Malcolm Dalglish

Malcolm Dalglish attended The American Boychoir School at age ten and graduated from The National Outdoor Leadership School at fifteen. He’s a choral composer, director, and raconteur who plays hammer dulcimer, spoons, bones, and his face. A founding member of the popular folk trio Metamora, Malcolm has made over twelve recordings, including solo offerings on the Windham Hill Label. He strives to create songs that are “playgrounds for singers”. Audiences are engaged by the storytelling, poetry and theater of these works. Choirs throughout the world have commissioned his music, and he performs with them everywhere from schools and festivals to Carnegie Hall. His folk choir, The Ooolites, is known for its earthy, ethereal sound. He’s been called a pied piper of youth choirs (and his flair for pie making hasn’t hurt his reputation either!).

Elise Witt

Legend has it, Elise Witt sang before she talked, and she’s been singing every since. Born in Switzerland, raised in North Carolina, and living in Atlanta since 1977, Elise speaks 5 languages and sings in at least a dozen more. She has taken her concerts of Global, Local & Homemade Songs™ to Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and community centers around the country. She has been a cultural ambassador to South Africa, Italy, Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, and China. Elise has created a life combining her two passions: language and music. From her farm-ette in Pine Lake GA, she travels far and wide, instigating Impromptu Glorious Chorus™ adventures for singers and people who think they aren’t singers, but secretly know that’s a lie. “She could get a colony of ants singing!” enthused a workshop participant. Elise sang for 20 years with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus and Chamber Chorus as well as the Robert Shaw Singers, with whom she performed annually at Carnegie Hall. Currently Elise is Artist-in-Residence at the Global Village Project, a school for teenage refugee girls from Afghanistan, Burma, Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia, and Central African Republic, using singing to teach English and write songs about math, science, social studies, and life. As a life-long student herself, Elise has studied extensively with masters of improvisation Bobby McFerrin, David Darling, Rhiannon, African vocal expert Dr. Fred Onovwerosuoke, and Sweet Honey in the Rock’s Dr. Ysaye Maria Barnwell, all of whose pedagogy she incorporates into her own teaching and composing.

Rachel Schlafer-Parton

Rachel Schlafer-Parton‘s first musical experience began at an early age when she crawled into the kitchen, opened the bottom drawer of the stove, and started playing the pots and pans. She has been playing everything she can get her hands on ever since. As a sign language interpreter she also uses those hands to sing. Her performing experience, (vocal, instrumental, and movement) ranges from early music to jazz ensemble, classical trio to theater, and mime to modern dance. As a magician’s assistant, she is likely to disappear or levitate at any moment! Rachel is perhaps best known for her performance on the syringe on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. These eclectic experiences have enhanced her artistic sign language interpreting for theater, concerts, opera, and other artistic productions. Venues where Rachel has performed range from the National Gallery of Art to the Blue Bird Cafe. At Bonnaroo, she interpreted for a number of Rock artists and was also an instrumentalist with the Band of Humans. As an RID certified interpreter she interprets in the Knoxville area where she lives with her husband Joel and their menagerie of goats, bees, cats, and dogs.

Charlie Jesseph

Charlie Jesseph has been a part of the Ooolation camps since they began in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana in 1999. He grew up on music. Being the son of two university trained musicians and the youngest of four children, all of whom are singers and instrumentalists, he picked up some tricks along the way. While studying biology at Indiana University Charlie sang in IU Soul Revue and performed in Brazilian Samba and Afro-Cuban percussion ensembles. He spent one semester busking around the major cities of Western Europe. Currently he teaches guitar, piano, voice, and percussion lessons and performs acoustic soul and jazz in a duo. He has been hooked by the spirit of improvisation and is excited to share it with all of the Ooofolk on this 11-day musical adventure!