917.620.8872
COMING
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FACULTY 2025
Mike Dowling
World-renowned for his artistry in Acoustic Blues and Swing on guitar and slide, Mike’s extensive career includes playing with greats from Vassar Clemens to Joe Venuti and Jethro Burns, before embarking on his solo career -- a career that's taken him around the world. A composer as well, he’s written songs for artists including Del McCoury, Kathy Mattea and Emilylou Harris.
Armed with an engaging voice, self-deprecating wit and an arsenal of elegant interpretations of old blues, swing, ragtime, and original tunes, Mike's teaching is equal to his artistry. Mike’s published
numerous iinstructional DVDs including Two Guitar Jamming and Bottleneck Blues and Beyond (I and II) to name a few, and most recently, his book Rhythm By the Code. Mike’s core classes with include Acoustic Blues repertoire and Swing for Intermediate/Advanced players, with electives in improvisation, open tunings, and more, open to all levels.
Chris Grampp
Chris Grampp is a versatile guitarist,
playing in jazz, pop, rock, blues, swing, and
old-time bands for years in the San Francisco
Bay Area, and has worked extensively as a solo guitarist. An all-around player, he has studied with Tuck
Andress, Davis Ramey, and Warren Nunes.
Chris has published articles on improvisation and rhythm guitar in Acoustic Guitar
magazine and their instructional books, and contributed profiles of famous artists and f
unny music camp stories. He has taught at
various music camps on the West Coast, and has conducted workshops a many festivals.
Toby Walker
Toby has been hailed as an award-winning roots music fingerstyle guitar virtuoso and songwriter who has toured the US., US, Canada and Europe. Blending the styles of blues, ragime, country old time jazz and rock, he’s developed his own style and as such has received numerous awards, including recipient of the International
Blues Challenge Award in Memphis, and has been inducted into the NY Blues Hall of Fame.
Toby teaching not only reflects his guitar mastery, but a systematic approach to breaking down skills and content incrementally, to assure success. He has taught extensively at workshops across the United States and Europe, and currently has eight instructional DVD’s on Happy Traum’s Homespun Music Instruction. He’s produced hundreds of instructional videos for his own website as well. At camp, Toby will be focusing on Blues, Blues, and more Blues -- for all levels. In this context he will incorporate repertoire, tricks-of-the trade technique, soloing, and more. His core classes will range from early intermediate to intermediate. AHis electives will reflect results of our student interest survey.
Denise Adorante
Denise Adorante is a multi-instrumentalist who hails from New York. She began her musical journey on the ukulele at a young age and quickly moved on to the guitar. She has played in many bands over the years, the most recent being the Westchester based Urban Coyotes and the acoustic trio of the Near Misses. Denise has also recently collaborated on a newly released children’s album, Smile Like a Reptile, as part of a duo called The Ossibles.
Denise likes to play a variety of musical styles including folk, Americana, swing, jazz, pop and rock. She plays the guitar, ukulele, mandolin, banjo and bass when there are too many guitars! She’s happy to be a part of the Guitar Intensives music community once again, and will be working primarily with early intermediate/intermediate students on enhancing skills, developing repertoire in genres of their choice, band 101, and jam-time sessions.