WCU Stories      June 14, 2022

A lecture and demonstration by folk singer and storyteller Lee Knight will be presented Tuesday, June 28, at 7:30 p.m. in the recital hall of Western Carolina University’s Coulter Building.

The program will focus on social interest songs by Appalachian women from the coal fields and cotton mills.

Knight, a renowned performer of Appalachian music, grew up in the Adirondacks and has spent his life collecting folk music from his childhood home, as well as the Southern Appalachians, the Mississippi Delta, and coastal Georgia and South Carolina. His travels have also led him to explore music in Scotland, Canada, Central and South America, and parts of Asia. He has recorded with Yo-Yo Ma, Wu Man, and the Kronos Quartet.  

The program is a collaboration between Mountain Collegium and WCU’s Mountain Heritage Center. Free and open to the public, donations to the sponsoring John Trexler Folk Lecture Series will be accepted.

The faculty of the Mountain Collegium Music Workshop will perform medieval, renaissance, baroque and contemporary music on early and folk instruments Thursday, June 30, beginning at 8 p.m. in the Coulter Building. Again, admission is free, but donations to the Gerald R. Moore Mountain Collegium Scholarship will be accepted.

The Mountain Collegium Music Workshop is an annual event at WCU and typically offers classes on instruments used in 15th through 18th century Europe, which helps performers achieve a sound and effect appropriate for these styles of music. Workshop participants come from around the country to study with a faculty that includes recording artists, orchestra conductors, musicologists and professors.

Musicians performing include Gail Ann Schroeder, Holly Maurer, Chrissy Spencer, and Brent Wissick (violas da gamba); Valerie Austin, Phil Hollar, Jody Miller, Patricia Petersen, Gwyn Roberts, Anne Timberlake, and Sarah Shodja (recorders and other renaissance winds); Erik Schmalz (sackbut and recorders); Kelly Brzozowski (harp); Rosalind Buda (bagpipes and whistle); Barbara Weiss (harpsichord and recorder); and Will Peebles (dulcian).

For more information, contact Jody Miller, director of Mountain Collegium, at 404-314-1891 and director@mountaincollegium.org.