Faculty Biography

Mitzie Collins, Lecturer


Contact:
(585) 464-9377
samplerrec@aol.com


Departmental Responsibilities:
World Music


Education:
Eastman School of Music, MA
Eastman School of Music , BM


Biography:
A native of Dallas, Texas, Mitzie Collins is known as a recording artist, a performer of Celtic and traditional American folk music, a historian of the American hammered dulcimer, and an Arts-in-Education specialist in the public schools. For her more than 30 years of musical contributions to the community, Mitzie was honored by the Arts and Cultural Council of Greater Rochester with its 2007 Artist Award.  Mitzie has taught World Music at Nazareth College in the spring semester since 2007.

With her husband, Tom Bohrer, she founded, in 1975, Sampler Records Ltd., a recording company specializing in the production of traditional music. The company has produced more than 30 titles, which have been sold nationwide through catalogs and retail outlets. Their recording and companion book Vic Kibler: Adirondack Fiddler was selected as a 1992 Notable Recording by the Library of Congress.

Mitzie Collins received her bachelor’s degree with a major in piano from the Eastman School of Music in 1963; she received her Master of Arts in Music Education and the Diploma in Ethnomusicology from Eastman in 2005. She was a member of the Eastman gamelan, Lila Muni at Eastman; her master's degree project was the collecting and analysis of
clapping games and count-outs from Rochester children. She has completed Orff levels I and II at Eastman.

Her current research is focused on the development of the hammered dulcimer in Western New York State. Mitzie Collins owns a collection of historical dulcimers and has recently given talks on dulcimers for the Ontario County Historical Society, the Livingston County Historical Society and the Yates County Genealogical and Historical Society.
Other fields of interest are the music of the Shakers and shape note singing. She has produced two recordings of Shaker music, and was a speaker at two seminars on Shaker music at Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in Kentucky. She sings regularly with local and regional shape note groups and has traveled to two traditional singing meetings in Georgia.

Mitzie has traveled widely in Asia and Europe. In 1998 she gave programs, with Rochester soprano Colleen Liggett, as a Musical Ambassador to Rochester's Russian “Sister City” of Velikiy Novgorod. In 2005 she gave a paper at the 8th Yangqin [Chinese hammered dulcimer] Congress in Beijing, and in 2007 she attended the 9th Hackbrett [German hammered dulcimer] Congress in Oberammergau, Germany. She has presented workshops and performances for national and regional musical and educational conferences, including the 2000 Orff Schulwerke Convention in Rochester. For ten years Mitzie hosted Sounds Like Fun, a children's radio show on WXXI-FM in Rochester. She has twice been named Rochester's Best Folk Musician by readers of City Newspaper.

Mitzie was a founder in 1971 of the Golden Link Folksinging Society of Rochester. She has attended many summer sessions at the Country Dance and Song Society of America’s Pinewoods Camp, near Plymouth, Massachusetts, and was one of the founders of the camp’s multigenerational programs. She currently teaches hammered dulcimer in group classes through the Eastman Community Music School, and also directs the Eastman Community Music School Hammered Dulcimer Ensemble.

For the past thirteen years she has taught world music to high school students in the Eastman Community Music School Music Horizon's Summer Program and has produced an annual summer concert of World Music in Kilbourn Hall. For twenty years The Sampler Records Concert of Traditional Irish Music, which Mitzie produced, was the most popular concert of Irish music in the Rochester area.

Recent activities include presenting a paper on clapping games at the "Play Matters" conference in April of 2007, co-sponsored by the Strong National Museum of Play and The American Society for Play, and being a featured hammered dulcimer performer at the Heart of the Alleghenies Festival in Bradford, Pennsylvania, in August, 2007. She was a workshop leader at the Nonsuch Dulcimer Club of England’s Fall=202007 retreat at Launde Abbey, and with Roxanne Ziegler, she gave a faculty concert at Nazareth in April of 2008. The Christmas season of 2007 will mark the 24th year that Mitzie has given a series of Christmas concerts throughout the Rochester area with Glennda Dove, flute, and Roxannne Ziegler harp.

To see a complete listing of Mitzie’s recordings and a schedule of her
upcoming performances see www.samplerfolkmusic.com