Workshops and residencies
“Donna, thank you so much for the wonderful workshop. I really appreciate your ability to break the style down to the elements. An excellent and inspiring workshop. I love your approach to the tunes and your analysis. Thank you again for the hard work and passion for this music.” Jim Garber, Poughkeepsie Québecois fiddle jam
I’ll be riding the bliss wave you guys left behind for weeks. You just made an awesome weekend for a whole load of people! Much love to you three awesome superstars!!! Jennifer Stafford, Tri-City-Trad director, Albany NY
“I have taken hundreds of workshops, but yours was the best! Vocalizing the tune (I’m a singer) then doing it slowly in parts, all by ear, was perfect. You are a great teacher and I hope we can do another of these in the Fall – maybe one EVERY Spring and Fall!” Jo-Ellen Bosson
2009 Old Songs Great Groove Band rehearses for a main stage performance.
Donna’s Fiddling Demystified workshops and residencies are an ideal hands-on introduction to fiddling for string players of all ages.
Says string pioneer Darol Anger in his Foreword to her Fiddling Demystified for Strings Vol. I:
“Donna gets it all right, as far as I’m concerned. I suspect that the general level of fiddle knowledge and playing will take a major uptick soon after this Fiddling Demystified is published, just as other great music books such as Earl Scruggs’ original banjo book, O’Neill‘s great Irish fiddling reference, and the infamous jazz Real Book influenced the course of musicians’ lives and work.”
A Massachusetts Creative Teaching Partner, Donna is certified by the Massachusetts Cultural Council to work in classrooms, where she collaborates with school string teachers to introduce fiddling into the string curriculum. In 2008, the Council also named Donna a Massachusetts Artists’ Fellow in the Folk Arts. Donna teaches alone as well as teaming up with guitarist Max Cohen and their Groovemama band.
Donna founded and directs the Great Groove Band, a participatory pickup band for young musicians at the Old Songs and Philadelphia FolkFestivals. She also directs summer camps at Old Songs in Voorheesville NY.
- Press release
- Fiddling Demystified sample lesson - Swallowtail Jig – violin
- School strings sample program – tested in middle and high schools
Fiddling Demystified - the book and the workshops – teaches Donna Hébert’s method for teaching and playing in multiple fiddle styles. For sight-readers, she fills in the style points for each tune and also plays it for you slow and fast both on the CD and at workshops, breaking down right hand bowing licks and left hand ornaments into manageable lessons for teachers and students. Donna teaches rhythm and style motifs for each tune, setting each one authentically in its native dialect.
Max Cohen jams with 2008 Fiddling Demystified campers
Workshop descriptions
- Fiddling Demystified for String Players – A rhythm-based right-left hand system of learning that cracks the codes of fiddle styles so you can figure out what the old fiddlers are doing. Overview of Northern, Southern, Celtic styles. Participants learn tunes and bowings by ear for a jig, a reel and a waltz. 4-5-hour workshop. Solo, with Groovemama and cellist Renata Bratt. First day of Fiddling Demystified residency for string programs.
- Harmony Demystified - learn the chord triads and alterations, progressions for major, minor and modal tunes, the universal key, how to read and follow a chord chart. 5-hour workshop, solo, with Groovemama or cellist Renata Bratt. Second day of Fiddling Demystified residency for string programs.
- Improvisation & Grooveswapping - learn to drum new rhythms over a melody as we swap one meter or rhythm for another over the same tune. Students learn to follow a chord chart, finding complete progressions using two-note combinations. As we build on these combinations, it simplifies our process of improvisation. 3-4 hour workshop, solo, with Groovemama or Renata Bratt. Third day of Fiddling Demystified residency for string programs.
- Fiddling with a French Accent – Learn the driven-bow syncopation that characterizes French-Canadian and Franco-American fiddling, along with the crooked tunes (l’airs tordus), cross/open tunings, podorhythmie or seated foot-tapping, turlutter (lilting the tune with the voice) and the joyful repertoire and rhythms of Donna Hébert’s Franco fiddling mentors, Louis Beaudoin and Gerry Robichaud. 3-5 hour solo workshops and teaching. Some events feature Donna Hébert with her Franco fiddling friend, colleague and tunesmith Daniel Boucher. Recognized as a master Franco-American fiddler by New England arts councils, Donna includes her apprentices in events whenever possible.
2006 Old Songs Great Groove Band (Roger Mock photo)
SCHOOL STRINGS SAMPLE PROGRAM
- up to 75 people
- Swallowtail Jig (Irish 6/8 Jig, E Dorian) violin, viola, cello, chord chart, easy and fully-styled Irish settings. Mp3 samples: slow / fast
- Sail Away Ladies(Appalachian Old-Time song and tune, G major) violin, viola, cello, chord chart, lyrics, easy & fully-styled settings
- November Wind (Original waltz, © Jane Rothfield) 2 parts each for violin, viola, cello, chord chart
- East Tennessee Blues (Appalachian Old-Time tune, C major) violin, viola, cello, chord chart – easy and fully-styled settings
Repertoire: For schools, curriculum tune packets contain sheet music for violin, viola or bass clefs with a lesson and play-along CD. Students or schools order curriculum packets at least 6 weeks in advance and teachers and students listen to the music as tunes are learned first by ear. We have 50 tunes available for violin, viola, cello and bass and can work on two tunes per hour of workshop time to be able to play for an evening jam session onstage. Most school workshops are 3 hours long. Residencies are for a 3 hour class for 2-5 days, with a public concert the last evening.
When we arrive, we review the tunes and teach rhythmic backup lines on the spot, helping the group arrange the tunes for an evening jam onstage with us. Participants are taught how to read and follow chord charts and how to find harmonies and rhythms within the tune. Sheet music is allowed for a panic peek, but we encourage students to look at and listen to each other and us. Rhythm cues come from the recordings and from playing with us. We don’t conduct; they JAM with us and we help them find the groove! Students are given the opportunity to play both lead and backup lines and to improvise.
Jam session & performance: A conductor keeps an orchestra’s rhythm in order, but who does it in a jam session? We cover the basics of sharing leads and harmonies, teaching and using non-verbal cues and signals. We teach how to find and stay with a group rhythm or groove and cover some common-sense do’s and don’ts.
The one hour evening concert program ends with the students onstage jamming with us – fiddle heaven! Said Jane Ezbicki, 2006 Mass. ASTA chapter president and Fine Arts Director & Orchestra Conductor, Wayland MA Schools,
“Donna and her Groovemama colleagues changed the way my students and I think about fiddling. They actually helped us to feel confident enough to turn our music over, close our eyes and play independently. The techniques can be a real help to your ears for harmony and melody, your sense of rhythm and your bowing technique. There is nothing in classical music that approaches these skills in this way. I even started playing Mozart the following day in a different style – much lighter and more at ease!”
Donna Hébert:
With more than 60 tunes arranged for strings from Irish, Scottish, New England, Canadian, Québécois, Appalachian Old-Time, Cajun and original sources, Donna Hébert presents many layers of learning for orchestra players or fiddlers. Listening first before looking at sheet music, students learn more than melodies, mining the tune for chords and harmonies, bent notes and ornaments with the left hand and dynamic shadings with the bow that bring the tune alive.
Students learn to read chord charts and apply specific bowings to create new rhythms on each repetition of the tune. Violists and cellists learn to voice and bow fiddle melodies on their instrument and to find the backup and alternate lines and harmonies along with the violins. We choose some tunes voiced on the A-D-G strings so they are native to the viola and cello.
Adjunct fiddle instructor at Amherst and Smith Colleges, Donna has been recognized by MA Governor Deval Patrick, New England arts councils, NPR, Smithsonian-Folkways Recordings and the independent recording industry for her fiddling and cultural contributions. Teaching workshops for universities, conferences, dance camps and ASTA chapters, she also directs Fiddling Demystified Camp, a five-day August fiddling intensive, and The Great Groove Band of school-age folk musicians every year at the Old Songs and Philadelphia Folk Festivals.
A Franco-American fiddling master, she has worked under state arts council sponsorship with apprentices from Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. She also worked with the Vermont Folklife Center and fiddler George Wilson, preserving, documenting and presenting the music of Louis Beaudoin and his family with new generations of Beaudoins.
Says Dr. Alan Jabbour, Director (ret.) of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress,
“Donna is an outstanding performer and a world-class teacher of the art of fiddle. I consider her at the forefront of the developing field of fiddle pedagogy.”
Max Cohen:
In addition to Groovemama and the Beaudoin Legacy, Max also tours and records with folk music legend Priscilla Herdman. He teaches lead and rhythm guitar in standard and open tunings, flatpick and fingerstyle. He covers basics for the novice and will challenge the experienced player with advanced tunings and chord progressions, theory and arranging, accompaniment styles and rhythm patterns.
