18th Century Singing School

Make A Tuneful Noise! Please join us for a weekend of harmony, singing and history. A workshop for absolute beginners and experienced singers alike. Tim Eriksen and Allison Steel will share their contagious love of singing with students as they delve into the Shape-Note style of singing used in The Sacred Harp, a songbook first printed in 1844 and still actively in use today. Participants will learn the basic rudiments and explore the cultural and stylistic traditions of Sacred Harp-style singing, uplifted by a community of singers. Specific workshops will explore local 19th-century tune book “The Easy Instructor,” the work of quirky locals, tune-smithing, hearth-cooked meals and harmony!

  • Friday, July 24, 5 pm - Sunday 26th, 4 pm.

  • Lunch and dinner are included with tuition

  • Limited to 30 students

For more information and to be notified when registration opens, visit: allisonblakesteel.com/news/eastfield

Allison Steel

Allison Steel is a longtime Sacred Harp singer and gravestone carver and maker of new/old things. Obsessed with tune writing, she has had her songs published in The Shenandoah Harmony and in the new edition of The Sacred Harp.  In all her practices, Allison endeavors to pick up where vernacular New England art left off in about 1815 when the railroad came through and kinda wrecked it all.  “What if we just picked up that thread and kept going?” Allison worked for many years as an interpreter of history at Old Sturbridge Village where she shared her knowledge and enthusiasm for the past while milking cows, baking bread, dipping candles, plowing fields, singing songs, and shoveling manure. 

Tim Eriksen

Tim Eriksen is a songwriter who has been covered by Alison Krauss, Bonny “Prince” Billy and Joan Baez, a ballad singer who received the Jean Ritchie Musical Heritage Award from Ritchie herself, a prominent shapenote singer whose work appears in The Sacred Harp and a hardcore punk musician with a degree in South Indian veena. Eriksen's shapenote singing students have included Allison Steel and the cast of the film Cold Mountain. His PhD dissertation in ethnomusicology concerns the revival of 18th century New England choral music by antebellum senior citizens, and his scholarship has been published in journals including Ethnomusicology and The Massachusetts Review. His article about a haunted Yankee viol and its connections to musical revivalism, the creation of the imaginary New England village and the dystopian regionalism of H. P. Lovecraft will appear in the upcoming issue of The Viola da Gamba Society Journal.