July 25, 2020 – The Whole Wide World
Hosts: RBS Board
Original Story
Program Booklet
Video
The Fest Begins
Highlights
Greg Adams
Tom Connolly
Boris Sichon
Workshops
Jonathan-Space and Time
Bill Vits – Drums and Rudiments
Wolin – Triplets into 16th Notes
Wolin – Gallop Rhythm
Wolin – Ostenato Patterns
Bones Fest XXIV has so many highlights. It was originally planned for Alexandria, Virginia, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic was retooled as a virtual Bones Fest using Zoom teleconferencing technology. A meeting using teleconferencing is more intimate in a way since everyone is (sort of) four feet from everyone else.
The host for the Fest was changed to our Board of Directors with Steve Brown as Program Committee Chair, Skeff Flynn as Technical Committee Chair, Dennis Riedesel as Help Desk, along with Randy Gordon and Dean Robinson as Technical Hosts. There were 60 attendees that are shown in the photograph above, and it was truly an international Fest with one attendee from Australia and several from Canada and Europe.
The program began with traditional introductions where attendees talk about how they learned to play and optionally demonstrated their style. This was follow by parallel session in three Zoom Rooms covering beginning, intermediate and advance workshops, Jonathan Danforth’s different look at their history, tips and techniques, teaching techniques and contest judging. Look at the videos above for a sampling of what happened. The newsletter article (see Original Story above) has reflections from several attendees of their impression of a Virtual Bones Fest.
Next year let’s hope we are back in-person, however, we may add a virtual component for those who can’t make it to an in-person Fest.