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Bluegrass music celebrated at elementary school assembly

Eric O’Hara, left, and Eric Gibson, of the Gibson Brothers bluegrass band, perform during a music assembly on Jan. 13 in the Lake Placid Elementary School gymnasium. Gibson currenly lives in Brainarsdville, south of Malone, and O’Hara taught Gibson and his brother, Leigh, how to play guitar and banjo at Dick’s Country Store in Churubusco just north of the Adirondack Park in Clinton County in the early 1980s. The Gibson Brothers grew up in Ellenburg Depot. (Provided photo — Alicia Brandes)

LAKE PLACID — Students at Lake Placid Elementary School were treated to a special performance on Friday, Jan. 13 by North Country bluegrass music legends Eric Gibson and Eric O’Hara.

Part of the International Bluegrass Music Association award-winning Gibson Brothers band, they played some of their original songs. O’Hara demonstrated several different guitars and spoke about the history of the slide steel guitar.

This performance was the second in a series of performances organized by Speech-Language Pathologist Vicki Kirchner and Music Teacher Kathy Briggs.

The series is funded by a grant provided by the Lake Placid Educational Opportunity Fund, a fund designed to bridge the economic, social and cultural opportunity gaps facing the students in Lake Placid.

In February, Potsdam-based band Animal Crackers will visit the school with songs for the “young and the young at heart” and will feature several songs the children can sing along with. March will bring David Sommerstein, news director and host of the program “The Beat Authority” from North Country Public Radio, to the school for a Latin music dance party. Later this year, a local African dance and drumming ensemble will perform for the students.

More information about the Lake Placid Central School District’s Educational Opportunity Fund can be found at www.edopfund.org.

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