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Hardly even a decent frost here yet, but I'm drawn to images of spring leaves and flowers replacing all of our gray Texas winter landscape. It's time to start thinking about this year's concertina workshop in beautiful Palestine, east Texas: dogwoods, bluebonnets, and free reeds! This year is the 16th year of our annual workshop within the Palestine Old TIme Music and Dulcimer Festival, March 26-28 in the east Texas Pineywoods. This time, we are excited to have Benedict Gagliardi and Armand Aromin from the Rhode Island group Vox Hunters heading south to our workshops. This means we will have classes and sessions for both Anglo AND English concertina this year. Find out more about Benedict, Armand and the Vox Hunters here. Our workshops run from Friday morning through Saturday afternoon, and will include streams for both beginners and more experienced players, as needed. If interested, please send me a message via this site by February 15, saying 1) if you are coming, 2) what system you play, and 3) your experience level. With this information, hopefully by February 15, we can plan out the workshops in more detail, and will send you beforehand the workshop schedule, logistics, and any sheet music. If you have requests or suggestions for a specific type of concertina workshop, let us know and we’ll see what can be done. As in all previous years, we charge $35 for the concertina workshops, on top of the normal Old Pal admittance, which covers the concerts and other activities. Information on the larger Old Pal festival can be found here. It has concerts every day at lunchtime and in the evening, from Thursday evening until Saturday night, plus impromptu sessions at all hours inside and outside the main building. The Vox Hunters will play in the concerts along with a host of old time musicians hailing from the Appalachians westward to Texas. It is a small and very friendly festival, and very accommodating to us concertinists – come ready to play along! All the best, Dan