Matt Munisteri

Matt Munisteri is a critically acclaimed guitarist, singer, and songwriter known for his mastery of American roots music, jazz, and blues. As Artistic Director of the Red Hot Strings program, Matt brings together leading string players from various genres to offer a broad exploration of string music. His teaching focuses on the fusion of traditional forms with innovative playing techniques, encouraging students to push musical boundaries.

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2026 Artist Faculty

Maxwell Apra

Mandolin

Maxwell is a New Orleans-based, internationally recognized multi-instrumentalist performer and music teacher. Specializing in mandolin and banjo, Maxwell began his training in California and then spent several years busking professionally in New Orleans’ city streets and night clubs, integrating himself into a rich and diverse array of musical styles including jug band, ragtime, jazz and little-known catalogue of traditional Italian mandolin music.…

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Grant Gordy

Guitar

For many guitarists, landing a gig with bluegrass mandolinist David Grisman’s groundbreaking bluegrass/jazz quintet would be the culmination of a career in music. But for Grant Gordy, it was more of a beginning, an apprenticeship in combining bluegrass and jazz that served as a launchpad for his own music. How far he has traveled since then can be heard on Peripheral Visions, his stunning new quartet recording and welcome successor to his eponymous 2010 debut.…

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Jen Hodge

Bass

Jen Hodge is a Grammy-nominated bass player, currently living in New York City and originally hailing from British Columbia, Canada. A versatile and passionate musician, Jen is in high demand for her rock-solid bass playing, her consummate professionalism, and for the warm, infectious spirit she brings to the bandstand. Jen is a fixture of NYC’s hot jazz community, frequently featuring in the house band for the long-running Mona’s Tuesday Night Hot Jazz jam session hosted by multi-instrumentalist Dennis Lichtman, and performing with such artists as Bria Skonberg, The Hot Sardines, Jon-Erik Kellso & The EarRegulars, Cynthia Sayer, and Danny Jonokuchi & The Revisionists.…

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Tyler Jackson

Tenor Banjo

Tyler Jackson is a world renown tenor banjoist and upright bassist. Under the tutelage of Buddy Griffin, Tyler quickly learned the ukulele, tenor banjo, and electric bass. Tyler went on to study the double bass at the University of North Texas under Lynn Seaton and began to fine-tune his skills as a professional bassist.

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Dennis Lichtman

Mandolin

Dennis Lichtman is a multi-instrumentalist (clarinet, mandolin, fiddle, and more) who has been living, performing, composing, and teaching in New York City since 2002. He is a Selmer Paris Artist as an endorser of their Signature Clarinet. His music was recently used in director David Simon’s The Plot Against America (HBO) and he has appeared this year as a clarinetist on Succession (HBO) and The Blacklist (NBC).…

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Dale Morris, Jr.

Violin

Dale Morris, Jr. began playing violin at age three. By the time he was ten years old, he began his professional career performing with the Bar-D Wranglers at the Bar-D Chuck Wagon Supper and Western Show in Durango Colorado. He performed there for the next three summers alongside his father, Dale Morris, Sr.…

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Molly Reeves

Guitar

Raconteur of song Molly Reeves is a performer and adorer of early 20th-century American music. Molly is known globally for her enigmatic approach to rhythm guitar and her ability to invoke the idiomatic tone and language of 1920s and 30s acoustic guitar players. A crooner by nature, her dynamic and warm vocal stylings echo popular singers and storytellers of yesteryear.…

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Don Vappie

Banjo

Don Vappie, musician / composer / educator, is the 2021 Steve Martin Banjo Prize Winner and was inducted into the Banjo Hall of Fame in 2022. In addition, he has received awards for his contributions to the preservation of New Orleans Creole Culture through music and film. He has produced 7 of his own albums, co-produced and starred in a PBS documentary, performed as a featured artist with orchestras on movie and television soundtracks, and at concerts and festivals around the world.…

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Craig Ventresco

Guitar

Craig Ventresco is a San Francisco-based guitarist and revivalist of early 20th Century jazz, pop, and folk material. He grew up in Maine, but established himself as a guitarist specializing in older styles of American popular music by playing on the street every day for tips in San Francisco, beginning in the late 1980’s.…

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Jeremy Wakefield

Steel Guitar

Jeremy Wakefield is a steel guitarist and composer living and working in Portland, Oregon. He first discovered the sound of the steel guitar coming out of a thing called a radio, on the kitchen table of his grandparents’ South Dakota home. Jeremy has recorded and performed live with a multitude of Western Swing, Country and Lounge artists , but is probably most known for his background compositions in the SpongeBob SquarePants series. He also enjoys writing descriptions of himself in the third person.

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Participants learn “knee-to-knee,” intimate sessions with diverse instruments and artist faculty. Daily classroom instruction covers traditional hot jazz styles, songs, as well as technical skills and how to play well with others. Each evening, participants enjoy faculty concerts, chats, and jam sessions. 

Most artist faculty teach two one-hour instrument sessions daily. Sessions are in various styles and techniques and focus on certain traditional methods. Instrumentation includes guitar, mandolin, violin, bass, banjo, and steel guitar. Ensembles gather in the afternoon.

At the end of the week, the artist faculty take to the stage and share in performance a festive celebration of the traditions they carry as well as their own music and styles. Your tuition includes a front row seat at this performance.

CLASS DRESCRIPTIONS

Don Vappie - Tenor Banjo
NEW ORLEANS BANJO - Chord Melody
Will will learn to play a song as a chord melody using a mix of the following lessons:
(Note: Reading music is a plus; listening is a must!)
1) Basic chord shapes and inversions - major, minor, diminished; chord extensions (6, 7, 9, 13); applying these inversions and extensions to play chord melodies. 

2) Picking (right hand technique) - strumming traditional comping patterns; flat picking ascending rolls; using rolls to sustain long notes.

THE CREOLE BANJO OF NEW ORLEANS
With an understanding of basic chords we will learn to play Creole style syncopation. We’ll also look at how to play in an ensemble - how to be part of the musical conversation, and especially listening to the ensemble, basically how to make the band sound better. We’ll get into stylistic comping, applying arpeggiating and inversions to make more interesting comping, and we’ll learn more about each instrument’s role in an ensemble, and how the banjo can cover what might be missing.

Jen Hodge - Bass
SOUND AND SPACE
Come explore rhythmic variations and how they affect the groove of a song. Starting with the very basics and building in complexity, you'll learn how to craft some tasty bass-lines that honor the form and flavor of the tune.

SOLOING STRATEGIES (open to all instruments)
Where do solos come from? How do you pick notes? How do you make it sound good? In this safe space, among other curious souls, you'll learn concrete soloing strategies that will lower the trepidation around improvisation. If you've been avoiding playing solos (perhaps by becoming a bass player), come to this class and free your creativity around this essential component of jazz.

Jeremy Wakefield - Steel
TAILGATING AND OTHER INFRACTIONS
This class will be about finding melodies, both as a lead instrument and (especially!) as a supporting instrument. We’ll explore jazz horn styles as emulated by steel guitar (and vice-versa!) to find single-note melodies, build chord melody lines, and employ melody fragments in intros, outros and off-the-cuff solos. Key to this will be woking on some early jazz and swing “tailgate” trombone lines ala Kid Ory and Jack Teagarten, and exploring the influence of horn players on Bon Dunn, Alvino Rey & others.

JAZZ CHORDS FOR STEEL GUITAR
Finding all the chords you need to play jazz and swing standards- within the limitations of your non-pedal tuning. If a chord won’t be found, then we’ll learn how it can be implied! We’ll break down the structures of common chord voicings up and down the fretboard, and look at hw you can move easily between them.

Molly Reeves - Guitar
JOY IN RHYTHM
In this class we will interact with creative concepts, exercises, and games to incite our joy and drive for playing rhythm. This is a hands on quarter note calibration accessible and beneficial for all levels of playing.

EARLY JAZZ GUITAR - YOUR VOICE IN AN IDIOM
This class aims to illuminate a path towards your unique expression within the early jazz idiom. We will equip ourselves with the essential tools and techniques of the early guitar greats, traverse through the definitive recordings of the era, and map out fulfilling practices that align with our desires.

Dennis Lichtman - Mandolin
JETHRO BURNS SOLO & DUO RECORDINGS DEEP DIVE
Every single track on "Tea For One" and Burns' three full-length duo albums on Acoustic Disc is a master-class in swing mandolin.  We'll do a hands-on, ears-open deep dive into Burns' approach to arranging and playing jazz standards in solo and duo settings.  Every track provides a lifetime of study material - let's dive in!

SWING MANDOLIN ACCOMPANIMENT AND RHYTHM
Good accompaniment ("comping") is harder and more complex than good soloing!  Let's explore ways to make your comping more interesting, grooving, and interactive with the soloist and the rest of the band.  We'll explore left-hand (i.e. chord shapes and sequences) and right-hand (i.e. strumming patterns and accents) techniques using commonly played jazz standards as the framework.

Maxwell Apra - Mandolin
THE ITALIAN MANDOLIN IN AMERICA
Rooted in the tradition of Ballo Liscio, this session explores repertoire from Italian immigrant communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Meaning “smooth dance,” ballo liscio emerged in the Emilia-Romagna region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is known for its fluid, gliding style. Participants will learn one or two tunes associated with musicians such as Tony Flores, Ricardo Tunzi, and the Andrini Brothers, whose playing helped sustain this social dance music within Italian American communities in California and beyond.

SOUTHERN STRING BANDS SURVEY - from rags to jazz (open to all instruments) This workshop explores the repertoire and cultural role of New Orleans string bands between the 1890s and 1920s. Participants will examine a selection of rags and late 19th and early 20th century popular tunes associated with local string band style while also learning about to the social settings in which this music thrived. From rent parties and fish fries to picnics and neighborhood gatherings, string bands were a central part of community life, providing the soundtrack to everyday celebrations and mutual support within the city’s Black communities. This class welcomes all instruments.

Grant Gordy - guitar
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF GUITAR SOLOING
A good sounding solo -no matter the style of music- is nearly always operating using certain simple musical principles, whether we know it or not. As that old saying goes, “simple ain’t easy,” but when we begin to get a handle on the basic architecture at the nexus of rhythm, harmony and melody, it can be deeply impactful for our own playing, whether we’re more into fiddle tunes, western swing or the Great American Songbook. In addition to the raw material of musical structure, we’ll also consider some technical aspects unique to the guitar, like tone production, picking hand technique and fingering choice.

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF RHYTHM (open to all instruments)
Not “rhythm” as in “rhythm guitar,” but Capital R Rhythm! Rhythm is the primeval factor in all music. In this class we will learn some effective ways to attenuate our sense of time, strengthen our internal pulse and even train our ears in the process. Taking some time to give Rhythm some special consideration, my hope is that you’ll come away with a new appreciation for how it’s at the heart of all things musical, how important it is for all of us to work on it, and you’ll go home with some new techniques for hitting the woodshed.

Matt Munisteri - guitar
RIFFS AND THE ROOTED SOLO (open to all instruments)
This is class for ear training and for absorbing the language of Swing and Early Jazz soloing. Rather than thinking of what scales, modes or arpeggios go with what harmonic structure, we’re going to work on hearing and playing back melodic riffs and lines - starting simple and getting more complex - while applying them to the chord changes of a blues, “Lady Be Good” and “Roseroom”. The idea will be to look at soloing ideas that are rooted in The Blues and aural traditions, as we learn to recognize key intervals, instead of thinking “Oh goody - now I get to play the fourth mode of the Harmonic Minor Scale!”

CHORD/MELODY EZ SHORTCUTS
Chord/Melody guitar playing - both solos and songs - is dependent on having a lots of “go-to” licks at the ready. The idea isn’t just to move between chords; you want lay harmonized melodies, and ‘jazz lines”, and whether you’re a beginner at the style or advanced, this requires that your fingerings have to be impeccable…immaculate…unimpeachable - or your fingers are gonna wind up in traction. We’re going to learn a bunch of my FAVORITE chord/melody licks for navigating common swinging chord changes. Are They really EZ? No. Is there ever really such a thing as a short cut? Sorta. It’s gonna be something of a finger-buster, so it’s a class for advanced guitar players.

Tyler Jackson - tenor guitar/banjo
THE TENOR GUITAR AND TEXAS
This class will focus on the basics of playing rhythm tenor guitar in traditional Texas fiddle music. Students will learn authentic chord inversions and strum patterns, with a focus on applying these skills to popular tunes in the genre. A portion of the class will also be spent listening to examples of well-known tenor guitar players in the genre. Handouts will be provided.

SOLO STYLE TENOR BANJO
Take your playing to the next level by studying the masters of the past AND the masters of the present. Students will be given arrangements to learn that focus on both single-string and chord melody solos in the style of Harry Reser, Perry Bechtel, and Eddie Peabody. Improvisation, both single-string and chordal styles, will be covered as well. Proper technique will be a major focus in our classes. Everything from figuring out difficult fingerings to mastering advanced right and left hand technique will be tackled. If you're serious about the tenor banjo then you don't want to miss this!

Craig Ventresco
HELPFUL HINTS FOR HEAD ARRANGMENTS
A head arraignment is a simple version of a song incorporating melody/harmonies/rhythms, and they’re often thrown together on the fly. We’ll take a song that we all know and come up with various ideas that will make it sound good as a head arrangement.
(This is a good class for the player who has been playing a song for a minute and a half and wants to make it four minutes long.)

GUITAR ACCOMPANIMENT
We’ll talk about different ways for guitarists to approach playing accompaniment for both singers and instrumentalists using songs we all know and love as examples. The accompanist wants to play things that are ear-catching and have a persona stamp, yet yet not stomp on the voice playing the melody. We’ll look at incorporating bass lines, runs, and passing chords so we can enhance the singer or instrumentalist’s performance.

Dale Morris Jr.
SWING FIDDLE SURVEY
This class will serve as an introduction to the originators of swing violin. We’ll discuss the pioneers of this genre including Stephane Venuti, Joe Grappelli, Stuff Smith, Keith Coleman, Johnny Gimble, etc. We’ll note unique features of their individual styles and compare their approaches. As the class progresses, we’ll look more at fundamentals for advancing your own swing playing, and I’ll introduce my 4x4 exercise for fingerboard familiarity.

THE IMPROVISING VIOLINIST
Improvisation is our subject, and that will be reflected in the way we learn: We’re going to learn a couple of old jazz standards by ear as a class, without written music. Once we have the tunes under our fingers, we’re doing to make sure we understand how they work, by spending time reviewing their melodic and harmonic structures, before playing over them and doing a deeper dive into the art of improvisation over song structures.

2026 Schedule

You have your choice of four daily one-hour class sessions on Thursday and Friday. Ensembles practice in the late afternoons. In the evenings, artist faculty present special topics and performances. Toward or on the weekend, ensembles perform, and on Saturday evening, artist faculty present a public performance. Playing music together happens in between everything else, sometimes replacing sleep.

Here is how you’ll spend your time:

FIRST DAY 
4–5:30pm – Check-in, Centrum office 
6–8pm – Dinner 
8pm – Orientation 

THURSDAY-SATURDAY 
Most artist faculty teach two one-hour instrument sessions on Thursday and Friday and one on Saturday. Sessions in various styles and techniques focus on certain styles and Tradition Bearers. Instrumentation includes guitar, mandolin, violin, bass, banjo, and steel guitar. Evenings include events and performances, planned and spontaneous jams.

There is no age or skill restriction however, to get the most out of the intensive, one should be familiar with your instrument and be able to move about at a good clip.

Workshops are created for guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, steel guitar, and upright bass players.

Most of our workshops are family events, and we welcome musicians of all ages and abilities to participate. Our programming has annually evolved to meet the needs of very young musicians, and we devote considerable resources to this end.

Info for Parents of Under-18 Participants
If under 18 and participating in the workshop, a parent or guardian over 21 years old must register and accompany the minor. If the parent or guardian is not participating in the workshop, there is a registration type for guardian with no cost. However, if the minor is staying on campus in the dorm, the parent or guardian will need to also stay on campus in the dorm, and there are costs associated with those accommodations.

Centrum has a variety of ways to be able to attend our workshops even if you’re on a budget. If you need financial assistance, Centrum has a robust scholarship program awarded on a first-come, first-served; and as-needed basis. 

COSTS 

• Tuition: $540. (non-refundable deposit to hold your place $100) 

• Tuition Under-18: $440. (non-refundable deposit to hold your place $100) 

• Room & board: $565. 

• Meals only: $290. 

• Airport shuttle (optional): $120. round trip or $60. one way 

Workshop tuition includes admission to everything including great seats at the public performance on Saturday night. Your meal ticket is good for three meals per day starting with dinner Wednesday, May 13, ending with breakfast Sunday, May 17. 

To get the best musical community experience, we encourage you to stay in either a quiet dorm room in Building 225, or a jam dorm room for those who wish to keep the music going. Both options have private rooms and shared bathrooms.  

All rooms come with linens, blankets, and towels, but you should plan on bringing soap and personal toiletry items. 

RED HOT STRINGS - FAQ

Scholarships

Apply online as you register. Please note that except in rare cases, scholarships are available for tuition only. Centrum requires a $50 deposit of scholarship applicants, which is fully refundable before April 8, 2026, if you are unable to attend. If you are interested in volunteering, or a work trade position, please contact Mary Hilts at mhilts@centrum (dot) org.

Cancellation/Refund Policy

Full payment is due by April 8, 2026. If your full payment is not made by April 8, 2026, your registration will be canceled; $100 of your deposit is nonrefundable. 
Any fee that includes a room: no refunds available after April 8, 2026. 

Meals

If you have purchased a meal plan, meals are served at Fort Worden Commons. The first meal is dinner on Wednesday, May 13; the last meal is breakfast on Sunday, May 17, 2026.

Red Hot Strings Shuttle Schedule

ARRIVE – Wednesday, May 13, 2026, pick-up at Sea/Tac airport, 2:00pm, Pacific Time.

(book your arriving flight to land no later than 1:00pm)

DEPART – Sunday, May 17, 2026, depart Centrum, 9:00am sharp, Pacific Time.

(book your departing flight to leave no earlier than 1:00pm)

If we haven’t answered all of the questions you may have, please contact Mary Hilts at 360-385-3102, x116, or mhilts@centrum (dot) org. 

2026 RED HOT STRINGS CONCERT  

Saturday, May 16, 2026 
7:30 p.m. 
Wheeler Theater 

Featuring: Artistic Director Matt Munisteri, guitar; Craig Ventresco, guitar; Dennis Lichtman, mandolin and clarinet; Dale Morris Jr., violin; Jeremy Wakefield, steel guitar; Maxwell Poulos, mandolin; Don Vappie, banjo; Molly Reeves, guitar; Tyler Jackson, banjo; Grant Gordy, guitar; and Jen Hodge, bass.