WIND GAP - BLUEGRASS ACADEMY - Long Journey Home

This is a great time for kids and for their parents. If your child would like to participate, it is best to sign up ahead of arrival with the instrument they wish to play. That way, they will have enough instruments at the festival so that each child can have one to use.

The academy is in sponsored in June by Harry Grant and the Wind Gap Bluegrass Festival and in August by AFBA association and Festival. Here are the links to each of them:




http://www.windgapbluegrass.com/




http://www.afbawindgap.org/AFBA_Childrens_Committee.html

Instructor for the Bluegrass Academy: Mark Panfil and his brother Chris.

Born and raised in Lackawanna, NY (a steel mill town, south of Buffalo), Mark began playing harmonica at age eight. He played songs on his Marine Band that he'd heard on local radio by ear, the way his dad taught him to. He began playing five string banjo at 15 and soon after that formed a local bluegrass group with his brother, Chris called, the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad. When high school finished, he decided to make music his career by pursuing a degree in Music Education with piano as his primary instrument. After graduationg with his BA in Music, he went to work for Young Audiences of Western New York doing school concerts. In college, he began playing chromatic harmonica and added sight-reading music to his harmonica skills.

His first Dobro was bought in the early 80's and he soon joined Creek Bend as their Dobro player. He still plays with them and they have two CD's available on the Copper Creek record label from Roanoke, VA.

A major crossroads in his musical life took place in the 1991, While attending the Augusta Workshops in Elkins, WV new roads opened up as a student and later assistant instructor for Jerry Douglas. Around the same time, Howard Levy (the jazz harmonica giant) was also teaching at Augusta and through contact with him and his students, Mark began bending harmonica notes up in addtion to down in the Levy style. Since then, Mark has been on the teaching staff for bluegrass Dobro to this day and has taught scores of students from all over the world. In 2001, he recorded an instructional video tape for theMurphy Method that has been used all over the world to teach countless resonator guitar players to play their first songs.

Through the Augusta Workshops and later the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, he has had the opportunity to learn from and perform with many of the top names in Bluegrass today.
Jerry Douglas, Sally Van Meter, Jim Heffernan, Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum, Dudley Connell, Mac Wiseman, Tony Trishka, Jim Hurst and Missy Raines, and Bryan Sutton to name a few.

He has recorded with numerous local performers and prestigious choirs on harmonica, resonator guitar and banjo including the Grammy nominated,Western New York Children's Chorus.

Mark teaches music in Hamburg, NY at Pinehurst Elementary School and is a co-director of the Frontier Fiddlers club.
He is a member of the International Bluegrass Music Association and serves as a member of the "Bluegrass in our Schools" committee.

Mark and his ever-youthful wife, Cheryl are the proud parents of Scott and Katie Panfil who are both musicians with their own unique resumes and Music Education degrees.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• bluegrass
• education
• children
• banjo
• mandolin
• fiddle
• spoons
• bass
• washboard

[Illusionskywrighter]

the guy holding the violin at the beginning is my uncle and the guy holding the guitar who is wearing a red hat is my dad :-)

[Onehurtinunit]

One of my favorite songs. Goodjob kids!

[LuvIzAhl]

What a wonderful idea, to have the young people get involved in this music in this way. (Watch some of the parents' reactions.)