Instructors
Award winning, world-class instructors join us from all corners of the globe including the USA, Scotland, Ireland, Cape Breton and our very own, Vancouver Island.
Click on the subject below to see this year’s instructors and check back frequently for more instructors join us daily!
Dancing: Irish, Highland, Step & Ceilidh
Dancing: Irish, Highland, Step & Ceilidh
Rose Fearon -Irish Dance
Born in Toronto, Canada, Rose Fearon, ADCRG, started Irish dancing at age six. Her first teacher was Noreen Quinn, from...
Mairi Rankin
Mairi joined the Outside Track, her current band, at the beginning of the Canadian tour in 2009, with whom Mairi is now committed full-time. One of the hugely influential Rankin Family - legends on the Canadian music scene - she plays fiddle, sings and also...
Ailie Robertson
Ailie Robertson from Edinburgh is widely regarded as one of Scotland's leading young traditional musicians. She is a musician in the broadest sense: composer, arranger, teacher, improviser and harp virtuoso. Her accomplishment on the clarsach is such that...
Sandra Acton
Sandra has a background in ballet, modern dance, pilates, biodynamic cranial/sacral therapy and Yoga. After receiving a B.A. in Dance from Simon Fraser University, she worked as a dancer and choreographer for many years....
Cillian O'Dalaigh
Born In Hamburg, Germany to a German mother and an Irish father, Cillian O'Dálaigh has been surrounded by Irish music from day one. Cillian's father played with Irish band, Cromlach and Cillian learned from him - and learned well.
The family moved to...
Carolyn Phillips Cusson-Artistic Director
Carolyn is a Member of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing and is on the Judges' Panel of the Scottish Official Board of Highland Dancing. Having moved from Toronto, as a former Ontario Provincial Highland Dance champion, and Canadian Inter-...
Jennifer Stephenson
Jennifer Stephenson started her dance career at age six and competed for over twenty years. She has performed throughout North America and in Scotland, and represented the province of Quebec numerous times at the Canadian Championships.
Jennifer...
Owen Barrington
2008 Senior Men's World Irish Dance Champion, Owen Barrington, is one of the most sought after Irish dance performers in the world today. He was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and achieved a milestone in 2008 by winning both the All Ireland and the...
Fiddle
Fiddle
Mairi Rankin
Mairi joined the Outside Track, her current band, at the beginning of the Canadian tour in 2009, with whom Mairi is now committed full-time. One of the hugely influential Rankin Family - legends on the Canadian music scene - she plays fiddle, sings and also...
Trent Freeman
Though Trent is not a stranger to CeltFest, and has graced our evening stages and performed to accompany dancers, this is his first time as a CeltFest instructor. Trent was born and raised in the Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island in BC, and grew up in a...
Geoff Horrocks
Geoff Horrocks has earned a reputation as one of the premier pianists in the Canadian fiddle community, and is also quickly becoming recognized for his vocal performances of standard ballads of the 1930s...
Trish Clair-Peck
Originally from Courtenay, BC, Trish studied violin performance with Gwen Thompson and Robert Skelton at the University of Western Ontario, where she also did graduate work in Musicology under Serge Lacasse and Keir Keightley. As a classical violinist and...
Penny Whistle
Penny Whistle
Martin Nolan
Martin Nolan's uilleann piping has taken him throughout Europe and the UK, India, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada, from the Lincoln Center for the Arts in New York to the national theatres of Ireland and England and concert halls across the Indian...
Norah Rendell
The Stornoway Gazette wrote, "Her singing left me goose-pimpled all over - a sure sign of a gutsy, emotional delivery laced with meaning and pathos". Nominated as Traditional Singer of the Year for the Canadian Folk Music Awards 2008, Norah not only sings,...
Uilleann Pipes/Other Woodwinds
Uilleann Pipes/Other Woodwinds
Martin Nolan
Martin Nolan's uilleann piping has taken him throughout Europe and the UK, India, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada, from the Lincoln Center for the Arts in New York to the national theatres of Ireland and England and concert halls across the Indian...
Alan Walters
Alan Walters is a full-time piping professional from Vancouver, B.C. He currently instructs, competes, and pipes for Highland Dancers. Alan has released a Scottish Small Pipe C.D. for competitive dancers entitled "Strictly Time". He is also well known...
Piping and Drumming
Piping and Drumming
Ken Eller
Champion piper, world-renowned pipe major, teacher and RSPBA adjudicator, Ken Eller is also known as "The Captain". In his 40 year piping career at the Grade 1 level he has been 15 times a winner of the North American Pipe Band Championships with two bands:...
Rene (RPF) Cusson
A school teacher by profession, René (R P F) Cusson from Nanaimo, BC, on Vancouver Island, is in regular and popular demand as a piping teacher, recitalist, adjudicator, dance piper and composer. He has many years of experience in teaching, organising and...
Alan Walters
Alan Walters is a full-time piping professional from Vancouver, B.C. He currently instructs, competes, and pipes for Highland Dancers. Alan has released a Scottish Small Pipe C.D. for competitive dancers entitled "Strictly Time". He is also well known...
James P. Troy
James began both piping and drumming at age six, studying piping with his father, James W. Troy, and drumming with his uncle, Colin Magee. He joined his first band, the renowned City of Victoria Pipe Band, at age 11, and has since been a member of the Peel...
Alex Gandy
As an Economics student at St. Mary's University (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada), Alex has been keeping with his studies as well as some major contests, both solo and as a band mate.
He began piping at age ten and had the good fortune of family...
Celtic Art and Crafts
Celtic Art and Crafts
Eileen McGann
2002 Juno nominee Eileen McGann is widely acclaimed as one of the best contemporary Canadian songwriters, as well as one of the finest Celtic traditional singers anywhere. Add to this a dynamic performance style, an...
Fiona Black
From the Highland village of Evanton, Fiona Black developed a love of music and dance from a young age. The feisean movement provided her the opportunity to nurture her passion through learning to play the piano accordion. Fiona went on to attend the National...
Celtic Song & Gaelic Language
Celtic Song & Gaelic Language
Eileen McGann
2002 Juno nominee Eileen McGann is widely acclaimed as one of the best contemporary Canadian songwriters, as well as one of the finest Celtic traditional singers anywhere. Add to this a dynamic performance style, an...
Mary Mc Laughlin
Born and raised in Northern Ireland, Mary Mc Laughlin has been performing, teaching writing and recording original and traditional songs (in both English and Irish Gaelic) for many years.
Mary appears on over twelve recordings including the highly...
Norah Rendell
The Stornoway Gazette wrote, "Her singing left me goose-pimpled all over - a sure sign of a gutsy, emotional delivery laced with meaning and pathos". Nominated as Traditional Singer of the Year for the Canadian Folk Music Awards 2008, Norah not only sings,...
Cillian O'Dalaigh
Born In Hamburg, Germany to a German mother and an Irish father, Cillian O'Dálaigh has been surrounded by Irish music from day one. Cillian's father played with Irish band, Cromlach and Cillian learned from him - and learned well.
The family moved to...
John Beaton
John Beaton was raised in the Highlands of Scotland and lives on an acreage in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, Canada. An actuary by profession, he is now retired from a career as a corporate executive in the pensions industry. He and his wife have...
Celtic Harp
Celtic Harp
Ailie Robertson
Ailie Robertson from Edinburgh is widely regarded as one of Scotland's leading young traditional musicians. She is a musician in the broadest sense: composer, arranger, teacher, improviser and harp virtuoso. Her accomplishment on the clarsach is such that...
Health and Wellness
Health and Wellness
Sandra Acton
Sandra has a background in ballet, modern dance, pilates, biodynamic cranial/sacral therapy and Yoga. After receiving a B.A. in Dance from Simon Fraser University, she worked as a dancer and choreographer for many years....
Guitar
Guitar
Cillian O'Dalaigh
Born In Hamburg, Germany to a German mother and an Irish father, Cillian O'Dálaigh has been surrounded by Irish music from day one. Cillian's father played with Irish band, Cromlach and Cillian learned from him - and learned well.
The family moved to...
Piano
Piano
Geoff Horrocks
Geoff Horrocks has earned a reputation as one of the premier pianists in the Canadian fiddle community, and is also quickly becoming recognized for his vocal performances of standard ballads of the 1930s...
Bodhran/Percussion
Bodhran/Percussion
James P. Troy
James began both piping and drumming at age six, studying piping with his father, James W. Troy, and drumming with his uncle, Colin Magee. He joined his first band, the renowned City of Victoria Pipe Band, at age 11, and has since been a member of the Peel...
Accordion
Accordion
Fiona Black
From the Highland village of Evanton, Fiona Black developed a love of music and dance from a young age. The feisean movement provided her the opportunity to nurture her passion through learning to play the piano accordion. Fiona went on to attend the National...
