FESTIVAL TEACHERS and CLASSES
Elian Carbone
Elian Carbone is a songwriter and dancer who moves between Havana, Cuba, and Bellingham, WA. Elian comes from a Syrian, Mexican, and Italian family, a colorful combination that fuels his passion for community, narrative, movement, song, and travel. As a voracious reader and music theory enthusiast, he strives to find simple, economical, and engaging ways to marry lyrics and composition, relying on intuition, practical theory, and his friends and family as his guides. Currently, he works for two non-profits: The Bellingham Food Bank and The Puget Sound Guitar Workshop. His educational background includes undergraduate, graduate, and technical studies in education, counseling psychology, and massage therapy.
Marie Eaton
Marie Eaton is curious about how lyrics and melody work together, and the ways this partnership helps us to tell stories that open the heart. She’s been exploring this collaboration for decades and is excited to spend time with you trying to figure out how this happens. She taught songwriting for many years at Fairhaven College, Western Washington University, as well as at PSGW, the Northwest Women's Music Celebration, the Bellingham Music Festival, and the Northwest Writers' Weekend. Over years of teaching songwriting she has developed tools and jumpstart exercises to get the creative juices flowing. Marie is a published poet as well and brings the tools and craft of this form of creative writing to songwriting.
Geof Morgan
Geof Morgan was raised in New England and began playing guitar at fourteen. He spent nine years in Nashville as a successful commercial country-western songwriter and recording artist before moving to Bellingham in 1982. He found a second career as a community organizer in 1989 but has never stopped writing and performing. He has taught songwriting and guitar privately and at music camps and retreats for over forty years. He is excited to be working with Karee to help build a community for songwriters (a “wonder”) in Whatcom County.
Kristina Olsen
Kristina Olsen, Venice CA, USA & Vancouver, Canada. A superb multi-instrumentalist as well as an award-winning songwriter with a big bluesy voice, Kristina has audiences around the world coming back for more. Her mix of powerful songs ranging from sassy bottleneck blues to lilting ballads to swing jazz to raunch and roll (as well as her hilarious storytelling) makes for a diverse and satisfying musical experience, on stage and on disc. In 2016 she released her 15th recording, Sweet Stillness with Canadian jazz guitarist Bill Coon. Four of her albums were on Philo/Rounder Records (Boston MA) Her songs have been recorded by Eric Bibb, Fairport Convention, Mary Coughlan, Maddy Prior and Mollie O’Brien among others. She has been a session player for Michelle Shocked, Rikki Lee Jones and Mary Coughlan. Olsen was born in San Francisco, California and also lived in Australia for 15 years before immigrating to Canada. She holds a Bachelor’s of Music from Berklee College of Music in guitar and interdisciplinary studies.
Karee Wardrop
Co-Founder and Coordinator of A Wonder of Songwriters Festival, Karee also co-founded (2008) and coordinates the Northwest Writers' Weekend. She has taught songwriting, creative writing, and visual art at Northwest Women's Music Celebration and visual art at Moab Folk camp. When faced with a conundrum or a creative problem to solve she says, "Let's just try...we'll learn something!"
Chef Roger Fickensher
Chef Roger Fickenscher grew up in Pennsylvania, raised his children in Massachusetts, and finally settled and rooted in the Puget Sound Lowlands. Always interested in word-smithing, Roger initially headed for a career teaching English but the adrenaline rush of the hot food line
caught his passion instead. More than five decades later, Chef Roger strums a little guitar and writes the occasional song but still finds true creative expression in the kitchen and bakeshop. His focus these days is on flavorful, nutritious meals that satisfy the senses and the soul.
Janet Peterson
Janet—40+ year member of Motherlode, folk cellist and song collector and interpreter—also runs camps: Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, California Coast Music Camp, Moab Folk Camp, Northwest Women's Music Celebration, and Northwest Writers' Weekend. She's taking a fun turn for this event to sous chef for Chef Roger!
Keep scrolling for classes!
CLASSES
RECOLORING Elian Carbone
We'll explore how a repeated chorus or refrain can maintain the same lyrics while taking on new meaning and emotional weight as the song's story develops through the verses. Learn to craft powerful narratives that transform your listener's understanding of a song's central message.
REHARMONIZATION Elian Carbone
Explore harmonic concepts such as functional harmony, chord substitution, chord extensions and alterations, chromaticism, voice leading, pedal tones, and harmonic rhythm to create new soundscapes that reshape the character and meaning of your existing melodies.
SONGWRITING JUMPSTART! Marie Eaton
In this session, we will explore the tools and craft of songwriting through a series of fun (and maybe a little risky) exercises that will lead toward songs. We'll discuss techniques, strategies and blocks, the roles and interrelationships of melody, rhythm, lyric and song forms. Previous songwriting experience is not necessary, but participants should come with a willingness to take some risks.
SONGWRITING FROM THE INSIDE OUT! Marie Eaton
To hone your songwriting skills, figuring out how others make a song work is a great way to get new ideas or inspiration. In this class, we'll use great songs written by other people (or maybe by you) to explore the moves songwriters use to capture your attention in a number of areas common to most songs, melody, lyric, structure, and groove. I’ll bring a few to start the conversation, but participants are also invited to bring a song.
OUR STORYTELLING VOICE Geof Morgan
We all carry stories - moments, loves, seasons, losses, and triumphs that made and make us who we are. We connect to shared experiences through our stories. In this class, we will use a few prompts to spark us and identify some of our core stories and then explore how to tell them as best we can, as only we can.
BRING IT HOME: THE ART OF REWRITING Geof Morgan
You have a pretty great start, but how do you know when it’s done, when it is the polished gem it yearns to be? In this class, we’ll incorporate metaphor, scene, imagery, melody, and the senses to brighten the language and highlight the core of the song. We’ll talk about the craft of keeping the great, expanding it, and how to emphasize where the heartbeat really lives.
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USING ARCHETYPES FOR SONGWRITING Kristina Olsen
This class is for established songwriters who want to kick their songwriting into high gear by playing with archetypes. When is an archetype a stereotype and when is an archetype a way to convey much information in a small amount of space? Come and find out!
ARRANGING FOR SONGWRITERS Kristina Olsen
Many songwriters have lovely words and melodies that are deadened by repetitive humdrum arrangements. In this class we’ll look at ways to make your songs stand out and sparkle. Oriented mainly for guitarists, but all instruments are welcome.
SONG WORKSHOP Geof, Marie, Elian, and Kristina
Songs selected from participants' submissions will be workshopped in this session. Songs will be selected based on the variety they present (genre, melodic or harmonic themes, lyric forms or choices, etc,) so we can cover as much ground as possible for everyone's benefit. Being present for, and listening to a song being workshopped, even when it is not your own song, is a rich learning opportunity. Please read the submission information on the registration page.
Event Coordinators
Coordinators Geof and Karee have been writing in the same songwriting group since 2018. We've learned a lot...about songwriting, about how a group can support a writer, about friendship woven from song. And we still have so many questions! We want to bring songwriters together to learn from each other, to give and gain support, and to honor and explore this amazing art form.
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We send a giant thank you Devan Wardrop-Saxton for extensive technical help and guidance!