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Who put the Bard in the Bardic Academy?
I thought you might like to know a bit about me, Kate Chadbourne,
and why I can help you create and fall in love with your own bardic life.
and why I can help you create and fall in love with your own bardic life.
- I'm a life-long learner. I'm a student of music, folklore, poetry, literature, languages, anthropology, art, and much more. Though all of this I've learned how to study, how to find the heartbeat of fascination, how to practice, and how to keep going. I've been studying piano without a gap since age 5, the Irish language continues to surprise me, new poets and poetry continually swim into my world, and I'm a voracious reader of books of all genres. Interest leads to interest. The more I learn the more I want to learn!
- I hold a PhD in Celtic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University. My dissertation is a giant, 350-page tome entitled Otherworld Processions in Irish and Welsh Literature and Folklore. What a joy and privilege to spend so much time thinking about the Celtic Otherworld, fairies, enchanted horses, sacred movement, and seasonal celebrations.
- I'm a joyful, prolific creator.
- I've released four solo CD's and guested on another half dozen or so. One of my CDs features blessing songs - songs I improvised on piano and harp to channel love and healing. Another features classic poems in English and in Irish set to music for piano and harp.
- I've published three books of poetry and many essays, stories, poems in journals and books all over the world.
- I've undertaken long-term community-building projects, creating some 80 improvised, free songs for anyone who asked (the Well-Wishing Songs project), and composing for my newsletter community a series of eight songs to mark the feast days in the Celtic sacred year (A Celtic Blessing Year project).
- I am always making something, writing something, recording something, trying something, editing something, releasing something... My house is a hive of creativity!
- I'm a passionate and multi-award-winning teacher. For the last 20 years, I've taught Irish language and folklore at Harvard University. I spent 11 years teaching writing at Harvard and Brandeis. I won a lovely and prestigious award for foreign-language teaching, the Carmen S. Bonino Award, and I've won a teaching award for every single class I've taught at Harvard. Outside academia, I've taught in The Bardic Academy for more than 5 years. I've taught people to sing, tell stories, write poems, create art, find meaning in literature, play the harp, piano, and tin whistle, and to take their place among the world's creators.
- I'm a busy, sought-after performer. When I was a little girl attending concerts at my local library, I dreamed of being one of the lucky performers bringing delight to the audience and having, by all appearances, such a great time! Now, I'm thrilled to be that person, traveling around New England, telling stories, singing songs, and laughing with the wonderful people who attend my shows. Together, we create festivity, intimacy, and joy. What could be better?
- I live as a Bard. Like the early Irish bards who enjoyed the legal right to explore and create across territorial lines, I'm enjoying the freedom to create my life beyond the normal 9-5, to learn continuously, to create daily, and to live deliberately and joyfully. Nothing has helped me trust myself more than this: I always dreamed of creating a school to support learners of all ages as they explore their potential and genius through the arts and humanities. Today, I look at the students I've had the privilege to teach, the musicians and singers I've coached, and the writers I've helped and I think: WOW, my dream has come true! If that's true for me, so it is for you and your dream, and it is my heart's desire to help you make it so.
