The North Country Workshop
An Alaskan workshop that reverse-engineered Alan Albright’s wooden harmony ocarinas from the objects, wrote to him, and was taught by him.
The North Country Workshop sold wooden harmony ocarinas from doubleocarina.com — soprano, alto and tenor, each with two chambers, made in Alaska, which is what “North Country” means.
The people who ran the workshop have not been asked about this page. They are not named here, though the site named them — see what the museum holds. Alan Albright’s part of this story is told from his own material, which he gave the museum permission to use. Nothing else from the site is reproduced beyond short quotations.
A harmony ocarina has two chambers played together, so it sounds two notes at once, from one breath. Plenty of makers have offered one, but harmony ocarinas were the only ocarinas this workshop sold.
Its makers first heard the ocarina in the music of Nancy Rumbel and Eric Tingstad, and learned to make them from Alan Albright.
How the workshop learned
Their own About page tells it plainly:
it was the music of Nancy Rumbel and Eric Tingstad that first introduced [them] to the magical sound of the ocarina… Nancy plays several created by Alan Albright. By the time they came upon them, Alan was no longer making these beautiful instruments. They tried others of wood and clay by artisans from North and South America, China to Russia, but none had the appeal as the ones by Alan.
After years of searching and questioning woodworkers, [he] purchased tools and tried to figure out how to reproduce them. Nearly successful, they jubilantly wrote to Nancy and then to Alan to discuss it with them. Alan sent his blessing to them to continue the work and has spent many hours tutoring them on the fine points of woodworking and instrument design.
The high point of this tutelage came about the spring of 2001 when Alan and Nancy spent a week with them in The Woodworkers Dream workshop with expert woodworker John Hartvigson, giving them invaluable experience and guidance.
That is a living transmission, not an influence. A maker who had stopped taught strangers to make his instruments again, in person, and the instruments went back on sale.
The instruments
Four holes per side — three on top and one thumb hole — an octave each, in whatever hardwood was available. And this, from their order pages:
Each instrument varies slightly but is tuned to itself.
Karen Dunster did the same, and shipped a chart saying which key each instrument had landed in.
They also published an Introductory Book for The Double Ocarina, 29 pages, $7.00 — “a collection of suggestions, practice exercises and simple tunes.”
Nancy Rumbel
The workshop sold Tingstad & Rumbel’s Paradise, released October 24, 2000, whose credits list Rumbel on “double alto and tenor Ocarinas”. The credit does not say whose. The album came out before the workshop’s week with Albright in the spring of 2001.
The workshop’s news page, undated, says she played theirs. After a concert in Anchorage: “I was able to work with Nancy once again on the fine art of tuning and it was great fun listening to her play our ocarinas in concert!”
Chronology
Dates the museum has been able to establish, and where each comes from.
| — | A couple in Anchorage hear the Tingstad and Rumbel recordings and go looking for the instrument, a double-chamber harmony ocarina; Albright has stopped making them | the workshop’s About page; album credits |
| — | They try other ocarinas of wood and clay, by makers “from North and South America, China to Russia”, and none satisfy | the workshop’s About page |
| — | One of them buys tools and works out how Albright’s were made, from the objects | the workshop’s About page |
| — | They write to Rumbel, then to Albright. Albright sends his blessing and begins tutoring them | the workshop’s About page |
| 1997–2001 | Albright, in his own words, passes on “trade secrets” to the workshop | Albright’s caption in Alan Albright and His Ocarinas: Part 3 |
| spring 2001 | Albright and Rumbel spend a week at The Woodworker’s Dream workshop in Alaska with the woodworker John Hartvigson | the workshop’s About page |
| after 2001 | Hartvigson joins them, and the wooden harmony ocarinas are made again | the workshop’s About page |
| Apr 2002 – Sep 2022 | The Internet Archive captures the workshop’s site at doubleocarina.com | the Archive’s capture index |
| by May 2024 | doubleocarina.com is serving gambling spam in Hindi and Bengali. It is no longer the workshop’s site | the Archive’s captures of the domain |
What the museum holds of doubleocarina.com, and on what terms: The North Country Workshop.