Laura Cortese

2023-402 Laura Cortese portret

Biography

Laura Cortese is a creative driving force who brings people together wherever she goes. Her percussive playing style, powerful, sensual voice and post-folk arrangements are at once rowdy, delicate and cinematic. Her songs draw on the lyrical rituals of folk music while exploring new rhythmic and sonic territories. In 2016, she also released an instrumental album 'All in Always' featuring collaborations with musicians from Quebec, Sweden and Galicia.

She wears several hats: violinist, singer, composer and organizer. She grew up in San Francisco, California, and moved to Boston, Massachusetts to study at Boston's Berklee College of Music. After graduating from Berklee, she founded Miles of Music Camp and BCMfest: Boston's Celtic Music Festival. She immersed herself in the city's vibrant music scene and built a busy touring and studio career, including appearances with Band of Horses at Carnegie Hall and with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival. After that, she founded her own band 'Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards'. Four years ago, Laura moved to Ghent and learned Dutch.

As a teacher, Laura has taught violin, voice and ensemble at Newcastle University in England and the University of Limerick in Ireland. She regularly teaches fiddle, voice and dance workshops at many fiddle camps, including Alasdair Fraser's "Valley of the Moon Fiddle School", Mark O'Connor's Nashville Fiddle Camp, Sierra Fiddle Camp in USA, the Folkworks Youth Summer School in Newcastle, UK, as well as Wouter Vandenabeele's "Fiddlers on the Move" in Ghent.

Website : thisislauracortese.com

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Languages : Dutch, English, French