FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Pola Galie
(609) 698-7231
pola@musicatbarnegatbay.org
Local musical group announces 3 “Lifetime Achievement
. . .so far” Award Recipient
Waretown, NJ, June 1, 2009 - Rich Carty,
Music Director of the Music By the Bay traditional music
workshop weekend, announced today that the 2009
“Lifetime Achievement . . .so far” Award will
be presented to none other than Lorraine Hammond at the
concert Friday, November 6, 2009. At the announcement, Rich
said, “Our committee wanted to honor Lorraine for her
dedication and sharing of traditional music and the
Appalachian dulcimer in particular. ”
Lorraine Lee
Hammond, a lifelong New Englander, has played fretted
dulcimer for over thirty years, performing mountain ballads
and jazz standards with equal skill. "Quite simply acoustic
music at it's finest," ...Dirty Linen
Review. Influenced by
traditional musicians from the rural community in the
Connecticut Berkshires where she was raised, she brings the
sensibility of a tradition bearer to her music.
Lorraine is
well known as a folk singer, songwriter, an accomplished
player and teacher of the Celtic harp, 5-string banjo and
Appalachian dulcimer and, most recently, the mandolin. Her
numerous credits include her Shanachie release with fiddler
Gerry Milnes, "Hell Up Coal Holler,” and, with her
husband Bennett, “Jingalo Gypsy,” released on
the couple’s Snowy Egret label.
Hammond has authored two books, The Magic
Dulcimer, and
Barley
Break, Elizabethan Music for
Dulcimer, both
published by Yellow Moon Press in Somerville,
Massachusetts. She is the founder and director of the
Spring Dulcimer Festival at the Cambridge Center for Adult
Education in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
where she has been a faculty member teaching folk music
courses since 1972. The dulcimer festival recently
celebrated its 29th
consecutive
year. Lorraine is also a founder and director of the WUMB
Summer Acoustic Music Week. The program will enter its
14th
season this
summer in Center Harbor, New Hampshire. Lorraine has been
teaching music courses at the John C. Campbell Folk School
in Brasstown, North Carolina, since 1992, and is also a
faculty member of the Mountain Collegium of Early Music at
Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. During the
academic year she teaches Music and Literacy classes in her
hometown of Brookline, serving several pre-schools.
In February of
this year Lorraine was awarded her Master’s degree
for her study of folklore, ethnomusicology and the politics
of culture at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. This
coming fall she will join the Humanities Department at
Lasell College, in nearby Newton, as an adjunct faculty
member.
She tours
extensively, performing both as a soloist and with her
husband, guitarist Bennett Hammond. The couple married on
Thanksgiving Day, 1991.
Lorraine Hammond is the third person to receive honors from
the Music By the Bay Committee. David E. Field of
Collingswood and Jim Albertson were named in 2007 and 2008,
respectively.
Music by the Bay has become an annual event and where else
should it be held but in the education center where Gladys
Eayre of the Pine Coners lived and worked as the caretaker
for many years – The Lighthouse Center for Natural
Resource Education was formerly The Lighthouse Vacation
Center for the Blind.
This year, not only will the festival be honoring Lorraine
Hammond at the concert where she and her very talented
husband, Bennett will perform but also performances by Rick
Thum, hammered dulcimist and the Jennifer Mylod Band (of
Toms River) and will be enjoyed. The weekend will run from
November 6-8, 2009.
Saturday will include music and craft workshops as well as
nature walks and much much more. Jams and activities all
weekend including a faculty concert Saturday night and Hymn
Sing on Sunday morning.
For additional information on how to participate in the
workshops or simply attend a wonderful concert where the
music is truly “by the bay”, please call (609)
698-7231 or visit us online at
http://www.MusicatBarnegatBay.org
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