dulcimer), Nick Blanton (hammered dulcimer, galoubet)
Throw away your music stands! After a week you’ll play, ornament, and improvise upon medieval, Renaissance, Appalachian, Irish and Sephardic tunes without reading music. You’ll hear modes, meters, and melodic patterns; add accompaniments and counter melodies. Working with four different coaches helps you find the approach that suits you best in a warm and supportive learning environment. Informal playing, Irish/Old Time session, faculty and student concerts.

PLACE: Walker Chapel, 4102 N Glebe Rd, Arlington, VA, 22207 (5 minutes from Chain Bridge).

FOR INFORMATION: Tina Chancey (703) 525-7550.

 Want a new chair? Need to fix a broken one? Today you’d open the Sunday papers or the phone book. In Shakespeare’s England you’d pop your head outside and listen for the street cry, “Chairs to mend, old chairs to mend.” In the Renaissance everything could be found on the street, from strawberries to chimney sweeps. Before mega chains like K-Mart and Sam’s Club each small tradesman had his or her own distinctive little ditty—the ancestors of our modern advertising jingles. These musical slogans fascinated composers, who sprinkled them like salt throughout their serious instrumental fantasias to form a delicious musical hybrid called “The Cries of London.”

            HESPERUS celebrates all manner of musical commerce in this unusual program of madrigals, lute songs, rounds and catches, viol consorts, featuring Rosa Lamoreaux, Philip Cave, Brian Chu, Marjorie Bunday, Grant Herreid,  Barbara Hollinshead, and the HESPERUS consort of viols.