Common Threads is a getaway for folks who love making music and crafting. We combine the community aspects of Renaissance ensemble music, Traditional tunes, group crafting, and learning new skills.
To keep us all going, we offer occasional online workshops and play-alongs throughout the year. Because this is Common Threads, our online music workshops will begin with a bit of show and tell for everyone’s current projects! So before we start the music portion, show us what you’re knitting or sewing or spinning! Ask your crafting questions – maybe someone in the group has the answer!
Coming up:
Sunday, Sept. 15th from 5-7 PM Eastern: ECD Tunes with Emily
The English Country Dance tune repertoire is rich and varied. These tunes are great on their own, but they also make a great starting point for improvising, ornamenting, and harmonizing. No experience necessary! via Zoom. $25
Register here.
Our central retreat program offers:
– Ensemble classes matched by skill level
– Topic-based music and fiber arts classes
– “Crossover” topics and activities that bridge the divide between Early Classical and Traditional styles of music making
– Fiber Arts workshop for all participants
– Faculty concert and fiber history lecture
– Informal playing, singing, and creating together.
– Open Gallery, Sing-and-Stitch, Open Mic event, so participants can share both finished craft projects and musical performances
– Large group projects for all comers
We select a different fiber theme each year. Our 2026 theme will be co-taught by Emily, Kelly, and Rosalind is “Introducing the Backstrap Loom”. We’ll also have other group projects and things to try in case spinning isn’t your thing – and of course, you’re welcome to bring your own projects to work on and skills to share!
Common Threads offers classes in both Folk music and Early music. Participants are invited to pick and choose from both categories!
The folk classes focus on a variety of tunes, songs, and dances from all of the Celtic Nations and Appalachia, along with a skills focus on learning by ear and working in an ensemble. All indoor folk instruments and skill levels are welcome!
Early Music classes focus mainly on ensemble music of the Renaissance. They are geared toward consort instruments such as recorders and viols, but other “indoor” instruments are welcome, such as voices, violins, flutes, dulcians, bassoons, etc (no bombards or highland pipes, please!). These classes are grouped by level, so please review the self-assessment guidelines. Feel free to contact us if you have questions!
Click Here for full details on classes and events
Faculty
Rosalind Buda
Folk music, pennywhistle, pipes
Co-Director
Rosalind Buda is a versatile and diverse performer and educator, playing and teaching music from Scottish smallpipes and Highland bagpipes to classical bassoon. Rosalind is passionate about teaching musicians of all ages, and her years of experience in both classical and folk music give her a unique perspective and a multi-faceted, holistic approach to learning. Rosalind firmly believes that everyone can develop their own style, expand technique through new approaches, and find their greatest enjoyment in music-making at any stage in their learning. Rosalind brings her musically encouraging approach to her private students, college students, and to workshops around the country.
As a performer, Rosalind freelances and tours regularly with the Celtic/Appalachian pipe and harp duo, The Reel Sisters, on smallpipes, whistles, and vocals. The Reel Sisters have toured from New Mexico to New York and revel in sharing traditional tunes and stories. In addition to her duo, Rosalind performs regularly as a multi-instrumentalist, singer, and reader with various ensembles including Houston-based Istanpitta Early Music Ensemble as well other bagpipe-centric bands. As a bassoonist, Rosalind is an avid performer of chamber music and orchestral music in the Southeast. Rosalind received her MM in bassoon performance from New England Conservatory.
Joan Kimball
Recorder, Renaissance consorts
Joan Kimball is the former artistic co-director and a founding member of Piffaro, The
Renaissance Band. She has concertized with the ensemble throughout the U.S., Europe, and
South America and has performed with many of the leading early music artists and
ensembles in this country. With Piffaro she has recorded for Newport Classics, Deutsche
Grammophon Archiv Produktion, Dorian Recordings and PARMA/Navona, and in
addition can be heard on the Vanguard, Eudora and Vox Amadeus labels.
Widely known in the early music community as a teacher of recorder, early double reeds and
bagpipes, she has been on faculty at early music festivals and workshops across the country,
including The Madison Early Music Festival, The Early Double Reed & Sackbut Workshop,
Amherst Early Music, The San Francisco Early Music Recorder and Med/Ren workshops,
The Texas Toot, and Hidden Valley Early Music Workshop.
Joan has intimate knowledge and experience with early double reeds, playing both shawm
and dulcian, as well as capped reeds and bagpipes. She has far too many of the latter in
various sizes, pitches and volumes in her studio, and is committed to keeping them all in
good working order! She makes her own reeds for all her instruments and supplies them as
well for reed players across the country. One of her specialties is refurbishing whole sets of
krumhorns, replacing the old plastic reeds with more authentic cane ones. In addition, she
collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson on the construction of Medieval and
Renaissance bagpipes.
Emily O’Brien
Recorder, Renaissance consorts
Co-Director
Emily O’Brien grew up in Washington, DC where she played recorder from a young age. She studied recorder and french horn at Boston University, and recorder and Baroque flute at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, Germany. She performs in recorder ensembles and historical chamber music, as well as English Country Dance bands. As a teacher, she works with private students and ensembles in the Boston area as well as teaching at various summer workshop such as CDSS’s Early Music Week at Pinewoods and Amherst Early Music Festival. Her recordings include “Fantasies for a Modern Recorder”, which explores the variety and possibilities over four centuries of repertoire offered by the Helder Harmonic Tenor recorder; “Songs from Home”, featuring music for recorder and guitar. She has also recorded a soon-to-be-released sample library of 26 different recorders of all sizes. In her spare time, she enjoys long distance cycling and has never met a craft she didn’t enjoy.
Kelly Stewart
Folk Music, Harp
Co-director
Kelly Stewart holds a BMUS and a Masters Diploma in Harp Performance and Musicology from the University of North Wales. She has taught and performed throughout Europe and the U.S. Kelly lives in Atlanta where she has maintained a large teaching studio for more than twenty years and performs both classical and Celtic music. When she is not performing, teaching, or traveling, she is homeschooling her son. You will often find her designing and conducting experiments. Is it science or is it food?!?
Previous Faculty:
Molly Jones-Lewis
Spinning and fiber arts
Dr. Molly Jones-Lewis is a medical historian of ancient Greece and Rome who teaches Ancient Greek, Latin, and topics in Ancient Mediterranean culture for the Ancient Studies department at the University of Maryland, Baltmore County. She earned her BA from Swarthmore College in Classics and Early Music Performance (recorder), and her graudate degrees from the Ohio State University. She has been a fiber artist almost as long as she has been alive, and her experimental archaeological work recreating Roman wool processing techniques has been featured on the Society for Classical Studies blog. She lives in Baltimore with her spouse, son, and three feline overlords.