In May 2024 I was very please to welcome Ken Kolodner, Mary Lynn Michal and Laurie McCarrier to Pewsey while they were over in the UK to teach at the Nonsuch Dulcimer Week at Halsway Manor. Halsway Manor is the National Centre for Folk Arts in the UK and runs courses and workshops all year around. While they were here they did lots of travelling in England and Wales and Ken met up with Brad and appeared at the Fire in the Mountain festival.
The three of them run the Sandbridge Dulcimer Retreat in Virginia, USA. I have attend several zoom workshop weeks and been on two occasions in person over the past 4 years. I found out about them during the origional Covid lockdown when I had to abandon my trip to the USA and go to Kentucky Music week in 2020. They announced Sandbridge that Fall would be via Zoom only. To be honest, like many of us, I didnt have anything else pressing at the time! But I was soon hooked on the superb teaching and choice of tunes, and the really nice Sandbridge community. I started weekly lesson with Mary Lynn and before long she was selling my hammers for me in the USA.
So, in the previous Fall I had been to Sandbridge and Ken very kindly gave me a lift to the Black Mountain festival in North Carolina. He also lent me a dulcimer for the week and both he and Mary Lynn were great buddies that week and let me “hang” with them.
Anyway, this all lead to me making a 16/15 dulcimer with dampers to lend to Ken while he was doing a the concert with his son Brad Kolodner at the Fire in the Mountain festival in Aberystwyth. It also spurred me on to finally complete a 13/12 Hammered Mbira, based on the one Don MacLane had made him back in 2006. I had been working on for a while but never actually finished as there was always one more thing to try.
A good friend has a fabulous music room and agreed to lend it as a reaheasal space for them. So I set up all my instuments ready for the gang to arrive, here I am checking the tuning!
I was really thrillied when they recorded this for me, showing off two of my dulcimers.
And then to top it all, showing off my dulcimer with dampers and 13/12 Hammered Mbira
The verdict was good, they played “Shaking down the Acorns” on my instuments in their concert at Halsway Manor, Ken played both instruments at Fire in the Mountain and they went down very well. I helped him run a “Meet the Dulcimer and Mbira” session at Fire in the Mountain which went very well and introduced a whole new set of people to the instruments. To top it all Mary Lynn agreed to be my agent for the Mbira in the USA. Quite an endorsement!
If you want more information on my Hammered Mbira’s please go to my new website MbiraHeaven.com.
