Upper Potomac Music Weekends
About the 2024 Teachers
Armand Aromin is a queer Filipino-American violin maker and musician based in Providence, Rhode Island. More importantly, if you can say Arm & Hammer, then you’re very likely pronouncing his name correctly! Armand studied at Berklee College of Music and am a 2013 graduate of the North Bennet Street School in Boston, MA where he earned his diploma in Violin Making & Repair. Under the tutelage of master violin maker Roman Barnas,​
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Picking up the fiddle and tin whistle in his mid-teens, he learned much of his music from renowned Irish musicians and tunesmiths Jimmy Devine and Patrick Hutchinson, both of whom helped foster his interest in the lyrical and colorful styles of musicians such as Denis Murphy & Julia Clifford, Bobby Casey, Lucy Farr, Johnny Doherty, and Tommy Reck. In addition to being the 2010 Mid-Atlantic Fleadh Cheoil Champion for Senior Fiddle, he was also a finalist at the Séan Ó Riada Gold Medal Fiddle Competition held in Cork, Ireland in 2011. He has taught fiddle and tin whistle for the Reynolds-Hanafin-Cooley branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann in Boston; ukulele classes at the Blackstone River Theatre in Cumberland, RI; and also teaches privately in and around the Rhode Island area. He is one-half of the duo The Vox Hunters, a quarter of Eight Feet Tall, and at least a third of The Ivy Leaf.
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Chance McCoy is a Grammy winning Indie Folk musician, music producer and film composer from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Chance grew up in a musical family, as a baby he spent hours strapped to his fathers back while his father recorded synth music in the family's home studio. As a young man he took an unlikely musical direction, studying the obscure traditional folk music of Appalachia with old master musicians from West Virginia under a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. After many years steeping himself in the lost traditions of American string band music he went on to win Fiddle, Banjo and Dulcimer championships as well as first place honors in the International String Band contest known as ‘Clifftop’. In 2008 he released ‘Chance McCoy and The Appalachian Stringband’ a collection of traditional music recorded live around one mic that slowly gained a cult following among Old Time Music enthusiasts. Chance was also a member of Old Crow Medicine Show for 7 years. He now resides in Greenville, WV with his wife, Tessa, where they run Hunter Springs Studio – a world class audio and video recording studio.
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Tessa (Dillon) McCoy is a five-time WV State Fiddle Champion and is the current Grand Master Traditional Fiddle Champion. Her driving and intricate style comes from a long lineage of fiddlers from the Kanawha Valley such as Bobby Taylor and Clark Kessinger.
She released her first old-time fiddle album in 2018, titled “It’s Hard to Love”, flanked by fellow West Virginia musicians Jesse Milnes and Kim Johnson. That same year, Tessa won 1st place in the traditional band contest at the Appalachian Stringband Festival (Clifftop) with her band, Big Possum Stringband. They went on to release a self-titled album in 2019, were featured on NPR’s Mountain Stage, and toured across both the US and Australia that summer.
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She is a passionate educator and teaches and performs year round. Tessa, along with husband Chance and step-son Edwin, won 1st place in the traditional band contest at Clifftop in 2023 as The McCoys. She now lives in Greenville, WV where she and Chance run a recording studio near their home.
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Pascal Gemme has a degree from St-Laurent College (Montreal) in arranging and classical/jazz guitar, he has since been searching for seldom-heard songs and melodies, interpreting them in his unique and unmistakable style. Originally inspired by his fiddling grandfather, he has played with (and learned from), most of today’s great Quebecois fiddlers and singers.
On top of teaching fiddle lessons on a weekly basis in his village of Waterville, QC, his teaching highlights include the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in Limerick, Ireland, the Goderich Celtic College in Ontario, Quasitrad Music Camp in Australia, The Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Alasdair Fraser’s Fiddle Train, Sierra Fiddle Camp and Valley of the moon, and Maine Fiddle camp.
Pascal Gemme is a leading light in Quebec’s traditional music scene.Known as much for his original compositions as his fine interpretation of traditional tunes, Pascal is the fiddler, singer and arranger of the band, Genticorum, whose CDs have met with critical acclaim in several countries.
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​ Belgian-born multi-instrumentalist Paul Oorts, is very active in the world of English, contra, and vintage dances in the DC-Baltimore area. With the trio Goldcrest he performs at dance events all over the US. He also performs and tours with his wife, hammered dulcimer player Karen Ashbrook.
Paul plays a wide variety of stringed instruments... mandolin, guitar, harp guitar, bouzouki, bass, mountain dulcimer as well as accordion. As a teacher and staff musician, he has been on faculty at many week-long camps including Augusta Heritage Center (WV) the Swannanoa Gathering (NC), Common Ground on the Hill (MD), Pinewoods (MA), Kentucky Music Week, and the Volksmuziekstage in Gooik (Belgium). No stranger to the Upper Potomac Weekends, Paul is a popular teacher at both the Fiddle and Dulcimer weekends. During the academic year Dr. Oorts teaches Italian and French at Loyola University in Baltimore..
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For more information on any of the performers, follow the links to their web pages!
