OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Sixty Nine FIDDLING

In fourth grade I sat in the wood floored gym of the Hardy School on Weston Rd in Wellesley, MA, with walls covered with blue mats and climbing ropes, and watched a whole troupe of musicians play their instruments for the impressionable crowd of my contemporaries from the middle class Irish/Italian neighborhood where we lived in our WASPy town.   There was a trumpet and a clarinet and no doubt a drummer, but I was transfixed when Mrs. Sleigh hauled out her violin and played "My Wild Irish Rose."   Nothing had sung to my 10-year-old heart quite like that and few things have ever since.   I went home determined to take lessons and had definite dreams of becoming a soloist.   How the wide eyed become educated.   Mrs. Sleigh was my first teacher and lessons commenced during library hour in a spare supply closet full of dusty chalk board and erasers.

But one doesn't become a concert master or soloist on a $100 violin from the local music shop or with a small town teacher using A Tune A Day in the supply closet.   I began to realize it was hard work and didn't much like to practice.   To make matters worse my brothers made so much fun of me I had to lock myself in the bathroom to play at all.   There was also the stigma of carrying that case to school every Tuesday. "Watcha got in there kid?  A machine gun?  Ha Ha."   It's still my least favorite day of the week.   But I stuck with it through junior high orchestra and eventually had a teacher in high school who was mean enough to tell me, "You just won't get any better unless you have a better instrument."   That was not in the cards so I quit and then 20 years later had small children who wanted to play.  Having raised a classical cellist, I now have a better understanding of what goes into the making a of a young musician.  I took up violin again myself when the kids were in high school and have been with my wonderful 95 year old violin teacher for ten years.  He had patience and humor enough to stretch me, teach me scales and have me play Bach, Mozart, Shubert, Hayden, Mendelssohn, Frank and much more.  Real music.  It does delight my heart, but it is hard work and I often feel more of the urge to just play.

As an adult my dream has been to become a fiddler and that has seemed as illusive as the young girl imaging her life as a soloist.  Several years of lessons and fiddle camps and I'm still no natural, but last night I went to my fiddle teacher's home for a party and jammed with some amazing musicians - even if it was just hitting the base chords.   What a thrill.

Today one of those musicians gave a workshop in Cajun fiddling and singing at The Tompkins Corners Cultural Center at 729 Peekskill Hollow Road in Putnam Valley, NY.   I don't know if it was the rhythm or the clear break down of the tune by David Greely, but I had no trouble keeping up and had a blast.   He's a student of master Cajun fiddler Dewey Balfa and came up from Louisiana just for the weekend.

David Greely Cajun Fiddler

Tompkins Corners Cultural Center has a whole line up of great music going on all summer.

Check it out:   www.tompkinscorners.org - info@tompkinscorners.org - facebook.com/tompkinscorners 

@tompkinscorners