Bellows and Buttons
Music Tuition Weekends
Tutors
Will Allen, Lucy Huzzard, Anna Pack, Vicky Cooper and Helena Painting.
Will Allen
Will Allen is a highly renowned melodeon and fiddle player from Kent with two solo albums to his name. A powerful and soulful musician largely inspired by the music of Southern England, West Kerry and Quebec.
"The finest box player of his generation" – Nick Hart
Will performs with Brown Boots, WillPower, The Brown Boots Boogie Band and Club Débris.
"The finest box player of his generation" – Nick Hart
Will performs with Brown Boots, WillPower, The Brown Boots Boogie Band and Club Débris.
Lucy Huzzard
Lucy grew up steeped in the English folk music and dance scene, and learned to play for
Cotswold morris as a teenager, which set her up for life with the grooves of English music.
She went on to study melodeon on the Folk Degree, and spent a year studying Swedish
dance at the Eric Sahlström Institute in Sweden, where she fell in love with Swedish music.
Since then she has been teaching Swedish tunes for DG players for her students, along with
Swedish folk dances with The Third Beat Dance Collective in the UK. She is also one half of
political folk duo Lucy & Hazel, using the melodeon as an accompaniment to her song
writing.
Lucy loves to get into the groove with box playing and often spends a lot of time working with rhythms within dance music and loves how the melodeon can provide lift, light and shade in tune playing.
Lucy loves to get into the groove with box playing and often spends a lot of time working with rhythms within dance music and loves how the melodeon can provide lift, light and shade in tune playing.
Anna Pack
Anna Pack is a musician and dancer with a long-standing interest in European traditional
dance, performing in duos with Blowzabella's Dave Shepherd, Nigel Eaton, Hekety's Jo Veal
and in the trio Oscina. Anna's rhythmic playing style lends itself to ensemble playing and
accompaniment.
In her workshops she will explore the use of rhythms and right hand chords to accompany
dance tunes when playing with other musicians in sessions and ensembles.
Vicky Cooper
Vicky is band leader for Silkstone Greens North West Morris and is a relative newcomer to all things folk, but long time musician. She has previously taught at North East Playgroup, Derbyshire Playgroup, Whitby Folk Festival and Melodeons in Wensleydale. She has a passion for encouraging others to take up the melodeon in the hope they love it as much as she does! She plays D/G and G/C melodeons, with a particular soft spot for French tunes
Helena Painting
Helena is a keen advocate for adults beginning their musical journey, teaching Absolute Beginner melodeon workshops at melodeon events and folk festivals since 2018. Helena is a regular tutor at Melodeon Playgroup, and has taught at folk festivals including Towersey, Sidmouth, Shrewsbury and Chippenham, working solo and alongside Ed Rennie as part of their Squeezebox from Scratch project. A lover of folk dance and music, Helena runs supportive steady-speed sessions, with a particular focus on English tunes.