Workshop details, daily schedules, and daily passes to be announced!

Here’s what a typical day will look like:

• 10 am-12pm: Instrument Specific Classes
• 1-2 pm: FREE Afternoon Concert
• 2-3 pm: Open Jam
• 3 – 4:30 pm: Workshops (3 options)
• 7-9 pm: Evening Concert

All tickets include the option to camp primitively and/or park.

• If you want to camp in an RV, Motorhome, or Vehicle with large camper, please purchase the add-on RV camping option at checkout.
• Snow Fork Event Center will open the evening of Wednesday, June 7th at 7pm to allow accommodations for campers. Campsite will close at 5pm on Sunday, June 11th.
• BYOB is welcomed and encouraged, as long as its not glassware! We also recommend bringing your own food for the weekend, as accommodations are limited.

Scholarships available upon request, please email devin@stuartsoperahouse.org

Register Now!

Music Instructors

Blakely Burger

Beginner Guitar Instructor

Bio coming soon!

Hilarie Burhans

Beginner Banjo Instructor

Hilarie Burhans been playing and teaching my driving clawhammer banjo style for more than 45 years. I’m the co-founder of the nationally-touring Hotpoint Stringband, with whom she has recorded five albums, and has collaborated on too many other musical projects to count. A track from her solo CD was featured on an episode of the acclaimed HBO series Deadwood. Well over 5000 subscribers enjoy her YouTube banjo channel, and her banjo instructional Patreon has more than 500 paid subscribers. In her younger days, I won the Ohio State Banjo Contest nine times, and is very proud to have placed in the contests at the Appalachian Stringband Festival (Clifftop) a number of times (3rd in Banjo, and First Place in both the Traditional Band and NeoTraditional Band contests.) She loves teaching banjo, and especially loves working with beginners and with folks making the transition from learning note-by-note from an instructor or tablature to learning tunes from recordings or “on the fly” at jams.

Tessa Dillon

Beginner Fiddle Instructor

Originally from Saint Albans, West Virginia, Tessa Dillon has been playing fiddle since she was six years old. As a regular blue ribbon recipient in fiddle contests around the region, she’s a 3 time WV State Fiddle champion (Vandalia) and also won the Appalachian Stringband Festival (Clifftop) in 2022. Tessa toured the US and Australia with her former band, Big Possum Stringband, which won first place at Clifftop in 2018 and released a self-titled album in 2019. She now fiddles in her new band, The State Birds, and in The Jesse Milnes Band (electric country). She is Program Coordinator for the Augusta Heritage Center, directs Augusta’s after school old-time program, teaches fiddle for West Virginia University, and has many private students.

John Harrod

Advanced Fiddle Instructor

John Harrod has documented, recorded, and performed traditional music for more than 45 years. Born and raised in Shelby County, Kentucky, he has a B.A. from Centre College (1967) and an M.A. from Oxford University (1969) which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. Recently retired, he taught history and English at Owen County High School and Frankfort High School. In the 1970s and ’80s, he played with a number of bands including the Progress Red Hot String Band, the Bill Livers String Ensemble, and the Gray Eagle Band that re-introduced traditional musicians such as Bill Livers and Lily May Ledford to Kentucky audiences. During this time he also worked for three years as a Kentucky Arts Council folk artist-in-residence in Wolfe, Estill, and Trimble Counties. Along with Mark Wilson and Guthrie Meade, he produced a series of field recordings of Kentucky fiddle and banjo players that is still available on Rounder Records. In 2015 the Field Recorders Collective issued his recordings of Carlton Rawlings and Darley Fulks, two exceptional and heretofore unknown fiddlers who have had a great impact on his life. John’s field recordings are housed at both Berea College and the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music at Morehead. He has taught fiddle and conducted workshops at the Augusta Heritage Center, the American Festival of Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington, the Berea College Celebration of Traditional Music, and the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School. He continues to perform with Kentucky Wild Horse, a band that draws on a wide variety of Kentucky music past and present. In 2004 John received the Folk Heritage Award of the Governor’s Awards in the Arts for his work in traditional music.

Zeke Hutchison

Mandolin Instructor

Zeke grew up with music all around, both his grandfathers played the fiddle and his father and uncle performed nationally as the Hutchison Brothers. Zeke recently recorded with Tim O’Brien on his Short Order Sessions.

Chance McCoy

Advanced Guitar Instructor

Chance McCoy is a Grammy winning artist, music producer and film composer from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He has recorded and performed with a diverse roster of artists including, Willie Nelson, Old Crow Medicine Show, Mumford and Sons, Kesha, The Lumineers, NEEDTOBREATHE, Tyler Childers, Yelawolf, Margo Price, Rhiannon Giddens and more. His solo recordings have been met with critical acclaim and span from traditional Appalachian string band music to genre bending Americana. Chance was raised in a musical family and was exposed to music from birth, he was strapped to his fathers back as an infant while his father spent long hours composing in their home studio. Chance taught himself to play by ear and was regarded as a phenom among his teen-age friends who would bring records to the shed he lived in behind the family home and watch in amazement as he would learn to play an album in its entirety by ear.

In his twenties he delved deeply into the traditional music of the Appalachian region he grew up in, traveling to fiddlers conventions, summer camps and apprenticing with master artists. He became a well regarded multi-instrumentalist and singer during these formative years, learning to play a multitude of styles on multiple instruments. He also captured top honors in many of the regions most prestigious contests, sometimes winning multiple blue ribbons on different instruments at the same contest.

Chance currently resides in the isolated area of Monroe County, West Virginia where he has built a world class residential recording studio to produce music in. He alsocontinues to performs as a solo artist and collaborate with other musicians, score films, teach at music camps and travel to regional fiddlers conventions during the summer.

Nadia Ramlagan

Advanced Banjo Instructor

Nadia spent much of her twenties traveling through West Virginia and East Tennessee, where she first heard and began playing old-time music. She has played banjo in the High Tops (Brett Ratliff, Stephanie Jeter, and Andy Duckworth) and more currently with the Possum Queens (Anna Harrod, Jodie Koch, and Julia Purcell). Living in Kentucky for the past several years, she’s delved deep into the Kentucky repertoire and met many talented players and a wonderful community. Nadia is based in Louisville.

Workshops

Information coming soon!