Bluegrass Week brings together some of the most incredible musicians on the bluegrass circuit today with students of all levels to share a week of learning, playing and deep listening. From the classes to the jams to the staff concert featuring electrifying collaborations from world-class musicians, there’s something for every bluegrass enthusiast at Augusta.
Check out everything that is happening at Augusta during your stay! If you’re taking Bluegrass classes, you can mix and match with the Vocal Week classes to create your perfect schedule. Craft classes take place all day, so you can’t mix and match there, but those classes can be a great way for family and friends to join you at camp and have a perfect week alongside you.
Bluegrass Week Schedule
July 14-19, 2024
Sunday
3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.: Check-in
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.: Dinner
7:00 p.m.: Theme Week Orientations
8:00 p.m.: Group Orientation
9:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.: Welcome Bluegrass & Vocal jams
Monday-Thursday
8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.: Breakfast
9:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.: Period 1
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Period 2
12:00 p.m. -1:15 p.m.: Lunch
1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.: Cultural Session
2:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.: Period 3
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.: Period 4
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.: Dinner
6:00 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.: Mini-Classes (optional)
7:30 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.: Concerts (Tuesday & Thursday) and other evening events!
Friday
8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.: Breakfast
9:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. : Period 1
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Period 2
12:00 p.m. -1:15 p.m.: Lunch
1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.: Period 3
2:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.: Student Showcases and Wrap-Up Events
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.: Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.: Farewell Dance & Jams
All of Augusta’s Summer Theme Weeks are organized in a period model. This means that you can create your daily schedule to study the exact combination of instruments, styles and techniques that is right for you. Most instructors are teaching during 2 of the 4 periods each day, plus participating in jams and dances. You will choose a class during Period 1 and take that same class all week. The same thing goes for Periods 2 and 3 — same class all week. Period 4 has jams and other special events that will change a bit each day. You will end up with three different classes that you are taking all week. Those can all be in one theme week (e.g. Bluegrass) or you can take a class from a different theme week each period (e.g. a Bluegrass class in Period 1, a Vocal class in Period 2, and back to a Bluegrass class in Period 3). We have worked hard to make sure there is a path for every student each day, no matter your instrument or level.
A Message to Bluegrass Week Students from Augusta’s Bluegrass Week Advisor Ira Gitlin:
We’re looking forward to another great Bluegrass Week, and hope you’ll be part of it! If you’ve been to Bluegrass Week in the past, you’ll notice some tweaks to the program this year.
What’s different?
—Instead of committing to one instructor’s class for the entire day, we’re dividing the day into periods. This will allow for more flexibility. If you want to stay with one instructor for the full day, as in years past, you can do that. But if you want, for example, to take an Advanced Guitar class and a Beginning Fiddle class every day, or one Bluegrass Week class and one Vocal Week class, you can do that, too. See the note above from Augusta about periods!
—We will be offering two Mandolin classes this year: Beginning and Intermediate/Advanced.
What’s the same?
—A staff of wonderful instructors, chosen because they’re superlative musicians, excellent teachers, and just great folks to spend a week with. Some are old friends we’re glad to have back; some are joining us for the first time. We’re especially proud to welcome two former Bluegrass Week students to our teaching staff this year!
—A week of total immersion! Classes, concerts, dances, jamming, and everywhere you look, the “green rolling hills of West Virginia.” Getting to hang with folks who share your passion for bluegrass music, and making lifelong friends. Finding the inspiration to take your music to the next level, at Bluegrass Week and throughout the year!
Bluegrass Week Staff 2024
Ira Gitlin – Advisor
Advisor & Jam leader
Ira Gitlin, a native of New York City, is widely known and respected in Washington-Baltimore bluegrass, folk, and roots-music circles as a versatile multi-instrumentalist, teacher, and writer. A former National Bluegrass Banjo Champion and multiple Wammie award winner, Ira has backed up such nationally known performers as Bill Harrell, the Johnson Mountain Boys, Laurie Lewis, Peter Rowan, and Peter “P.D.Q. Bach” Schickele, and has played on dozens of recording projects. He can be seen performing frequently with a wide range of D.C.-area artists, including the bluegrass band Big Howdy.
In addition to Augusta Bluegrass Week, where he has been a coordinator since 2013, and an instructor and staff musician for nine years before that, Ira has taught at the Maryland Banjo Academy, the Swannanoa Gathering, Pete Wernick’s Bluegrass Camp, and the Midwest Banjo Camp, along with numerous festival workshops and private lessons. He has written about bluegrass music in the pages of Bluegrass Unlimited, Banjo NewsLetter, and Bluegrass Now, and has contributed liner notes to several commercial recordings. Ira has lectured on the history of bluegrass for the Smithsonian Associates, and he presented papers at the 2005 and 2017 Bluegrass Music Symposiums.
In 1993 Ira was a one-day winner on the television game show Jeopardy.
Greg Blake
Intermediate Guitar
Greg was born and raised in West Virginia where he developed his love for bluegrass & traditional country music and received his first guitar at the age of seven. Greg’s adult life has been spent mostly in the Midwest – Missouri, Kansas and Colorado. He spent nearly fifteen years with the Bluegrass Missourians and while with them, he earned SPBGMA’s Guitar Player of the Year Award 5 consecutive years (9 nominations) and a Kansas State Flatpicking championship. He was also nominated twice for SPBGMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year Award. After more than 20 years in Kansas, he lived in Colorado for 10 years where he helped form the band Jeff Scroggins and Colorado and started traveling more extensively throughout the US and worldwide. With the release of his first solo album in 2015, Greg is now being recognized as one of the industry’s premier vocalists and guitarists. Just recently (2022) he was nominated by the IBMA for Male Vocalist of the Year. Greg’s yearly schedule is full of instructional camp appointments to teach guitar and vocals.
Becky Buller
Advanced Fiddle
Becky Buller is a multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter from St. James, Minn., who has traversed the globe over performing bluegrass music to underwrite her insatiable songwriting habit. Becky has co-written songs for three Grammy award-winning albums by The Infamous Stringdusters, The Travelin’ McCourys, and Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. Becky is the recipient of 10 IBMA awards, including the 2016 Fiddler and Female Vocalist. She is the first woman in the history of the awards to receive the Fiddler nod; she is also the first person ever to win in both vocal and instrumental categories. In 2023, she was inducted into the Minnesota Music Hall Of Fame. Becky tours extensively with her band and also as a duo with Ned Luberecki. Becky also teaches bluegrass fiddle, singing, and songwriting in person and online from her music studio in her adopted hometown of Manchester, Tenn., where she lives with her husband, Jeff, and daughter, Romy.
Greg Cahill
Intermediate Banjo
Greg Cahill has been playing bluegrass banjo since the early 1970s. He formed The Special Consensus in the Chicago area and the band became a full-time touring and recording entity in 1975. Greg has appeared on all twenty-one of The Special Consensus recordings that have garnered seven International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) awards and two GRAMMY nominations. He has also released three solo recordings, one European bluegrass music recording, four banjo instructional videos/DVDs and three banjo tablature and instructional books. He has appeared on numerous recordings by other artists and on countless national television and radios commercials (jingles). Greg conducts workshops and master classes at bluegrass camps and festivals worldwide, has taught bluegrass banjo at The Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago for 50 years and he became the first adjunct professor teaching banjo as a member of the Columbia College Strings Department in Chicago in 2011. Greg was a regular contributor of banjo tablature and interviews with notable banjo players for Banjo Newsletter.
Mike Compton
Intermediate/Advanced mandolin
Befriended and mentored by Bill Monroe, the acknowledged Father of Bluegrass Music, Mike Compton is one of today’s foremost interpreters of Monroe’s genre-creating mandolin style. Mandolin students from around the world make the pilgrimage to his annual Monroe Mandolin Camp in Nashville, TN, where Compton and a select handful of other experts teach everything from the basics of bluegrass mandolin to the most intimate details of Monroe’s endlessly inspiring mandolin style.
Mike Compton’s decades of touring and recording with musical luminaries ranging from rockstars Sting, Gregg Allman and Elvis Costello, to straight-from-the-still acoustic legends like John Hartford, Doc Watson, Peter Rowan, Ralph Stanley, and David Grisman, have established Compton as a true master of the modern American mandolin and a premier interpreter of roots and Americana musical styles.
Compton’s mastery of mandolin is at once effortless and exceptional. A compelling entertainer either alone or with a group, his skills as a singer, arranger, instrumentalist, composer and accompanist also make him in-demand as a band member and ensemble player at festivals, clubs and concert halls, recording sessions, music workshops and as a private instructor. With more than 140 albums in his discography, including work with Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Patty Loveless, Compton has helped keep mandolin a cool, relevant sound as the modern musical styles ebb and evolve to reach an ever broadening audience.
Grant Flick
Intermediate Fiddle
Grant Flick is a performer, recording artist, composer, and educator currently based in Ann Arbor, MI. He plays many instruments including violin, mandolin, tenor guitar, nyckelharpa, tenor banjo, and viola. Primarily, his interests are new acoustic music, jazz manouche, jazz/swing, bluegrass, and American old-
time. His current original music projects, Westbound Situation, Warren & Flick, and Hannah O’Brien and Grant Flick, explore the fusion of chamber music with the influences listed above. In these groups, he writes pieces influenced from many styles that feature the collective spontaneity and imagination of the fellow improvisatory musicians with whom he collaborates. Examples of his writing can be heard on “Accord” (Westbound Situation), “Tomorrow Worries About Itself” (Grant Flick), “Windward” (Hannah O’Brien and Grant Flick), and “Waxwing” (Warren & Flick). Grant has received numerous music awards including the 2013 Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin. He was a finalist in the 2015 Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Competition in Winfield, Kansas, as well as the 2017 Freshgrass Fiddle Competition in North Adams, Massachusetts. Additionally, several competitive collegiate awards and grants for improvisation, acoustic chamber music inventiveness, and music education have been presented to his original groups
in the past few years. Grant has been selected as a two-time participant (2015 and 2016) of the Acoustic Music Seminar held at the Savannah Music Festival in Savannah, Georgia. He has taught workshops at numerous camps throughout America including Augusta Bluegrass Week, Charm City Django Fest, the
Tenor Guitar Gathering, and River of the West Mandolin Camp. Grant also tours and performs regularly and has played at many music festivals including Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, ROMP Fest, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and the Savannah Music Festival. Frank Vignola, Mike Marshall, Julian Lage, and Darol Anger are just some of the notable musicians with whom Grant has appeared on stage. Grant recently completed a Master’s degree at University of Michigan in Improvisation.
Matt Flinner
Beginning/Intermediate mandolin
Matt Flinner has made a career out of playing acoustic music in new ways. Whether it’s with his own Matt Flinner Trio or with Phillips, Grier and Flinner, the Frank Vignola Quartet, Darrell Scott, Steve Martin, the Ying Quartet, Tim O’Brien, Leftover Salmon or the Modern Mandolin Quartet, Flinner’s style and compositional ability have established him as one of the most accomplished and musically diverse acoustic string musicians in the world.
Starting out as a banjo prodigy who was playing bluegrass festivals before he entered his teens, Flinner later took up the mandolin, won the National Banjo Competition in Winfield, KS in 1990, and won the mandolin award there the following year. He moved to Nashville in 1999, and his musical horizons quickly broadened. His two solo albums for Compass Records, “The View from Here” and “Latitude” both featured bluegrass stalwarts Todd Phillips, David Grier, Stuart Duncan, Jerry Douglas and Darol Anger, and received high critical acclaim. He was also featured on Steve Martin’s CD “The Crow,” which won the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album.
Rebecca Frazier
Beginning Guitar
Rebecca Frazier gained notoriety as the first woman on the cover of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, and has since become known as “a genuine triple threat as singer, songwriter, and flatpicking guitarist.” (Nashville Scene) In 2017, Paste Magazine included Frazier in their piece titled “7 Women Smashing the Bluegrass Glass Ceiling.” Frazier was the first woman to be nominated for Guitar Player of the Year by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America (SPBGMA) in 2018, and was nominated again in 2019.
Frazier is widely known for her work with award-winning Colorado-base bluegrass outfit, Hit & Run. The only band to win all three Rockygrass, Telluride, and SPBGMA Festival Band competitions, this successful touring act has graced stages of prestigious festivals and venues in 42 states and Canada, and eventually migrated to Nashville in 2007 with two studio albums under their belts.
After experiencing the loss of a child and a subsequent break from touring, Rebecca focused solely on her writing for 2 years. The result is her transparent Compass Records release, When We Fall. The album places Frazier right in line behind the bluegrass women that preceded her—the driving track “Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow” is reminiscent of early recordings of Alison Krauss, while instrumentals such as “Virginia Coastline” and “Clifftop” give a tip of the hat to guitar legends Tony Rice and the late jazz guitarist Emily Remler, about whom Frazier wrote her Honors Senior Thesis at the University of Michigan. When We Fall reached #3 on the Roots Music Report National Bluegrass Chart and garnered praise as “Best Bluegrass Album of 2013” by Bluegrass Situation. Nashville journalist Craig Havighurst dubbed Rebecca Frazier “East Nashville real deal bluegrass.”
Tyler Grant
Advanced Guitar
National Flatpicking Champion Tyler Grant is an internationally recognized guitarist, songwriter, vocalist and leader of the band Grant Farm® (currently on hiatus). His latest album, Tryin’ To Have A Good Time (Americana Vibes, 2022), is a tribute to his late father. Tyler has appeared at most major US festivals and performed thousands of concerts and guitar workshops worldwide. He was an original member of the Emmitt-Nershi Band and was a sideman for Abigail Washburn, April Verch and Adrienne Young. He has produced five solo albums and six releases by Grant Farm on his own Grant Central Records. His 2018 collaborative release, Kanawha County Flatpicking, reached #14 on the US Folk DJ chart. The latest Grant Farm album, Broke In Two, released June 2019, is an ambitious concept album which furthers the stories of characters and archetypes introduced on the previous release, Kiss The Ground. Tyler was also host of the Meeting on the Mountain® LIVE Broadcast, a radio-style musical program based in Fort Collins, CO, from 2015-2018.
The “Great Pause” of 2020 brought Tyler back to the outdoors, where he became involved as an entertainer and raft guide on RiverWonderGrass Expeditions through Adrift Adventures Dinosaur on the Green and Yampa Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument. Outdoor leadership has blended well with his musical endeavors, and River Life has permeated his music.
In addition to the National Flatpicking Championship at Winfield in 2008 and Merlefest Doc Watson Guitar Championship in 2009, Tyler has also won the Rockygrass, Wayne Henderson, and the New England Flatpicking Championships. He has been featured in Acoustic Guitar, Flatpicking Guitar, Fretboard Journal and Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine. Tyler has been an instructor at CalArts, Kaufman Kamp, Rockygrass Academy, Sore Fingers UK, Augusta Heritage Center Bluegrass Week, Grand Targhee Bluegrass Camp, Julian Family Fiddle Camp, Nimblefingers, and St. Louis Flatpick among others. Tyler’s Flatpicking Academy on ArtistWorks.com is his primary instructional site, and he is also a regular contributor to online guitar instruction sites Jamplay.com & Truefire.com.
When he is indoors, Tyler hosts a Monday Night Playalong Bluegrass Jam for all levels on his Youtube channel.
Murphy Henry
Beginning Banjo
Murphy Henry, co-founder (with her husband Red) of The Murphy Method, teaches banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bass, and ukulele. She’s been teaching almost as long as she has been playing.
Murphy grew up singing in church and taking piano lessons. She learned how to play guitar during the folk boom, and soon taught her sisters to play, so that she’d have someone to play with. In college (University of Georgia) she played at coffeehouses with just her guitar until, on the recommendation of Florida folksinger Gamble Rogers, she went to her first bluegrass festival and decided that she wanted to play bluegrass.
The Murphy Method has been based in Winchester, Va., for the past 37 years, with Red and Murphy still running the business with some major help in all things from Casey and loads of technical help from Christopher. Red records and edits all our lessons, duplicates our DVDs, ships orders, and talks to customers on the phone. Yes! You can still reach us by phone! Murphy develops new lessons to record, gives in-person lessons in Winchester, and now also offers Zoom or Skype lessons.
In 2013 Murphy published her first book Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass with the University of Illinois Press. In 2015 she received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) for her “pioneering accomplishments” in the bluegrass world.
Murphy has taught at banjo camps all over the country including Augusta Heritage Bluegrass Week (Elkins, WV), Midwest Banjo Camp (Michigan), American Banjo Camp (near Seattle), Steve Kaufman Camp (Maryville, Tenn.), Maryland Banjo Academy, Tennessee Banjo Institute, California Bluegrass Association Music Camp (Grass Valley) and Banjo Camp North (Massachusetts).
Murphy is currently working on a biography of Maybelle Carter, which she hopes to publish in 2027, which will be the 100th anniversary of the Carter Family’s first recording session in Bristol, Virginia!
Sarah Larsen
Beginning Fiddle
Sarah Larsen is a multi-faceted teacher & musician. Originally from Wisconsin, she grew up playing classical music with her pianist mother and sister. Her formative years were spent at Lawrence University, the Walnut Hill School, New England Conservatory’s Preparatory Division, and the University of Hartford’s Hartt School on full scholarship. College introduced her to alternative styles including a run with string quartet Vox4 that led to Carnegie Hall; Americana rock string trio, Little Ugly; and premiering Gary Tomasetti’s Violin Concerto written specifically for her.
Sarah’s time in Philadelphia saw her playing with the Hot Club of Philadelphia, multiple bluegrass bands as well as frequent calls as string arranger for local songwriters. She has recorded at every major studio in the greater Philadelphia area, working with Ben Arnold, Susan Werner, Hop Along and Dr. Dog, among others. Sarah is an award-winning contest fiddler having taken Grand Champion of the Lyons Fiddle Festival and the Delaware State Championship.
Refusing to be defined by labels or genres, Sarah is equally at home in a jazz jam, a bluegrass pick, or an orchestral setting. She has spent over 30 years learning to communicate with musicians of all levels and styles, and has dedicated her life to helping others achieve satisfaction and joy through music.
Ned Luberecki
Advanced Banjo
Banjoist for the Becky Buller Band and host of More Banjo Sunday and Derailed on SiriusXM Satellite Radio’s Bluegrass Junction, Ned Luberecki was named Banjo Player of the Year for 2018 and Broadcaster of the Year for 2023 by the International Bluegrass Music Association. Ned is the author of the Complete Banjo Method series for Alfred Music and has numerous lesson videos available at TrueFire.com. Living in Nashville, TN, he is an in-demand performer and session musician having appeared on stage and recordings with Becky Buller, Chris Jones, Jim Lauderdale, Ray Stevens, Nedski & Mojo and many others. In addition to teaching private banjo lessons via Skype, FaceTime and Zoom to students around the globe, Ned is a popular instructor at music camps and workshops across the US, Canada and Europe including Camp Bluegrass, RockyGrass Academy, Kaufman Acoustic Kamp, Sore Fingers (UK) and Bluegrass Camp Germany.
John Seebach
Staff musician and Ensembles
John Seebach was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky. He lives in the Washington, DC, area. An accomplished tenor and lead vocalist, John also performs on mandolin and guitar with the Rickie Simpkins Quartet, Only Lonesome, and Big Chimney.
Jacob Warren
Bass
Curiosity, commitment, and collaboration define Jacob Warren’s exceptional career as a multi-style double bassist, composer, and educator. As a classical double bassist, Jacob was awarded first prize in the 2023 International Society of Bassists Soloist Competition, where his program displayed the diversity of his musicality, including an original transcription of the Debussy Cello Sonata, an original composition, an arrangement of a Canadian fiddle tune, and more.
In addition to solo performing, Jacob is also an avid chamber musician. He is currently a member of three nationally touring ensembles, two of which he co-founded and co-manages. Warren & Flick is a duo project with multi-instrumentalist Grant Flick. Together, they have released two albums (Kestrel, 2019 and Waxwing, 2022) of original material that spans genres from classical to American and Swedish fiddle, jazz and more. The quartet Westbound Situation released Pilot in 2019 and Accord in 2023. The quartet explores thematic development through their arrangements of original compositions drawing sonic inspiration from string ensembles and electronic music styles. Jacob also tours with the Grammy-nominated string quintet Kittel & Co. Through his diverse collaborations, he has been able to perform at a wide range of venues, from local listening rooms, house concerts, and jazz clubs, to performing arts centers, Royal Albert Hall, the Kennedy Center, and more.
As an educator, Jacob has been invited to give guest masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, Indiana University, Wabass, and Mimi Zweig’s Jacobs String Academy, among others. He has maintained a flourishing private studio since 2015, and also connects with other curious bassists through educational videos and online workshops exploring techniques that he has translated to the instrument. He has also been selected to present at multiple International Society of Bassists conventions, including presentations on his own music and techniques.
Jacob began double bass studies at the age of 10 under the tutelage of Robert Rohwer. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in 2017 along with the Earl V. Moore Award in Music. During his undergraduate degree he studied with Dr. Diana Gannett. He also holds both a Masters of Music in Improvisation and a Masters of Music in Chamber Music from the University of Michigan.
In addition to writing music for his ensembles, Jacob composes original works for solo double bass. Videos of his compositions, teaching, and arrangements have been featured by The Strad, The Violin Channel, and others. His compositions are available for purchase online through his website. Jacob currently lives in Ann Arbor, MI.
Dede Wyland
Vocals
A native of Wisconsin, singer and guitarist Dede honed her bluegrass skills from 1975 through 1979 playing throughout the Midwest and Central states with the Milwaukee-based band ’Grass, Food & Lodging. She then moved to New York, where she became a founding member of Tony Trischka and Skyline, one of the leading progressive bluegrass groups of the 1980s. She toured internationally with Skyline through the ’80s. During those years her clear, powerful voice made her a perennial nominee in the annual awards poll of the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBGMA). As one of the few women at the time who was performing in a high-profile touring bluegrass band, Dede was a role model and an artistic influence for a generation of female bluegrass musicians who would shape the music in the
years to come.