20 November 2008
Related show
Donna Hébert - Bill Spence photo
Welcome to my new fiddleblog! You’ll find free tunes and lessons here as well as a catalog of fiddling treasures and holiday specials.
Updated band pages for Franco-American groups The Beaudoin Legacy and my new duo with Max Cohen are available and with pages for Chanterelle, teaching and Old-Time band Groovemama coming soon.
I turned 60 this year, so now I’ve been teaching more than half my life. Time flies when you’re fiddling around! Fiddle mentors Louis Beaudoin, Allan Block and Gerry Robichaud helped me find my French roots and fiddle groove in the 1970s and they would love to see my young apprentices now! The latest is Louis Beaudoin’s grandson, a fellow band-member in The Beaudoin Legacy. Though last spring we sadly lost Louis’ widow, Julie, at age 87, her great-grandaughter Rachel has begun to learn fiddle and is passionate about bringing the family’s music into her generation. And so the circle is unbroken.
Being able to help so many people find and nourish their music has inevitably enriched my own. This year, I was exceptionally fortunate to be awarded a state Artists’ Fellowship in the Folk Arts by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which also named me a Creative Teaching Partner in Fiddling. The latter certifies me to work in Massachusetts string classrooms, introducing fiddling into the curriculum.
Watching the orchestra improvise their parts in performance onstage brought the audience of parents and educators to their feet at a 2008 fiddle concert with Groovemama and the Dennis/Yarmouth MA strings programs. Strings teacher Kerry Cutler brought us in and we provided CDs and sheet music ahead of time. Teachers included, there were more than 60 people onstage. We asked them all to listen for which part of the arrangement needed their voice, then add it to that part, so they were swapping melody for harmony for bass line for rhythm riffs, back and forth, the music rippling across the stage like water. Now that’s what I call FUN!
This year I completed and released Fiddling Demystified for Strings Vol. I , the teacher-training package in the Fiddling Demystified series, along with the companion Fiddlejam CD. Sample lessons from the book are available online. Next in line is my instructional DVD of French-Canadian fiddling. Both will be available at the March 2009 ASTA Conference in Atlanta, where I will lead a Fiddle Immersion Jam. House concerts and workshops are on the menu in Atlanta as well.
© 2008 Donna Hébert, fiddlingdemystified.com. All rights reserved.
