Workshop & Excursion Leaders - Fresh Voices from the U.P.

Barbara is a Professor of Music and Director of Strings and Orchestra at Northern Michigan University. Barbara regularly instructs fiddling, classical violin and viola, and enjoys composing music and collaborating with local artists. She has been the Associate Concertmaster of the Marquette Symphony Orchestra for twenty-seven years, and a fiddle player and vocalist in the regional Irish folk ensemble, the Knockabouts, for about eight years. 

Barbara and her husband Tim enjoy attending the Hiawatha Music Festival each year to perform, host workshops, attend folk performances, and to dance all night.

Brent took up mandolin while living in south Louisiana in 1989 for two reasons. First, a mandolin is a lot easier to carry around than a guitar, banjo, or bass. Second, when you show up at a jam that has eight guitar players all strumming the same chords, people are really happy to see a mandolin and it adds so much to music. Opportunities abound. Brent has been playing mandolin in a variety of bands around Marquette since the early 90s and is a biology professor at Northern Michigan University, where he really enjoys the teaching process. His current band, The Union Suits, will play at the Friday night dance at this year's Hiawatha Traditional Music Festival right after the Fresh Voices Camp.

Devi Lockwood is the Commentary and Ideas editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer and the author of 1,001 VOICES ON CLIMATE CHANGE, a book published by Simon & Schuster in 2021. Previously she worked as an editor and writer at the New York Times Opinion section and launched the Ideas section at Rest of World. She spent five years traveling in 20 countries on six continents to document 1,001 stories on water & climate change. 

You can read her writing in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, The Washington Post, Bicycling Magazine, Yale Climate Connections, and elsewhere.

Jessica L. Thompson, PhD is an Associate Professor at Northern Michigan University. She teaches courses in public relations, new media and environmental responsibility, and is the founder and director of the Northern Climate Network. Thompson previously served as the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP), "Building Place-Based Climate Change Education through the Lens of National Parks and Wildlife Refuges," and led an interdisciplinary and inter-agency team to develop climate change education and engagement tools for national parks and wildlife refuges.

She is the author of two books: Interdisciplinary Research Team Dynamics: A Systems Approach to Understanding Communication and Collaboration in Complex Teams (2008) and America's Largest Classroom: What We Learn from Our National Parks (2020), an edited collection of chapters and case studies about place-based learning in National Parks.

John Gillette has been captivating audiences with his banjo playing for 25 years. His style lands somewhere in between energetic melodies of Scruggs-style to the soulful rhythms of open-backed clawhammer. With a passion for both traditional and contemporary banjo, John brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to this workshop. 

John is an award-winning songwriter and has played in several bluegrass-style bands over the years in collaboration with his wife, Sarah Mittlefehldt. They are "co-presidents" of both the Poultney Bluegrass Society and the Yooper Bluegrass Society and now fill out two-fourths of the band Cloverland. 

Whether you're a seasoned picker or just starting your banjo journey, John is excited to share his knowledge and help you unlock the potential of this versatile instrument.

PRESS

• “magnetic, sweet sound”, “a tasty purity” - Boston Globe
• “John Gillette possesses a warm voice and a gift for more straight-spoken poetry” - No Depression
• “Mittlefehldt’s effortless harmonies make the sound all the richer” - Seven Days (VT)
• “comfortable string-band music, well sung and instantly timeless.” - Seven Days (VT)
• “gorgeous music that clears away the debris of the world” - author Mike Smith

Jeff Krebs is a Marquette singer/songwriter, guitarist and ukulele lover. He is co-owner of Yooptone Music and performs solo, does kids music as Papa Crow, and plays in The Union Suits and The Stumpsitters. He has taught ukulele workshops at schools, libraries, Hiawatha Festival and Mighty Uke Day. Join Jeff for a fun intro to ukulele workshop at Fresh Voices (ukuleles supplied if you don’t have one to bring).

Linnea Bemis is a tribal citizen of Mashkiiziibiing (Bad River) and a descendant from Asiniinsikaajiigibiig of Keweenaw Bay. She has spent her life traveling along her homelands near Gichigami (Lake Superior) within the 1842 Treaty of LaPoint. Her academic journey led me back to Gichi-namebini Ziibing (Marquette) for a degree in Native American Studies with a minor in biology. She finds balance by reconnecting with Anishinaabemowin (language) and by celebrating her relationships with Anishinaabewakiing (the Great Lakes Northwoods).

Linnea is currently working with the Center for Native American Studies at NMU and the Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy for the Dead River Community Forest Project to identify and create an interdisciplinary Anishinaabeg-education outdoor learning environment that connects Traditional Ecological Knowledge with western studies for a diverse and complex understanding of her homeland relatives in Anishinaabewakiing.

Dr. Martin Reinhardt is an Anishinaabe Ojibway citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians from Michigan. He is a tenured professor of Native American Studies at Northern Michigan University. He is the president of the Michigan Indian Education Council, and the lead singer and songwriter for the band Waawiyeyaa (The Circle). 

His current research focuses on revitalizing relationships between humans and Indigenous plants and animals of the Great Lakes Region. He has taught courses in American Indian education, tribal law and government, and sociology. 

He has a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the Pennsylvania State University, where his doctoral research focused on Indian education and the law with a special focus on treaty educational provisions. 

Martin serves as a panelist for the National Indian Education Study Technical Review Panel and as the primary investigator for the Decolonizing Diet Project. He has also served as Chair of the American Association for Higher Education American Indian/Alaska Native Caucus, and as an external advisor for the National Indian School Board Association. He also holds both a Bachelor's and a Master’s degree in Sociology.

Norma Froelich is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geographical Sciences at Northern Michigan University. She teaches courses in meteorology, climate science, physical geography, and energy & the environment. She has a PhD and MS in Geography from Indiana University and BS in Astronomy & Geophysics from the University of Western Ontario.

Her research uses a physics-based perspective to investigate interactions between land surfaces and the atmosphere. She is a lifelong self-powered outdoor adventurer, as a hiker, skier, canoeist & kayaker, rock climber, and mountain biker.

Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work  has been featured in The Nation, Brick, American Poetry Review, Witness, Kenyon Review, POETRY, and others. She is the author of the full-length collections Houses (Horseless Press 2015)  and Crawlspace (Bloof 2017) as well as the graphic book I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel (2019) from Bloof Books. She is also the author of an artist book called “Operation USA” through the Baltimore based book arts group Container, a project acquired by Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. Her third collection, Waterbaby, is out from Copper Canyon Press. She was a Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop from Spring 2021/ to Spring 2022.

Sarah Mittlefehldt has been holding down the low end since 2003. She has played upright bass in a number of bluegrass, old time, and country bands including Whiskey Friday, The Honey Buckets, The Virginia Pigdogs, and most recently, Cloverland. 

When she is not setting a steady rhythm on bass, Sarah Mittlefehldt is Professor of Environmental Studies & Sustainability at Northern Michigan University, author of Tangled Roots: The Appalachian Trail and American Environmental Politics (University of Washington Press, 2013), and several articles on land use change, energy policy, and environmental history. 

In addition to her music, teaching, and scholarship, she serves as chair of the City of Marquette’s Planning Commission.

Whether it’s scatting, chanting, collaborating, or writing, Sue explodes the pre-conceived notions of singing. Schooled in jazz, Sue is a founding and current member of the folk trio Sons of the Never Wrong, & gospel/jazz septet Come Sunday. She tours nationally, performing original, acoustic music. 

Her body of work as a songwriter achieves a rare peace between the boundaries of love & redemption. She has composed pieces for dance troups, musicals, puppet theaters, fringe fest and more. Sue is a seasoned back-up vocalist featured on over 75 albums, as well as a poet, painter & illustrator. Demel is a much sought-after singer/songwriter workshop teacher and performance coach, teaching nationwide for music festivals, universities, writing retreats, and humanities programs. 

“And then there’s Sue Demel, a singular voice: a rich, athletic, octave-hurtling instrument that purrs and growls, rocks the foundation and raises the roof. Demel is a well-tuned Maserati. She delivers with such a resplendent shimmer, you almost expect her to blink into a column of light.” - Huffington Post

Tim DeMarte has traversed the realms of music since childhood, born to musician parents. His cradle was rocked by the beats and tunes of their practices and gigs, and this early exposure fostered a lifelong passion for music as he absorbed bits of lore and dreamed of standing aside those musical wizards one day. As a vocalist, percussionist, and guitarist, Tim has found joy in every note and rhythm in a life filled with the sounds of folk, rock, classical, jazz, and every other style he can absorb.

His formal percussion studies began at 11, laying the foundation for a lifetime of exploring the endlessly complex and satisfying sounds that can come from beating on inanimate objects. During his teenage years, in addition to participating in school bands and ensembles, Tim helped fuel the punk-rock pulse of Marquette as the lead singer of The Regulars. His college years further honed his vocal and percussion skills in choirs and ensembles, preparing him for a pivotal summer in Vienna in 1992, where the tutelage of traditional Irish singer Eamonn Donnelly would guide Tim towards the enchanting world of Celtic music, the bodhrán, and the unadorned beauty of a capella performances of traditional Irish songs.

This new passion grew through musical exploration with various groups over the next several years, and by 1997 sparked a serendipitous chapter in which he joined the Celtic band Foreign Born Irish (FBI) and had a fated meeting with bandmate Barbara Rhyneer, his future wife and musical partner ever since. For over 20 years, Tim has been imparting the magic of the bodhrán, giving lessons to adventurous learners and sharing the nuances and joys of this traditional Irish instrument. Currently, as a member of The Knockabouts since 2014, he continues to explore the infinitely intertwining spells of rhythm through Celtic, folk, and many other styles, performing on the bodhrán, cajon, vocals, and guitar.