Success!

June 28^th Success!

Here is a picture (used with permission of Stuart Hill) of Ron and Janice (L to R) performing with Michael Graham Allen at Potomac Flute Festival in Feb 07. When a photo of the RCCAC event arrives I'll post that as well.

We were thrilled to host Ron Warren and vocalist Janice Torres as part of the First Annual Timber Flute Festival in Elkins. This event was for wooden flutes - this year of Irish and Baroque (18 & 19^th century European type) flutes and Native American Flute was happy to help enrich the week. Randolph County Community Arts Center hosted the week long event and it was very well attended.

On Thursday about 50 folks brought lunch and crowded into RCCAC’s Great Hall to hear Ron & Janice perform and then present a history of the flute and how it works, demonstrate scales and duets, and even teach a mini lesson to 16 never ever flute players. I was happy to see so many flute circle folks in attendance, I think all of us in the same room for Ron’s concert made Thursday our biggest flute circle meeting ever (chuckle). We met new circle members from Elkins and Buckhannon and even had NAF folks from Clay County come out for the event. I felt that our instrument was well received by Irish and classical wooden flute players and this added another dimension to a well received and attended first year event in Elkins. Congratulations to Dr. Dobbs and the RCCAC for hosting such a wonderful event - well received by the players I spoke with on Thursday.

That Friday we hosted a dinner for Ron and Janice that saw a dozen or so folks for grilling and a campfire along with a great deal of flute talk. Ron is very accommodating of questions and graciously shares his heritage and culture with folks. We sat up too late and had a really great time. In the process we did hatch some ideas for contributing to next years event and we will be discussing some of these over the summer to see where it leads us for a larger NAF presence in 2008 as one of several flutes represented.

We taught the basic flute lesson Thursday on Am flutes made of PVC. The formula for these flutes was designed by Bob Willasch of Maryland Flute Circle. Paul and I set up several jigs for consistency and cranked out a bakers dozen of these flutes in two afternoons. Some late night filing to finish up and Voila! a class worth of flutes that when all blown together sounded pretty much the same. I have to say that it was great practice for my newbie flute making skills and was truly rewarding to hear; not a cacophony of noise but 13 A’s a few cents apart (as pleasing as 13 folks learning together can be…) when Ron taught the class.

It was great to also learn that there are several more flute players in the region that play more than one type of flute. I think this will continue to provide new perspectives for our growing group. We meet again this month, the second Saturday (July 12) at RCCAC from 1-3pm and hope to see everyone there.