Our Teachers

Bio coming…

Bongani Magatyana is a professional singer /music director /composer /theatrical producer living in Khayelitsha 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 and taught hims son how to read and write tonic solfa music notation at a young age. Today Bongani conducts a 120-voice OAC choir himself, as well as a community male choir and a large children's choir. A dancer as well as singer, and he is particularly adept at communicating the elusive rhythms of South African songs.

Currently Bongani teaches at the Zolani Centre in Langa Township, leads an educational musical theatre company and the Khayelitsha Children's Choir, and continues to compose music in a variety of genres, bringing vibrant performances to communities across Cape Town.

Bongani’s folk-inspired choral compositions—popular pieces for South Africa’s major choral competitions—are sung by choirs around South Africa and internationally. Both Yale and Harvard Universities have commissioned Bongani to write choral works for their ensembles.

With a foundation in classical voice, Aurelia has sung traditional music from around the world since her early teens. Originally from Massachusetts, she studied ethnomusicology at UCLA and received her B.A. from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Aurelia began documenting music from eastern Georgia in 2010 and received a Fulbright Award in 2011; she published the culmination of this work, the Tsutisopeli Project website, in 2015.

As a teacher, Aurelia has worked with many ensembles in the USA and throughout Europe. She has performed as a soloist and with Northern Harmony, vocal duo Ash (Æ), and local Occitan ensembles in the hills outside of Nice, France where she has lived for much of the last decade.

Natalie describes herself as a classically trained vocalist-turned-folk music geek, influenced by too many genres to list. She is a classically trained vocalist, instrumentalist, composer, choral director, and performer since childhood with roots in opera and Ukrainian folk and choral music; specializing in traditional vocal styles of Eastern Europe with additional experience in American folk, pop, rock, jazz and musical theater.

A seasoned recording artist, soloist, ensemble vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Natalie is a choral director and vocal teacher with a repertoire spanning 50+ languages and over a dozen distinct vocal styles from around the world.

She is bilingual (Ukrainian & English), some French, and is a creative, adaptable and organized ethnomusicologist.

Some of her performance highlights: Orchestra Hall with Minnesota Orchestra, The Guthrie Theater, Fitzgerald Theater, "A Prairie Home Companion," and others. Her specialties: Traditional Eastern European vocal styling, coaching, composition, with special emphasis on timbres, diction and complex ornamentation.

Igor Dimovski, was born in 1987 in Dracevo, Macedonia and began playing music at 7 years of age. He graduated with a degree in music theory and pedagogy and is now known as one of the most sought after accordionists in Macedonia and beyond.

Igor leads and arranges for his band, Pauza za Rakija, which has 3 Youtube long play videos - two of which have more than 1 million hits from all over the former Yugoslavia and diaspora. They are fully booked, traveling throughout their country and abroad for gigs, concerts and weddings. Igor also has his own recording studio where he produces videos of traditional Macedonian music.

At Village Harmony camp, Igor will present a set of his own arrangements of traditional songs from his band’s repertoire. Igor will organize all of our concerts mostly in the Ohrid area - at monasteries, with other folk ensembles, and with his band. We will spend a day in the village of his grandfather eating traditional food, dancing and singing a concert for the villagers. Our final concert will be a collaboration between his band and Village Harmony.

Nadia Tarnawsky has been studying Eastern European singing techniques for nearly three decades. In 2002 she received a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship which allowed her to travel to Ukraine to collect folk songs and folklore. She has taught Ukrainian village style singing in workshops for the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York city, Village Harmony in Vermont and Oregon, the Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble in San Francisco, and the Black Forest Fancies in New Orleans among others. In 2011 she received a Traditional Arts Fellowship from Artist Trust. She sang under the tutelage of Yevgeny Yefremov with Ensemble Hilka of New York in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster in Ukraine. A recording of this repertoire was recently released on the Smithsonian Folkways label.

Dr. Kathy Bullock is a Workshop Clinician, Performer, Choral Conductor, Arranger and Scholar in the field of African American music. A Professor Emerita of Music from Berea College, she, has recently served as visiting professor and artist in residence at various colleges and universities in the U.S.

Dr. Bullock currently tours throughout the U.S., the U.K and West Africa “sharing the joy, “ of gospel, spirituals, freedom songs, and West African praise songs while completing research on various topics of Black Music and Black vocal styles.

A native of Washington, D.C., she has earned the Ph.D. and M.A. in Music Theory from Washington University, MO, and a B.A. from Brandeis University, MA.

Website: drkathybullock.com

Suzannah Park, a native of Asheville NC, is a performer teacher, activist, organizer and community leader. She comes from a family of three generations of traditional Appalachian, English and Irish singers, storytellers and dancers.

She has been touring and teaching for the past twenty plus years, both in the USA and abroad. She began singing with VH when she was twelve and touring with Northern Harmony at fourteen. One of VH most popular teachers, Suzannah became our acting Board President in 2018 and joined the executive team in 2021.

Founder and director of the Wild Asheville Community Chorus—now under the umbrella of VH—Suzannah was also a founding member of two VH alumni groups, the Starry Mountain Singers and the Starry Mountain Trio. She is also a member of the traditional music faculty and choir director at Warren Wilson College.

As an activist Suzannah wears the program director hat for a local NC non-profit, Community Roots. With a focus on environmental justice and the ‘rights of nature’ movement. She is also a counselor, teacher and organizer with a focus on women and Native liberation within the framework of the international peer-based counseling community, Re-evaluation Counseling. www.suzannahpark.com

• Corsica

• Georgia

• Online Course

Ketevan Mindorashvili was born in Sighnaghi in the eastern province of Kakheti in (the Republic of) Georgia. She was raised in a traditional singing family. Founder and director of the Zedashe Ensemble, Keto showed a gift for singing since childhood and continued to study music technique extensively in university. She devoted herself to preserving traditions on the brink of disappearance, and has become known as a singer and a teacher of Georgian folk music, particularly the fluid ornamentation of eastern folk songs. She has a deep knowledge of ancient church chant, and is a master of the panduri, the three-stringed lute from the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti.

Keto has searched valleys and mountains for ancient polyphony, collecting folk songs and chants, as well as writing her own music within the tradition. Today she hosts students from all over the world in her native Sighnaghi and travels internationally leading tours of Zedashe and teaching workshops. She has appeared on all Zedashe recordings to date, and has participated in numerous tours to the United States, United Kingdom, and throughout Europe. Keto has been teaching VH groups in Georgia (and in Corsica in 2014) since 2003.

Liam Kantor is a vocalist and instrumentalist based in Evanston, IL. From an early age, he was steeped in the world of traditional music, learning fiddle tunes and folk dances from his teachers and family alike. During the pandemic, he spent a year in Marshfield, VT, working with Village Harmony, to organize workshops and perform online concerts with Northern Harmony.

Currently pursuing a degree in ethnomusicology, Liam's musical interests span a wide range of traditional folk styles from around the world with a focus on New England-style and Celtic fiddle music and traditional ballads of those regions.

Liam has a particular passion for finding ways to bring people into community through art and, particularly those who might not think to find connection through art. Thus, drawn to community-based musical traditions, he finds himself most at home singing in choirs, playing in jam sessions, and trading songs around campfires.

Teen Camp I

A native of Montpelier, VT, Sinead O’Mahoney has been singing with Village Harmony and Northern Harmony for over a decade. She has traveled abroad with Village Harmony in Corsica, France, Switzerland, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and has made three trips to Caucasus Georgia, including an intensive Georgian language course. She has been active in Sacred Harp and other shape-note singing throughout New England, and became a co-director of VH’s community choir Boston Harmony in 2018. She co-led the Mettabee Village Harmony choir with Larry Gordon in 2019-20 and helped host many Village Harmony online workshops. She has been praised for her sure command of rhythm and clear and efficient teaching style. Sinead earned her bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Vermont in 2016. She currently lives in Boston, Mass. USA.

Georgia

Zedashe ensemble (ანსამბლი ზედაშე) is a polyphonic vocal choir and dance group from the nation of Georgia. Directed by Ketevan Mindorashvili, Zedashe is one of the few mixed (male and female) choirs in Georgia led by women. The ensemble was founded in Georgia the mid-1990s to preserve the polyphonic folk songs and chants, unique to Georgia, that were largely lost during the Communist era. These chants run through the heart of Georgia’s rich history, through Orthodox Christian liturgical services to the nation’s ancient pagan roots.

Zedashe has released eight full-length albums, toured across Georgia and internationally at various festivals and universities in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Latvia, and United States. In addition to their performances, Zedashe often holds day- to week-long workshops, either connecting with specific local choirs or simply open to those interested in the Georgian culture. Members of Zedashe have been teaching and touring with Village harmony since 2003.

For more information visit their website HERE