Music Staff
Mike Dunn, fiddle. (Charlottesville, VA)
MIKE DUNN (Charlottesville, VA). A classically trained violinist and violist, Mike was an A.J. Fletcher music scholar at Duke University, where he studied with George Taylor. He has also studied traditional fiddle styles with Freyda Epstein and John Turner.
Mike has played fiddle for Scottish, English and waltz events in the Charlottesville area and beyond for several years. He has also performed at the Charlottesville Fall Dance Festival, Monticello, First Night Virginia, and the Jefferson Thanksgiving Ball. In addition to playing for dances, Mike plays with Pete Vigour and Dan Sebring in the Sugar Hollow Trio, an innovative band that fuses classical, jazz, and traditional styles.
Liz Donaldson, piano and accordion.
LIZ DONALDSON (Bethesda, MD) plays piano and accordion and has been playing for dancing for many years. She is known for her innovative back-up style incorporating exciting rhythms, textures, and harmony lines in her music. In addition to playing for Scottish, English and American contra dances, Liz teaches all these styles, and dances, too!
She is a member of Terpsichore, Waverley Station, and The New Hip Trio. Her Scottish Country Dance recordings include: Caledonian Muse, Terpsichore, Scottish Dance Music, Waverley Station: First Stop! Memories of Scottish Weekend ('98) and More Memories of Scottish Weekend ('02), as well as her most recent CD English Echoes: English Country Dance Favorites. Liz has two books of Scottish tune medleys and Rain in the Desert, a collection of her own compositions.
Liz has taught and played at numerous dance weekends and music workshops including Scottish Weekend (MD/PA/WV), Pinewoods (MA), and Asilomar (CA). Her travels have taken her to Great Britain, Canada, France and Japan. She has performed with Terpsichore at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage.
For more information see Liz's website at lizdonaldson.com.
Dan Emery, piper.
DAN EMERY (Fort Washington, PA). Dan has been the designated piper at Scottish Weekend since the first session at Buffalo Gap in 1989, and has been the piper at Pinewoods many times. As well as the highland pipes, Dan plays the small pipes. In addition he enjoys playing the flute, fiddle and cittern (like a big mandolin!) just for fun.
When not piping, Dan is a fine Scottish country dancer and is an architect in real life.
Ralph Gordon, cello and bass.
RALPH GORDON (Charlestown, WV) is a classically trained bassist and cellist educated at West Virginia University and the Manhattan School of Music. He played for many years with innovative folk band Trapezoid, and his skills span a wide range of musical styles from chamber music to big band swing. The Charleston Post Courier remarked, "His playing is more sophisticated and technically accomplished than the next ten string players of any sort and he uses his instruments to subtly ground, stabilize, and inspire the rest of the ensemble as they pursue their experimentations."
Ralph is in great demand in the Washington, DC area as a freelance artist and a session musician. He can be heard on more than sixty recordings, including Scottish, English country, contradance, hoedown, folk, bluegrass, klezmer, blues, swing, jazz combos, and big band styles. Ralph has played for over ten years with Terpsichore, and has worked extensively on revitalizing Scottish folk cello style.
Anne Hooper, fiddle
ANNE HOOPER (Quincy, MA) played for nine years with the Camerata Academica of Salzburg and the Sinfonieorchester Graunke of Munich, also summers in the orchestra of the Festival dei due Mondi, in Spoleto, Italy. She free-lances in Boston and is a member of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston and the Boston Philharmonic.
Winner of the 1993 and 1998 U.S. Scottish Fiddle Championships, Anne has performed and been music director for numerous dance events of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. She has played with the dance band Tullochgorum for many years, both in the U.S. and in Scotland. Anne is a faculty member of the Rivers School Conservatory in Weston and the New School of Music in Cambridge.
David Knight, fiddle.
DAVID KNIGHT (Washington, DC) has been instigating dance up and down the East Coast and beyond since 1991, primarily in the Scottish, American, English, and Irish dance traditions. He also veers regularly into composition, performance, and recording. He has been featured on three recordings - Waverley Station: First Stop!, More Memories of Scottish
Weekend, and most recently Ellen Gozion: Awake, Awake. His most recent tunes are collected in The Art Of..., his second collection. He plays most frequently with Thistle House, Waverley Station, and the Evil Twins. Visit David's website at music.davidknight.us.
Ryan McKasson, fiddle
RYAN MCKASSON (Tacoma, WA) started playing classical violin at the age of 4 and then at the age of 13 started learning American Old-time style through the teaching of Carol-Ann Wheeler. It was around this time that he joined the Seattle Scottish Fiddle Club under the leadership of Calum MacKinnon and started to learn the musical traditions of his family heritage. In 1995 he won National Scottish Junior Fiddle Champion, and went on a year later to be the youngest fiddler to win the National Scottish Fiddle Open Championship. In 2004 he teamed up with his sister, Cali Mckasson, wife, Brooke McKasson, and brother-in-law, Matthew Jerrell to form The McKassons. They recorded two albums together, Tall Tales and Tripping Maggie.
More recently Ryan has taught fiddle at the Southern Hemisphere International School of Scottish Fiddle in New Zealand (April 2010), and at the Boston Harbor Scottish Fiddling School (August 2010). He is also playing with Ensemble Galilei in Seeing America, a new show due out Fall 2010. It features Neil Conan from NPR's "Talk of the Nation" and is in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the premiere will be held October 16, 2010.
Melissa Running, piano
MELISSA RUNNING (Silver Spring, MD) started playing piano for dancing in 1999, when she was recruited to play for the Swarthmore College folk dance class. She's been playing for English and Scottish country dancing ever since, with some occasional forays into contra and the recent acquisition of the nyckelharpa, a Swedish folk instrument. She dances all of the styles she plays for and more. In her other life, she is a librarian and writer for the Math Forum @ Drexel, an online K-12 math education center.
Nora Smith, fiddle
NORA SMITH (Baltimore, MD) began dancing and playing fiddle while at Haverford College.
Always up for fun, she enjoys Scottish, contra, Irish, English Country, ceilidh, and ritual dance. You can often hear her playing with The Contraptions http://www.thecontraptions.com/ with Chloe Maher and Bill Quern, Glenfiddle http://home.comcast.net/~glenfiddle/site/ with Josh Burdick, Jane Roberts, and Melissa Running, or Rumpus http://www.sarahgowan.com/rumpus.htm with Bill Quern, Sarah Gowan, and Ross Harriss.
When not dancing or playing fiddle, Nora retrieves, manages, and synthesizes biomedical information. She is currently training as an Informationist at Johns Hopkins, a position which neatly combines her previous experience in biology research, library science, and informatics.
Dave Wiesler, piano and guitar.
DAVE WIESLER (Newark, DE). Dave is pleased to return to Scottish Weekend for the thirteenth consecutive year. Dave is a skilled pianist and avid Scottish Country dancer and enjoys the chance to participate in both at Scottish Weekend. In addition to his Scottish Dance music, he plays regularly for contra dance, English Country Dance, couple dancing, concerts,
and has substantial studio experience.
He has been on staff at Pinewoods, Augusta, Ashokan, Buffalo Gap, and Sierra Swing, Timber Ridge, and Boston Harbor, and has performed at the Kennedy Center and at the Smithsonian. His music has taken him to Hawaii, Canada, England, Scotland and the Galapagos Islands. Check out his book of original melodies, DaveTunes, and his CDs, including Cracks and Shadows and two Scottish dance recordings Many Happy Returns with Hanneke Cassel, and Heather Hills with Mara Shea. You can also find out more about Dave on his website at
davewiesler.com.
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