Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)  has scheduled an academic event on February 6 focused on bluegrass music. The one day seminar is entitled, Fire On The Mountain – A Bluegrass Symposium, and will feature a keynote address and panel discussions including a number of prominent bluegrass musicians and educators. Things kick off at 10:30 a.m. with an opening keynote from Berklee’s Matt Glaser, and will run throughout the day, capped by an early evening concert.

Presenters and panelists include legendary musicians Sam Bush and Bobby Hicks, noted banjoist, producer and record company exec Alison Brown (a 1984 Harvard grad), luthier Lynn Dudenbostel, historian Neil Rosenberg, and Jack Tottle, founding director of the bluegrass program at ETSU. Topics for the panels include a look at the history and traditions of bluegrass, the craftsmen and the instruments who make the music, and where the genre is moving in contemporary music.

A pair of current Harvard students will also be featured. Forrest O’Connor, a senior music major who is doing his undergraduate thesis on luthiery, proposed this topic to the administration, and has been involved at every level of planning and implementation. He is the son of fiddle/violin master Mark O’Connor, and founder of the Harvard College American Music Association. Clint Miller is set to graduate in 2011 with a Philosophy degree, and is a blues and bluegrass guitarist. Both will perform in the evening concert.

The Symposium will be hosted by the Harvard Committee on Degrees in Folklore & Mythology, along with the Office for the Arts (OFA), the Office of the Provost, the Undergraduate Council, and the Harvard College American Music Association (HCAMA) There is no charge to attend, nor reservation required. Full details can be found online here.

1. Master Classes at Joe Val! Boston Bluegrass Union has announced that once again, master classes will be offered the day that the festival begins, Friday, Feb. 12th.

They have Jimmy Heffernan on dobro and Greg Cahill on banjo confirmed….and more on the way!!T hey have also announced a banjo fast track class for beginners that day, taught by Rich Stillman.

Keep an eye on the Master Class Page on the BBU website for more details, coming soon.

2. The Passim Folk Music & Cultural Center is offering a “Beginning Bluegrass Mandolin with Jiro Kokubu” course.

The Passim Folk Music & Cultural Center
Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. January 14-February 18, 2010
$132 nonmembers / $108 members

Jiro Kokubu, of the David Wax Museum, will teach a bluegrass mandolin class for beginners – no experience necessary. Jiro will start with the very basics, and you’ll learn how to hold a mandolin, how to hold a flatpick, and how to tune your instrument. As you learn to pick and strum, you’ll learn some traditional fiddle tunes and variations for mandolin. Through these songs, Jiro will teach you the chords and scales. At the end of each class, he will give you exercises and tabs to practice each day.

Jiro, a phenomenal multi-instrumentalist from Osaka, Japan, found a home in the Japanese bluegrass community, and on his band’s first tour of America, he met his hero Bill Monroe. He later returned to the United States to study at Berklee College of Music, graduating in 2008. In The David Wax Museum, Jiro’s breath-taking dobro solos and spectacular mandolin ability make him a thrill to take in.

3. Boston Bluegrass Union’s Bluegrass Academy will offer Tony Watt introductory courses for mandolin and guitar (rhythm and lead)

Both courses will be taught through the Boston Bluegrass Union’s Bluegrass Academy, and complete details can be found below, and on the BBU website (http://www.bbu.org/tony_watt_winter_classes.html) and on Tony’s website (http://www.theoriginaltonywatt.com).

Image via CrunchBase

Well, I recently tried to upgrade to Wordpress 2.8 and ran into a few snags. I thought I’d share my experience in case it can help someone else!

Upon the manual upload of 2.8 files (follow the instructions here) the site looked great, but I couldn’t login to the back-end.

It turns out that WP 2.8 uses some authentication code/hooks that can conflict with your existing legacy plug-ins. If you can’t login after your 2.8 install, rename your plug-ins folder (which essentially disables them). Then you should be able to login to the back-end.

After some evaluation, I decided that WP 2.8 is not for me, so I reinstalledWP 2.7. Easy right? NO! Guess what? I still couldn’t login to the back end!

Here’s what I figured out…

My hosting provider is 1and1, and a while back I had an issue with some plug-ins because the MySQL DB my WordPress site utilizes is version 4.0 (not 5.0). I had to add a line of code to .htaccess in the root folder [ AddType x-mapp-php5 .php] to have Apache run all .php files as if the MySQL DB was 5.0. It worked great.

When I installed 2.8, it replaced the .htaccess file and erased the hack/fix.

I added that magic line of code [ AddType x-mapp-php5 .php] back into the .htacess file and Voila! Everything works perfectly once again as a 2.7 install.

Hope this helps someone else out!  Good luck!

Date:
Thursday April 2nd, 2009
7:00- 9:00 PM

Tickets:
$20 in advance, $25 at the door.
Call for reservations 603 778-9711

Location:

Acoustic Outfitters Music Shop
72 Portsmouth Ave
Stratham Plaza, Route 108
Stratham, NH 03885-2568
(603) 778-9711
aoms@aomusicshop.com

Click here to listen to a recording of Mike and Skip performing together at the Monroe Mandolin Camp in Owensboro, Kentucky in September of 2007.

http://www.andysicard.com/mp3/gorman_compton_16sept06.mp3

Also Skip will be giving a mandolin workshop in Portland, Maine on March 28th from 1-3pm. I don’t have the details on that yet, but the info will be posted soon on Skip’s Web site (http://www.skipgorman.com)

On Sunday, January 11th, Fiddler Tommy Peoples will come to the J.P.O Hanlons’s Irish Pub, Ayer to teach a Traditional Irish Music Workshop. from 2:30pm to 4pm .The workshop is open to all traditional irish melody instruments.Workshop fee $25. Following the workshop, Tommy will join guitarist Flynn Cohen on stage for the weekly Sunday session from 4:30pm to 7:30pm. Its sure to be a great time. Jan 11th also happens to be the weekend of BCMfest and sometimes we have extra guest musicians coming out to join in the fun at JPOs following the fest.

Tommy is teaching a workshop earlier that week ( Jan 7th) at The Groton Session at J.P.O.Hanlon’s . That workshop filled so quickly that I decided to offer an additional workshop on January 11th. Sign up today by email to save your space. When you receive an email confirmation from me that you are on the list, you will then send your check to officially hold that space. This workshop will only take place if we have 15 musicians sign up this week.

Sign up by email TODAY and the deadline for your check will be Tuesday, January 2nd. email Aisling ashling@verizon.net

Visit www.TheGrotonSession.com for more info