Star Island Harmony Leaders
Mary Cay Brass has led harmony singing at the Vermont-based Village Harmony camps for teens an adults for 20 years. She is a specialist in music from the former Yugoslavia where she studied on a Fulbright and has created and led Village Harmony camps in Bosnia and Macedonia. Mary Cay leads three community choirs: The River Singers in Westminster West, Vermont, and Greenfield Harmony in Greenfield Massachusetts; both SATB intergenrational choruses of 80 - 90 singers, and the Upper Valley Community Choir in Norwich, Vermont - all exploring the vocal music cultures of community-based world tradiiotns: the Balkans, the Republic of Georgia, Africa, the British Isles, France and American folk traditions such as shape note, Appalachian and African-American gospel. Mary Cay is a founding member and co-music director of Hallowell, Vermont's first a cappella SATB hospice singing group.
Dr. Kathy Bullock is a professor of music and chair of the music department at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky where she has worked for the past nineteen years. There she teaches music and general studies courses, directs the Black Music Ensemble, and has designed and completed new programs of study abroad for Berea College students, traveling to Zimbabwe, Ghana and the Caribbean. As a scholar, performer and church music director, Dr. Bullock has provided numerous presentations, performances, lectures and workshops throughout the United States, Europe and Africa in the areas of spirituals, gospel music, and music of the African diaspora. Additionally she is co-editor of an upcoming, new anthology of art songs by contemporary African-American composers. Dr. Bullock has earned the Ph.D. and M.A. in Music Theory from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and a B.A. in Music from Brandeis University, MA. Most importantly, Dr. Bullock brings to her programs a rich cultural heritage and tradition. She also brings a love and passion for music of all kinds, a deep appreciation of music's beauty, power and spiritual possibilities, and an infectious excitement in the performing and sharing of it with others.
John Harrison has been singing and playing professionally since he was a boy. He started out as a chorister under Richard Connelly and James Litton. After finishing high school he went to New York where he sang and played in various rock, jazz and rhythm and blues bands for fifteen years. After moving to Vermont in 1992 he became a founding member and, after a year, director of the Montpelier Community Gospel Choir, a non-denominational community choir in Montpelier VT that sings gospel music in the African-American tradition. John has also taught for many years at Village Harmony singing camps for adults and teens and for Turtle Dove camps. He is currently in his ninth year teaching K-12 music at Twinfield Union School in Plainfield, Vermont.