Sunday, November 23 there will be a contra dance at the “Stone Church” on Main St in Brattleboro. Dances will be called by Quena Crain, with live music from Everest Witman, Peter Siegel and Audrey Knuth. Witman, 16, is the youngest of this trio, and is a thoughtful, intelligent and clearly-spoken young man with the ability to laugh at himself. He and his band, Nova, appeared earlier this year at the Brattleboro Contra Dance to loud cheering and stomping from the crowd of dancers.
Witman is this year’s recipient of the Johnny Trombly Memorial Scholarship. The fund was established to support and encourage young musicians interested in playing instruments used for traditional New England dance music.
Witman has had a long-time interest in music. “I’ve been interested in playing the guitar since I was a small child, but I didn’t start playing until I was 11. My mother became involved in the trad scene, and so that’s where I started playing. Pretty quickly, a mentor of mine, Roger Kahle converted me to DADGAD, and that’s what I’ve been playing ever since. I’m primarily a DADGAD guitar player, but recently I just acquired a tenor guitar (tuned GDAD) which I’ve been diligently playing. I mess around on a bunch of other instruments like piano and electric bass, but I don’t really consider myself to be a multi-instrumentalist.”
Witman currently studies guitar and musicianship under two local teachers and has plans to expand his study of contra dance guitar with a variety of different teachers. Witman says getting the scholarship felt great. “It’s an award that I applied for several years in the past, and finally my persistence paid off. I’m going to use the award to take individual lessons with other great guitar players that I have yet to spend time working with. The idea is to take myself a little out of my comfort zone and be exposed to new ideas.”
Earlier this week, Witman played a gig in Amherst with his band, Nova. “Right now,” he said, “I’m part of three bands: Nova, Dragonfly, and Jokers Wild. Nova is the newest of the bunch – we started back in March – but it’s definitely the one that’s been picking up a lot of steam. We have plans to tour extensively with the renowned caller Will Mentor this summer, and we’ve been offered some pretty high-profile gigs. We’ve been hired as performers for dance weekends with bands like Elixir, Crowfoot, and others.”
Witman has been home schooled up until this year when he started working toward his associate’s degree. “I think that homeschooling has given me more room to do things like travel for gigs. This has exposed me to a lot of opportunities that I otherwise would not have gotten.” Another influence on his music is math. “I would say that my acumen for mathematics has heavily influenced the way I think about music. When I am thinking about approaches I could use to back a piece of music, my mind is usually taking a very quantitative approach. This is probably why I’m a bit of a theory nerd.”
When asked about where he has gotten inspiration, Witman said, “I would say that I’ve been almost singularly inspired by my mentor and long-time teacher’s former band Nightingale which split up in 2011. They are my main source of musical inspiration, and my playing style heavily echoes that of Keith’s (Murphy). Right now, in my own band Nova, a lot of my playing is being shaped by working so much with Kathleen (Fownes) and Guillaume (Sparrow-Pepin), my band mates. A lot of the way that Guillaume thinks about chords, or Kathleen builds energy, has rubbed off on me a lot in our attempt to work as cohesively as possible. Now I take the style I’ve developed working with them and put it other places.”
In addition to playing music, Witman is “an incredibly avid contra dancer. I think that a lot of the appeal of playing music for me is the way that I can influence others. Watching my music change emotions on the dance floor can be a powerful experience for me.”
As to the upcoming dance in Brattleboro, Witman is “definitely excited. I know both Peter and Audrey personally, but have not yet had the pleasure of playing with them. Audrey is the fiddler from a one of my favorite contra dance bands, The Free Raisins, so I’ve been a fan of her playing for a while. The same goes for Peter.”
The dance will take place Sunday, November 23 from 7 to 10pm at The Stone Church on Main St in Brattleboro. A short beginner lesson starts at 6:45. Please bring clean, soft-soled, non-street shoes for dancing. All ages and experience levels are welcome. General admission is $10. The dance is fragrance-free.
For More information contact the Stone Church.
