Stewart Hardy

Mixed Instruments with Stewart Hardy – Fully Booked

The workshops typically take between 7 & 10 people for three days of instruction. The cost covers all food, tuition, refreshments and overnight accommodation.The course cost for weekend (Friday Lunchtime through to Sunday evening) includes everything by way of meals and refreshments, so no need to spend another penny on anything once you are here. Vegan and vegetarian diets are catered for, as are lactose and gluten intolerance.

There are on average 6 hours of workshops daily. Dinner is followed each evening by an informal session led by Stewart. These help reinforce the techniques learned during the day, give you a chance to hear and learn new tunes and teach others some of your own favourites.

Your tutor is available to you from breakfast until bed-time for questions and advice.

Fiddle Techniques with Stewart Hardy

Tunes are carefully selected to work as exercises demonstrating particular techniques, whilst at the same time providing a melodic stimulus. Exercises are extracted from the tunes to facilitate applying the technique to other tunes. Many of the tunes are suitable for multi-level workshops, with the teaching of a variety of techniques, requiring greater or lesser technical experience, applied to them. Subject matter includes: bowing technique, left hand technique and general fiddle well-being. In the choice of repertoire emphasis is given to stylistic aspects of the music. A number of considerations are given to the selection of tunes, including their interest to Stewart in his studies, their interest to the general musical community, their demonstration of particular stylistic nuances, and as being representative of a composer’s style.

All sheet music and mp3 files of all the tunes covered are provided. Plus recordings of exercises from the course where these are helpful.

The workshops typically take between 7 & 10 people for three days of instruction. The cost covers all food, tuition, refreshments and overnight accommodation.The course cost for the weekend (Friday Lunchtime through to Sunday evening) includes everything by way of meals and refreshments, so no need to spend another penny on anything once you are here. Vegan and vegetarian diets are catered for, as are lactose and gluten intolerance.

There are on average 6 hours of workshops daily. Dinner is followed each evening by an informal session led by Stewart. These help reinforce the techniques learned during the day, give you a chance to hear and learn new tunes and teach others some of your own favourites.

Your tutor is available to you from breakfast until bed-time for questions and advice.

Frank and I are very pleased to have been asked to come and play at this year’s Rothbury Traditional Music Festival, which is one of my favourite events in the local calendar. We are expecting to perform outside on the green during the day, in the Auction Mart in the evening and possibly popping into the tea time concert in the Church. There will always be time for fish and chips on the village green and for taking a shufty at some of the competitions.

The Historically Informed Summer School is a unique international residential course exploring the common ground & connections between early music and folk & traditional music. The course covers all aspects of early music and folk & traditional music and is suitable for students of all ages and experience from elementary to advanced.

Stewart will be exploring the music of the great Irish composer Turlough O’Carolan whose music is still heard in concert halls as well as played in pub sessions. His compositions embrace ideas from the baroque whilst remaining firmly rooted in Gaelic folk music. These workshops will introduce some of O’Carolan’s finest melodies and explore the effect of applying folk articulation and ornamentation to a form that is free of the constraints of regular folk dance structures. As is the tradition on HISS courses, he’ll be involved in a few collaborations – with Mary Tyers working with small folk ensembles which will use old English maggots as repertoire; with Jake Herringman on tunes constructed over a ground bass; and with Anne-Marie Chistensen-Brown looking at playing for “country dances,” comparing and contrasting material from England and Denmark. Material for other classes will include dance tunes used by Nathaniel Thompson in his 1680 publication, “180 Loyal Songs” and, under the banner of acquiring skills for learning by ear, he will also run a workshop looking at pattern recognition in music. Who could possibly resist? Book your place here.