Village Harmony founder and director LARRY GORDON has been making community music in Vermont since the early 1970s. He founded Village Harmony in 1989, and his patient and relaxed, yet demanding, teaching style and his collaborative approach have shaped the welcoming atmosphere of the Village Harmony community since the beginning. Though his first love was medieval and renaissance music, he is a vital figure in New England shape-note singing, and he is the music editor of the popular Northern Harmony shape-note songbook. Larry is an inspired organizer with an unerring eye for good repertoire and a unique knack of pulling together interesting combinations of singers and letting them shine.  Larry has led Onion River Chorus in Montpelier since the late 1970s, and is well known across the US and internationally for leading stunning periodic ad hoc incarnations of Northern Harmony, a semi-professional tour group made up largely of veteran Village Harmony singers.  Recently he has been devoting increasing time to teaching Balkan folk dancing.

Save

BONGANI MAGATYANA is a professional singer /music director /composer /theatrical producer living in Gugulethu Township in Cape Town, South Africa. He was born in Cape Town in a township called Old Crossroads; his father was a self-taught choir conductor in the Old Apostolic Church. Bongani’s father taught him how to read and write tonic solfa music notation at a very young age, and young Bongani dreamt of becoming a church choir conductor, too. Today he conducts a 120-voice OAC choir himself, as well as a community male choir.  His folk-inspired choral compositions—popular pieces for South Africa’s major choral competitions—are sung by choirs around South Africa and internationally. Currently Bongani teaches at the Zolani Centre in Langa Township, leads an educational musical theatre company, and continues to compose music in a variety of genres, bringing vibrant performances to communities across Cape Town. Bongani has been teaching with Village Harmony in South Africa and the US since 2012.  He is a wonderful dancer as well as singer, and he is particularly adept at communicating the elusive rhythms of South African songs.

Save

Save

Save

NATHANIEL DAMON started singing in Village Harmony while living in Vermont as a teenager. He immediately felt at home in this community created by honest and heart felt singing. After moving to Germany in 2004 he founded the world music choir, Weltmusik-Chor Hamburg, a community choir of 50 voices that performs many genres Nathaniel was introduced to in Village Harmony including Georgian and shape-note music, songs from the Balkans and traditional choral music from South Africa. Nathaniel studied music education in Hamburg and teaches at a Waldorf school for children with special needs in Hamburg. He often performs as an improvising solo vocalist and multi-instrumentalist (banjo, guitar, fiddle, trombone, percussion) at contact improvisation festivals that he attends with his partner and two children. In this camp session he will lead a number of songs from around the world including Georgia, Germany and USA, a choral improvisation and at least one of his own arrangements.

Save