How Fiddle Camp Freed Me

It was the best night at camp. Some of us were still in wet bathing suits after Elias the bagpiper had led us into the pool, playing his instrument the whole time. A group in the kitchen was cooking soup to be served at midnight. In the dining hall, another group danced and sang to a Beyoncé tune. Small gatherings of musicians were scattered outside, playing Old-Timey music or rock, under the stars.   

I was in the circular “cello” room playing the Mendelssohn Octet in E-flat major, op. 20. Only there weren’t eight musicians. There were closer to 25. Violinists were reading, three to a stand. Sheet music fluttered in the breeze from the open windows, iPads shone up into faces. A four-year-old girl was on her auntie’s lap, and three teenagers stretched out on their backs on the floor in the middle of this “octet” scrum. The room was packed with listener of all ages, just watching, listening, feeling. For some, it was the first time they had heard classical music performed live. For others, it was the first time they had enjoyed classical music. Or the first time they had seen classical musicians joking and laughing while playing. And we musicians were a diverse lot: a student going into music conservatory; a fiddler who hadn’t played classical music since high school; a fiddler playing the viola part on a five-string; amateurs, seasoned orchestra professionals, and a 12-year-old sight reading Mendelssohn for the first time. In the middle of all this was Alasdair Fraser, a two-time Scottish National Fiddle Championship winner, and Natalie Haas, sought-after cellist and Juilliard graduate, both of them smiling broadly as they played away.  

For me, fiddle camp is a week in the mountains at Alasdair Fraser’s Sierra Fiddle Camp, near Nevada City, California. Building on the success of the Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling School, the Sierra Camp was created in 2006. Led by Alasdair, his wife Sally Ashcraft, and many dedicated volunteers, it operates under the auspices of the non-profit Scottish Fiddlers of California. It is a week of total immersion, where musicians of all ages and abilities are encouraged to explore their own musical expression and potential in a supportive, non-competitive environment. Focused on Scottish fiddle, each summer session also explores other fiddling traditions from around the world. In addition, there are classes for guitar, cello, keyboard, dance, song, and percussion. The campers range from babes-in-arms to their 80s. They are professional classical musicians, professional bluegrass/fiddle players, passionate amateurs, music teachers, new fiddlers, people who had never picked up a violin before. And it’s not just for fiddles: there are violas, cellos, basses, pianos, flutes, trumpets, bagpipes, whistles, percussion, dancers, and singers. Any instrument is welcome. There is music day and night, lots of dancing and singing and swimming, and not a lot of sleeping or showering. We think of it as a “fiddle bubble,” a safe and welcoming week away from the rest of the world where we take risks, learn, grow, and laugh together. It ends in a professionally produced free concert at Nevada City’s Pioneer Park. 

A dozen years ago, fiddle camp changed my life and made my experience of music so much richer. But first, let me describe how I got there. I started playing Suzuki violin at age four with Janet Bogart in Kalamazoo, Michigan. My passion for chamber music was cemented during my summers at Point CounterPoint chamber music camp on Lake Dunmore, in Vermont. During my fifth year there, I decided I would be a professional musician. That devotion stayed with me through my graduate studies at Cleveland Institute of Music. After graduate school, I fled the Ohio weather for California and played in the San Francisco Bay Area’s “Freeway Philharmonic” until I won positions with the San Jose Symphony and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. Once the San Jose Symphony folded, I took a five-year break from serious practicing and regular orchestra work to raise my son.

During that five-year hiatus, I was living in Santa Cruz, and playing a lot of chamber music with my contemporary music trio, Trio Dagoba. During that time, my cellist colleague Aria DiSalvio turned me on to Fire & Grace, a recording by Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas. I fell so in love with this music that I listened to it until I had memorized the entire thing. Their music was traditional Scottish music, but not what I was used to hearing. Alasdair’s virtuosity appealed to my conservatory-trained fingers and bow. Natalie’s driving rhythms made me want to dance. My three-year-old son would run around the house with a cape and wooden sword, calling it his “fighting music.” I knew that one day, we had to go learn to play from these two exuberant musicians.  

When my son was finally old enough, we went to fiddle camp. My very first visit reminded me of why I started playing the violin as a child—because I loved the sound of my violin. It also reminded me of why I kept playing—because it was fun and social. Both of those facts somehow got lost in my years of striving for perfection—in stressing, for instance, over missing a note in an audition. Once I got to fiddle camp, I noticed how much the listeners at camp loved hearing us play. And I looked around at the fiddlers, who were playing their hearts out, having fun and laughing while making music together. I had forgotten that live music brings joy to people. Another big deal for me that week was my son. He was 10 years old and had started violin with me at age four. He had begun to not like playing the violin. Practicing had become a battleground. During the final fiddle camp concert, I looked over at him while he was playing, eyes shut, moving to the music. Really feeling it. From that day on, music has been a huge part of his life that I share with him, and it would not have happened without fiddle camp.

One of the most important things I learned at fiddle camp was how to be a learner again. When I sat in the back of Alasdair’s fiddle class, I was no longer the professional. I didn’t already know what was going to be taught. I didn’t even know if I could learn what he was teaching. The experience opened my eyes to how people took in music and learned it. In the classical world, learning to play by reading music is the dominant method. At fiddle camp, there is no music—no “dots,” as they say. My Suzuki training (learning by ear) came in handy. Some of the instructors insisted we learn to sing a tune before we played it. (“If you can sing it, you can play it.”)

These were the tunes we learned the quickest. Other things that helped me learn, and that I now teach to my students, are to learn the form of the tune, to try to play the first note of every measure, and to learn the endings and then find repeated bits. This works for classical music as well as fiddle tunes. Now I encourage students to build an image of a piece. How many parts? Which parts repeat? These become scaffolds onto which we start placing notes. Then we try to get the pacing of the phrases. Learning the endings helps have a feeling of accomplishment. Then, we listen for repeated motifs. At camp, I also learned that the artistry and skill within some music lies not just in the notes but in the arrangement, and especially in the ability to affect the emotions of the listener. Now I tell my students that building a tune is like writing a story.

Dance, which doesn’t come up much on concert stages, is a major part of fiddle camp. There is a dance almost every night. If the musicians don’t play the right way, the dancers won’t dance. The speed and style of playing has a direct influence on the dancers. I have incorporated that into my teaching, too. I now talk to my students about what a minuet or gavotte really is, and to imagine the people of that period dancing to it. If we play slowly and heavily, they will dance more slowly and heavily; if we play light and lively, they will dance light and lively. I have a private Suzuki violin studio of about 25 students; for our most recent recital, two baroque dancers danced while my cellist and I played a minuet and a gavotte to illustrate what those dances look and feel like. In Baroque dance, for instance, the details are in the feet and ankle, the turn of the wrist rather than the sheer athleticism of the leaps and pirouettes of the classical ballet world. That made me more aware of the role of ornaments and the poise of the bow in Baroque versus the technical virtuosity of Romantic music. 

For a while, I thought of my “fiddle bubble” and the contemporary chamber music world as separate universes. Now I realize how much they share. Alasdair, Natalie, and others have an openness and an inquisitiveness that I also find at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and in groups like the Kronos Quartet: Show me! How do you do that? Why? Let’s try it! A true sense of wonder, creativity, and risk-taking. Alasdair once told me about how he met a classical violinist who wanted to know everything about the ornaments in Scottish music. He spent time with her, going over the different ways to make a tune sound authentically Scottish. That violinist was Rachel Barton Pine, who was then preparing to record Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. The American Scottish fiddling champion and former Turtle Island Quartet member Jeremy Kittle is known at camp for his original compositions and arrangements; his guitar and mandolin accompaniment to the Prelude from the Bach Partita no. 3 in E Major showcases Bach’s chord progressions while adding unexpected twists, and it is simply great fun to play. 

At fiddle camp, through both their playing and teaching, Alasdair and Natalie demonstrated that making music for others is the highest calling we can have in life. It is our duty and our great luck to carry that sense of wonder, joy, and creativity out into the world, and to share it. I didn’t realize how deeply that lesson had affected me until one day, when a bunch of us orchestra musicians were in the dressing room between rehearsals for a concert that included a Beethoven symphony. Beethoven was evidently being played by every orchestra in the area that year, and some string players were griping about having to play the same music over and over. I could relate to their complaints. Yet I thought back to fiddle camp—the joy and honor I had found there. I considered the fact that nothing in life is certain. “What if this is the last time I ever get to play Beethoven?” I asked myself. That simple question, and the many answers I’ve found at fiddle camp, were all I needed.