Intro to Kemanche - "Things with Strings" continues!

RI Fiddle Project students were visited by Iranian musician Nima Jan and his kemanche last week.  He spoke with students about the ways it is similar to a violin, played a piece with small groups of students, and gave them each chance to try playing the kemanche. 

Looking forward to our 3rd and final part of the Things with Strings series on March 14th when we will be introduced to an erhu! 
Write to rifiddleproject@gmail.com for more details if you would like to attend.

A visit from the Nelson Quartet

Three members of the Nelson String Quartet came to visit RI Fiddle Project as a part of our "Things with Strings" series last week.

The Nelson String Quartet's members are all Community MusicWorks graduates, now at different colleges, who still get together to create and perform great music, including some of their own arrangements. 

One of these arrangements was created especially for their visit to us last week: we heard a trio version of Swallowtail Jig, with a unique baseline for our students to learn.

Students had lots of questions for the Nelson Quartet - hopefully we'll see them again soon with all four members!

Things with Strings continues next week with a visit from Persian musician Nima Jan, who will be bringing his kemanche to share with students, families and visitors. 
Contact rifiddleproject@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

MusiConnects dance clip

Here's a clip of MusiConnects' first ever "Family Fiddle Food Fest" in Boston: Rachel was playing with the awesome calling of Susan Reed and great dancing by lots of violin, viola and cello fiddlers and their families and teachers!


Family Fiddle Food Fest 2011 from musiConnects on Vimeo.

Photos from our December fiddling celebration

Things with Strings

Early next week, some photos should be appearing here from our December Fiddling Celebration...
in the meantime, here's a preview of our Things with Strings series, where our fiddlers (and guests) interact with players of other bowed stringed instruments.  These will include the viola, cello, kemanche & erhu!

On Wednesday, January 4th, we'll be visited by our first guest musicians in this series: the Nelson String Quartet.  The members of the quartet are all current college students and are graduates of Community MusicWorks in Providence.  We'll get a taste of both the Classical playing and fiddling of the quartet members.  If you would like to attend this event, email rifiddleproject@gmail.com for details.

New tricks from our workshop

David Kaynor teaches us new ways to play our tune!  This is from last weekend's workshop "on the map" in the Visitors' Center.

Shortnin' Bread/Mizoudio

 

Everyone is singing and playing this tune at their lessons: preparing to play it on Sunday for our visiting caller.  It's Shortnin' Bread, which is the tune to play for a dance called Mizoudio that we all danced to last year, and probably will dance to again.  

You don't want to miss the last 3 seconds of this clip!