Ancient Soundscapes

Born into a musical family, Stefan Dollak grew up around recorders, harpsichords, clavichords and many other musical instruments, starting on the piano at an early age.  In his teens, he taught himself how to play the guitar, thus beginning a personal musical journey starting with the Beatles and the Byrds, through a re-discovery of the music of his youth (Peter, Paul & Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, et al), to discoveries of the English Folk scene (Sandy Denny, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Richard Thompson, the Albion Band, Ashley Hutchings et al), to the more acoustic traditions that hinted at older musics (John Renbourn, Pentangle, the Incredible String Band, Martin Carthy, Amazing Blondel, Shirley Collins).  Finding an old LP on his parents shelf featuring the legendary Russell Oberlin singing lute songs by John Dowland helped determine Stefan’s musical destiny.

Stefan jamming with pipe & tabor legend Dick Bagwell. In his 20s, Stefan used Bagwell’s book “The Pipe and Tabor Tutor” to greatly improve his playing. 20 years later, they met for the first time!

Through classical guitar studies with Barry Eisner (a student of Christopher Parkening, who himself was a student of Andres Segovia), voice lessons with Joe Szostak, and Collegium Musicum with the gambist and composer Roland Hutchinson (one of the world’s few players of the baryton), Stefan began a process of inquiry and practice leading him to take up unusual old instruments, starting with the mandolin, the penny-whistle, and the recorder, and then to the pipe & tabor, the hurdy-gurdy, the bladder-pipe, and other arcane instruments.  During this process, Stefan had to re-learn how to read music after stopping piano lessons some years earlier.  Due to this process of ‘re-learning,’ Stefan became aware of the difficulties involved in learning to read music, and incorporates this sensitivity into his teaching method.

Stefan’s approach to presentation uses aspects of his theatrical and performance experience, combined with his sense of comic timing and zeal for discovery and enlightenment.  The challenge is to get the audience to realize that, even though they may be hearing this music (or instrument) for the very first time, they actually have loved this music all their lives.  This manipulation of time and space is common to all great music,  and so the spoken elements of Stefan’s early music presentations are typically on equal footing with the performances.  Thus, the experience of learning is as important as the subject being learned.

Stefan supplements his music literacy with improvisation and expressive interpretation, thus giving music from centuries past a new and immediate impact on his audience, while attractively communicating otherworldy, ancient qualities.

Stefan Dollak plays the following instruments:

lute, guitar, mandolin, mandora, psaltery, Appalachian dulcimer, ukulele/banjolele

recorders (SATB), feadog (Irish whistle), low whistle, ocarinas (various sizes), gemshorn, capped reeds (crumhorn, cornemuse, kortholt, rauschpfeife), bladder-pipe, fujara

pipe & tabor, pipe & string drum, symfoniae (medieval hurdy-gurdies)

various medieval percussion (tabors, nakers, tamburello, etc)