Join the ‘All Things Strings Online Community’

Created by the publishers of Strings, the All Things Strings Community (StringsCommunity.com) is a social network where you can meet fellow players, share video and audio files, join discussions, and keep up-to-date on all the happenings in the world of stringed instruments. If you’re a member of the stringed instrument trade, we encourage you to create a professional profile for yourself or your company or organization. It’s free to join, so come check it out today! Sign up now. Already a member? Log in.

‘Strings’ Scholarship Winner

Strings is pleased to announce that fiddler Amanda June Ward has been named the recipient of the 2009 Strings Magazine Scholarship Award. Ward is a native of Washington who has been playing fiddle for over seven years and teaching private fiddle lessons since 2006.
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From the ‘Strings Community’ Blogosphere

Does this sound like you or anyone you know? Calloused hands, a closet full of full skirts and/or “comfy” black pants, referring to people in strange code languages, long discussions about disarming the little voice inside your head? You may have Dementia Violoncellis.
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Meet the Members of the ‘All Things Strings Community’

Christian Howes

Jazz violinist Christian Howes, of Brooklyn, New York, was first swayed to play by his parents, but it was the Bruch Violin Concerto and a crush on a girl named Ruby that sold him on the violin at age 14. “I was hooked, either on her or the concerto—I couldn’t quite separate the two,” Howes says. “That summer I walked around with a boom box on my shoulder blasting Romantic violin concertos.”

Now an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music and master clinician of jazz violin improvisation, Howes has eight albums and a live DVD under his belt. “As an improviser, I search for times when a truly spontaneous idea occurs, and a sort of collective spirit envelops the ensemble, total symbiosis,” Howes says. “I also realize how much hearing certain performances can inspire me, and I hope that I can create that kind of inspiration for others every once in awhile”

From June 29 to July 5 in Columbus, Ohio, Howes will host his fifth annual Creative Strings Workshop, which teaches adult amateurs and professionals improvisation-based music—including jazz, bluegrass, rock, and blues—through active participation. Players will dive right into community outreach performances, gigs at popular clubs, and public and private jam sessions. Says Howes, “‘Live a week in the life of a gigging creative string player’ is the philosophy.”

In tandem with the workshop will be the Creative Strings Festival. Featured performers include Turtle Island Quartet violinist Jeremy Kittle, New York jazz violinist Rob Thomas, and Nashville fiddler Billy Contreras, among others.

Howes also is working on a three-part book for modern creative string players to help explain improvisation, harmony, and building one’s own music career. He joined the All Things Strings Community in March. “I like a lot of things about the All Things Strings Community, but especially the fact that it’s so targeted to string players,” Howes says. “It’s really like our own little community—it feels comfortable and intimate, a good place to go whenever I want to see some friends and get in on discussions about stuff that matters to me.”

Dave Light

Dave Light, of Ontario, Canada, came to fiddling after playing guitar 45 years as a semi-professional. “A friend got me involved in a weekly ‘pub session’ as the guitar accompanist,” Light says. “Eventually, I felt inclined to try fiddling myself. A buddy brought me to several fiddle festivals down South, after which (as he put it) I came over to ‘the Dark Side!’”

Light retired after teaching for 34 years, “20 of which involved SAB and SSA choirs, concert bands, recorder ‘herds’ (anywhere from 50 to 100 kids at a time!), musical theater, and jazz ensembles,” he says.

“It seems to me I became a more successful teacher the more compassionate I got. For instance, students may need a variety of approaches before they understand a concept. They need you to ‘orchestrate their success.’ A compassionate teacher devises pedagogical constructs wherein students can succeed regularly. Performance-wise, I’ve always loved creating with other musicians, like laying down a groove others can build on, or ‘playing air’ [putting in tasteful breaks and fills].”

Light continues to play at pub sessions, though he’s now studying classical violin technique. He’s also writing his own études, transcriptions of folk melodies, classical themes, and jazz standards, and he’s doing session work with other musicians as well as recording at home.

He joined the All Things Strings Community in January.

I appreciate the ‘stylistic inclusiveness’ of the All Things Strings Community,” Light says. “Too many ‘fiddle sites’ welcome only one style or genre, to the effective exclusion of all others. By comparison, the All Things Strings Community makes everyone welcome. Everyone, regardless of style or genre, can share and grow in a nonjudgmental environment. If I’ve been able to help someone else who’s struggling with something I can identify with, all the better.

“That’s what ‘community’ is all about.”

Catherine Fraser

With a Scottish father who played the violin and an Australian mother who played the piano, cello, and recorder, South Australian fiddler Catherine Fraser grew up in a home filled with music. Her eldest brother played the violin, and with the help of a healthy dose of sibling rivalry, Fraser began learning the piano and later the violin at age eight.

“I really loved the sound, and the fact that you could pick up [the violin] and carry it around!” Fraser says.

Her love for Scottish fiddling led Fraser to found the Southern Hemisphere International School of Scottish Fiddle in 2004, a weeklong camp that attracts students and instructors from Scotland, North America, and Canada to New Zealand. Fraser—also a teacher at the National Folk School, ACT, Australia—has won the South Australian Music Industry Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Folk Music in 1996 and 1997 and the Open Fiddle Championship in Kirriemuir, Scotland, in 2005. She recently released her fifth album, Rhymes and Reasons (Cromarty Records 091), with pianist Duncan Smith. Guest performers include cellist Natalie Haas and fiddler Hanneke Cassel.

“I am passionate about Scottish fiddle music and the range of emotional expression available through the repertoire,” Fraser says. “I love connecting with an audience or class, and communicating my love for his idiom, and witnessing the ability it has to make people feel better about themselves.”

Fraser joined the All Things Strings Community in June. “I have only just discovered the All Things Strings Community, but I already feel very welcome and look forward to having many musical ‘conversations’ with like-minded people.”