Tioga County Contradance to present 16th Anniversary Dance

Tioga County Contradance is pleased to announce its 16th year Anniversary Dance, with a community Contradance on Sunday, April 14 from 4 to 7 p.m.

Crooked Sixpence will be playing with caller David Smukler.

The dance will be held at the Countryside Community Center, located at 9 Sheldon Guile Blvd. in Owego, N.Y. All dances will be taught and prompted before dancing begins. Admission is $6 per person. Bring clean, soft-soled shoes.

Crooked Sixpence features Kathy Selby on fiddle with flutist Gordon Bonnet and pianist John Wobus. This high-octane trio specializes in music for contradance and English dance. 

Kathy Selby, a native of England, began singing and playing both folk and classical music at an early age. She discovered fiddle music on her first visit to her in-laws in Ireland, and underwent a rapid and fanatical conversion from violinist to fiddle player. Now living in Ithaca, N.Y., Kathy is an accomplished dance fiddler, playing for contras and English country dances. She also performs at concerts, festivals, coffeehouses, weddings and special events. 

When living in California, Kathy performed with Alasdair Fraser’s San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers, and was also their newsletter editor and a workshop and bandleader. With Viaduct Theater, she received excellent reviews for the part of Fiddler in “Mary Queen Of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off”, and was singing coach for their award-winning run of “Observe The Sons Of Ulster Marching Towards The Somme”. She has performed in a wide variety of instrumental and vocal genres, including folk singing, madrigals, musicals, and classical choral and orchestral works. 

Kathy enjoys teaching fiddle to both adults and children. In her “other life”, she is a physics lecturer at Cornell, teaching “The Physics of Musical Sound” every spring.

Throughout her musical journey, Kathy has been guided by the playing and teaching of master fiddlers such as Martin Hayes, Buddy MacMaster and Rodney Miller. Alasdair Fraser has been an especially profound inspiration as a teacher and mentor, particularly through the Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddle School and his leadership of the San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers.

John Wobus is an accomplished pianist who has developed his contradance and English style over nearly 20 years of playing for dances in the Central New York region. He currently plays in a variety of ensembles, including Contranella with his daughter and son-in-law Megan and Charley Beller, Heart’s Delight with David Smukler, Laurel Sharp, Eileen Nicholson and Zeke Smukler, and in Rosie’s Ready Mix with Hope Grietzer and Curt Osgood. John can often be found with his fiddle at jam sessions in the Ithaca vicinity. 

Gordon Bonnet grew up in Louisiana in a French-Acadian family. He has over 30 years of experience playing flute, bagpipes and other winds in a wide variety of styles. Some of his current musical passions include performing French and Breton music with the band Alizé, and playing Galician, Balkan and Klezmer music. Gordon’s talent and enthusiasm for music in demented time signatures has led to his publication of two books of Balkan tunes. He is in demand as a teacher of flute, pennywhistle and bagpipes, both at music camps and for private lessons.