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Fiddlin' Frenzy

Tag Archives: Stringed

Nanny Music #30 – I want that gold

08 Friday Mar 2013

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aladdin, Arts, Bowed Strings, Cello, competition, Jasmine, Lia, Music, Stringed, Violin

Even I just tell her to do her best, this was what Lia told me before the classical violin competition. Turn out she got two gold medals, a bursary and one trophy proves she is the best in the division and the other one to show she had the best quality of performance in the whole competition. And she got invited to the Honours Concert and a chance to compete in the provincial competition. It all start with a ridiculous competition Lia as Jasmine in Aladdin which let cellist compete with violinist judged by an adjudicator knows nothing about cello. No matter how good the cellist is the violin music always sounds harder and more appealing. Lia played cello that time and lost to a violin player who seems not Princess-Jasmine-aladdin-7075721-577-800handle the music piece well. She didn’t gave up, and determine to do better in violin competition after that.

The mind power drive her to reach far, not only winning. When she played you can see how the determination pull her whole strength and concentration into the music. You can also see her close her eyes to put her whole mind in the beautiful world of music.

Same mind power get her the first trumpet position in school honor band and the academic honor roll and lead actress in biennial musical play. The perfection she try to reach is much more meaningful to her than all the honors she got. after she got all A’s on the report card she still work very hard on the test. I asked, don’t you get an A on that subject already. She replied,”I want to be better.” Yes, her thirst for perfection is always pushing her forward.

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Nanny Music #26 – learn to be a leader

17 Wednesday Oct 2012

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Arts, conductor, Fiddle, Jam session, Kai, leader, Lia, Music, practice fiddle club, Sight reading, Stringed, Teacher, teaching leader, Violin

Kai joined one of the fiddle club practice without Lia, the club president asked him to lead some tunes. Count in, arrange the pick up, show other member how to play when they are not familiar with the arrangement. Even play harmony for most of the tunes. And there is a moment let my heart skipped a little. She asked Kai to record a tune so others can take it home and learn. The song is not very hard but Kai never heard it before, all he have is the sheet music he get a few minutes before the request. He played perfectly with vibrato just by sight-reading right after the request, the recording is once through. And when he plays harmony by request he make it up on spot too. Hmm, the only other fiddlers who done it before are either teachers or being play like mature player for a long time. Kai is only 14. And no, he is not genius, he learned how to do it from jam session in the fiddle camp, his fiddle buddies.

Sometime, experience come from trying, like Kai learned composition from the camp workshop, and figure things out when he have brain storm jamming with friends., even just doodling around. And you will never know when or where any request will pop out. Like in the club, he need to be a teacher, leader and conductor or composer. I am happy he took the challenge with an ease and enjoyed it too. The main hing is that he is ready, and all the effort worth it.

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Nanny Music # 19 – Believe in yourself

17 Wednesday Aug 2011

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Arts, Fiddle, grand master competition, Lia, Music, National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest, Stringed, Violin

There are times judges in the contest don’t like Kai and Lia music style, or give other young fiddler more points because of her smile. But when they join the contest that has best fiddlers from the whole country and best judges who are in the hall of fame. you know it’s the real test. This summer they went through one of this kind of fiddle contest. Kai was the youngest in his category and there are some fiddlers in the same group who are almost winning every contest and were invited to compete in Canadian Grand Master Fiddle Competition. We were not keeping any extra hope or giving up, just wish him do his best. After a year of practice and analyzed the songs, there is not much they can do in a couple of nights except listen to the original recording one more time and double check every equipments. The result, both Kai and Lia won first in all categories they joined.
Despite how good they played, we found that because they were not nervous and able to perform at their best. They were not over pride of themselves, nor intimidated by the other fiddlers. And there you go, they proved what they really can do. Never take one lost too serious is the key to get them going. And always review after contests give them content to improve. Nothing is impossible.

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Nanny Music #16- double blast

27 Friday May 2011

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Art, Arts, Au pair, Cello, Childcare, Daniel Lapp, Family, Fiddle, Lia, Music, Nanny, Stringed, Violin

Firework

Image via Wikipedia

Lia‘s teacher email us an exciting email said, “Lia is really starting to blossom on the cello! She looks like a little pro, which means she is starting to sound like a little pro.” And there is a famous fiddler Daniel Lapp comment on her score sheet in a fiddle contest with one word, ‘Wow!’ Sometime people think she should concentrate learning one instrument, but why? If she can handle both violin and cello and do both in the pro level, why not continue both. quit anyone will be a lost for her. There is time we need to be forced to make choice but do you really want to if you don’t need to?

Even violin and cello are quite different in playing method, the two instruments have some similarities. And Lia is not just manage the differences well, she is also able to take advantage from each instrument to make both sound better. While playing cello make her fingers stronger to play on violin, the lilt style she got from fiddling make her cello playing really stand out. So have double skills isn’t a bad thing, is it?

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Nanny Music #14- An Everyday Thing

03 Tuesday May 2011

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Arts, Bowed Strings, Canada, Fiddle, Lia, Music, Nanny, Stringed

Here is what they do before bed. While try to learn a song from Calvin Vollrath (Olympic composer, Canadian fiddle master) video, arguing who got the right notes and who plays the right style, and Kai added:” I am so see Jane jams this with us.” The other day when i asked Kai to practice violin, he replied, ” I want to play Calvin’s tunes.” There is many other days, you would hear Kai or Lia called from the room they practice very excitedly, ” Hear this, I made a new song.” Wherever they saw an instrument they want to try it, no matter it’s in the store or at the green room or even in front of the festival crowd. You will hear Lia plays some classical pieces randomly when she is taking a break between the performance sets, you will see Kai banging on a guitar from friend’s house, or watch them singing in harmony during a car ride even they never get training of it. So how to keep them going? It’s an everyday thing, would be my answer.

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Nanny Music #11- Deeper understanding

21 Monday Feb 2011

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Arts, Bowed Strings, Classical music, Fiddle, Folk music, Music, Stringed, Violin

Ashley MacIsaac‘s fiddling gave me a vivid image of a Scottish hornpipe player dancing with his kilt. And you certainly will shuffle your feet with Andy De Jalis metis bouncing music. Fiddle music can have so many varieties of style. It is not just some simple folk songs like some classical musician think it is. There are classical players think they can play fiddle by just play fast and smooth, for the people in the fiddle world, this is just wrong. The accent, lilt and jiggedy take some knowledge and experience to figure out. And most important, you have to feel it. When you put the accent on the wrong spot, it might still sound amazing to ordinary audience, but sure would get the fiddle lovers plug their ears.  Many music teachers hate to have kids learn fiddle music. In they imagination, all fiddlers have bad posture, never wipe their fiddle and scratch as hell. Well, once a while I saw fiddlers like that, but most good fiddlers know the good posture and care of their fiddle can make the music sounds better. Who won’t like more pleasant sound? One professional violinist commend on our myspace page, she tried to play fiddle and she can’t manage it well and she wish she know fiddle music as early as Kai and Lia. I am sure to normal people she can play the fiddle songs very good, deep down she knew it is not as easy as it sounds. Fiddle Frenzy take their classical and fiddle training equal serious. I hope this crossover experience teach them not to bias on anything before complete understanding.

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Nanny Music #8-Forgotten strings

27 Thursday Jan 2011

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Arts, Beautiful music, Bowed Strings, Forgotten strings recall Holocaust horror, Germans, Israel, Lia, Music, New Year's Day, Red Army, Red Violin, Shlomo Mintz, Stringed, Violin

http://www.violinsofhope.org

The Motele’s Violin from Violins of Hope

Imagine a sleeping child hugging a violin, somewhere at the foot of a big oak tree, at the edge of a forest. The picture is so serene that you almost forget the year is 1944 and that the forest is on the Ukrainian – Byelorussian border.

The Jewish partisans who come across the sleeping child learn that he is the sole survivor of a German massacre. His name is Motele. Grasping his violin, he had hidden, then fled to the forest Luck had it that this unit of partisans, known as “Uncle Misha’s Jewish groups”, was hiding in this very forest. Now, under the command of Moshe Gildenman, it boasts a new member: the young Motele.

One day, Gildenman decides to send Motele to the town below, on the other bank of the Vroutz River. His mission? To mix with the crowd on New Year’s Day and to note the comings and goings of the German soldiers. In fact, this is the only day people can move around freely, without having their papers checked. And Gildenman’s absolutely crasy dream is to recapture the town from the Germans and return it to the Red Army, whose cannons can already be heard resonating…

And that is how the boy, dressed in rags, comes to be standing precisely on the time-worn rock of the Church courtyard. There, among the mendicants come to beg for alms on this festival day, he plays his violins. He seems to be dreaming open-eyed. He’s dreaming that he’s in the most beautiful palace ever, that he’s on the most beautiful stage ever, wrapped in those stately red draped that fascinate children everywhere attending the theatre for the first time in their lives.

Suddenly, he notices a German officer among the crowd listening to him. The officer signals to him with his baton. Motele gets up and follows him wordlessly. They reach a big building. Motele immediately realizes that this is where the German officers assemble before departing to, and upon returning from, the rapidly approaching front line. “You’ll play here every evening, and there’s the pianist who’ll accompany you,” the officer tells him.

Every evening after his performance, Motele goes down to get a mess-tin of soup in the kitchen in the cellar. In the labyrinth of passages leading to it, Motele notices a kind of storage space, empty and in a bad condition, with cracks in the walls pratically begging to be opened…”I just have to get out of here and tell my friends in the forest about it,” Motele tells himself, and, hidden under foul ropes piled on a cart, reaches the river. He crosses it and rejoins his unit to discuss the cracks in the walls of the cellar.

You can most certainly imagine the sequel. But…not so quickly… From that day on, Motele enters and leaves the officers’ club with his violin case under his arm. Only there’s no violin inside it. Motele has hidden the violin in the old abandoned storehouse. As for the violin case, it is filled with the explosives necessary for the definitive widening of the cracks running, as luck would have it, from the bottom to the top of the walls.

This evening, the officers drink more than usual. Motele takes advantage of this to let a German violinist, who is also a little intoxicated, replace him, without anyone noticing the change of players. He then descends in all haste to the kitchen as if to get his mess-tin of soup. The kitchen is closed. That’s only natural, as it’s getting late. His heart beats so fast it could be beating the rhythm of the mazurka he’s just played. The way is clear. Motele arranges the explosives the way the partisans instructed him, lights the wick and grabs his violin, which he’d nearly forgotten.

As soon as the explosion is heard, Motele runs towards the meeting-place, at the bottom of the main road. In the confusion, no one notices a running boy. The noise of the explosions mixes with the screeching of the sirens and with the blind gunshots of the German soldiers. Motele has already reached the river, which he crosses in the company of his partisan friends. He hugs his violin tightly and, before going to sleep that night, carefully wipes off the dust and the cinders from the wood, so that it will be as shiny as usual.

Several weeks later, the Germans beat their retreat, and the Russians pursue them right into the forest where the partisans are hiding. That evening, before going to sleep, Motele does not have time to dust and polish his violin. That evening, he goes to sleep too early and forever in a clearing which he crosses at the wrong moment in order to warn a Russian officer about the Germans soldiers lying in ambush.

The commander of the partisans, Gildenman, picks up Motele’s violin. He does not dust it or polish it any more. After the war, he arrives in Israel with it. Later on, he gives it to his son who, in his turn, gives it to his own son.

For decades, this wooden violin, worn away by the cold and the rain, is kept, wrapped between clothes and blankets, in the old wardrobe that all our grandmothers seem to have bought in the same place. However, a few years ago, by an accident which may not have been exactly an accident, our master luthier, Amnon Weinstein, meets Gildenman’s grandson and discovers, with an emotion mixed with sadness and wonder, the violin hidden in the wardrobe.

It takes several years to remodel Motele’s violin, to find the same wood, to find the cords that go with the wood. Today, at the very moment you are reading these few lines, Motele’s violin is coming alive again and is about to be played once more.

In fact, Motele’s violin is the reflection of a whole people that, even though it seemed so fragile, is vibrating with life again, which has been reborn…

We’re telling you this tale because something extraordinary is about to happen… On September 24th, a few days before Rosh Hashana, for the first time after more that 60 years of silence, Motele’s violin is going to play again. It is going to play the Hatikva at the foot of the ancient walls of Jerusalem, illuminated by thousand of flames and lights, held by the delicate hands of a 12-year-old Israeli violinist, the same age Motele was when he last played it, the age he’ll remain forever…

If we could still talk to Motele, we might tell him something like this: “You liked to play with your eyes shut. You were dreaming then that you were on a big stage, somewhere in a big European or American capital… Well, we’d like you to know that your violin is soon going to play on the most beautiful of stages. Together with other violins which, too, have survived the inferno. It is going to play a great symphony, like the one you dreamt of interpreting some day, in the hands of one of the world’s greatest violinists, Shlomo Mintz. He will be accompanied by a huge philharmonic orchestra, at the foot of the ancient walls of Jerusalem. It will be the crowning event of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the State of Israel…

Yes, Israel has existed for 60 years now and thanks, in some part, to you…”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/01/27/israel.holocaust.violins/index.html?hpt=C2
This is a heart breaking story that make me think of a movie called The Red Violin. It’s amazing how an instrument telling the story that most people ignored. Racism or any not respectful point of view toward kids is not new for Kai and Lia. And with the struggle of financial difficulty, you can imagine what kind of look people give us when they know we live in a fifth wheel trailer even that is the life style we chose. We cannot expect people realize what kind of demage they could do when there is no respect, but don’t human ever learn from history? When Kai and Lia making beautiful music on their 280 years old violins, I always feel the old fellows are telling some remarkable stories, maybe some are just like the one in this video. I felt honor to hear the old violins singing, and hope one day the stories are lessons to make a better world not just the history in the book.

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