| When I received Linda's message
about putting profiles of her past students on her web site,
my first reaction was that this was a test and I was the answer
to the question 'which of these does not belong', since although
I was a music major, I do not currently have a career in music.
Before I graduated in 1980, I was one of the most single-minded
of "Pratt Rats" as we called ourselves. My instrument
was voice and I did a full recital my senior year, wrote a thesis,
sang in everything you could sing in (Coro, Glee Club, the V-8s),
and planned to pursue a career in choral conducting. In 1979,
I found my way into Linda's studio when 5 of us who all had
other primary instruments requested a class for majors wanting
to learn to play a stringed instrument, and for 3 semesters
I had the luxury of learning the viola just for fun.
Following 2 years of getting a Master of Music degree in
choral conducting from the University of Michigan, I auditioned
for church music director positions, conducted a community
women's chorus in the D.C. area, as a
volunteer, joined several excellent ensembles in the Washington
area,
including the Choral Arts Society, and had lots of wonderful
experiences singing fascinating repertoire with interesting
orchestras and the world's
greatest conductors. I started voice lessons again but the
great luxury we all have as students, which is the time to
be dedicated to our chosen studies, was lacking in a life
where I had to spend 8 hours a day earning a paycheck and
by the late 80s I was dormant as a musician.
Around that time I began tracing my mother's genealogy, and
as a result of
that became immersed in the Irish part of my roots. This led
me to my first
trip to Ireland, in 1990, and a meeting with relatives there
whom no one
else in my family had ever found. It also led me to discover
the world of
Irish traditional music and dance, which thrives in the Baltimore/Washington
area. I took up set dancing, which is one of the ancestors
of square
dancing, learned some Irish Gaelic and tried traditional singing,
and soon
began hanging around 'sessions', where musicians gather in
an informal
setting to play together. At first I brought a guitar and
plinked along on
the simple harmonies. However, it wasn't long before I realized
that thing
I really wanted to do was play the fiddle and be part of the
tune.
In 1994 I got a fiddle and started taking lessons from a
local player. I
was able to get off the ground quickly because I remembered
the things Linda had taught me. In folk music, few people
pay serious attention to issues of technique and are able
to teach about it, so it was to my advantage to be able to
recall how she had taught us to keep the bow parallel to the
bridge and what our left hands should look like! However,
since I had been reading musical notation for 30 years, I
had to learn a new way of learning. Irish music is mostly
an aurally transmitted art form - notation does not express
exactly how the music is played, and although there are many
printed collections, there are many more tunes not written
down anywhere, but played constantly as part of the common
repertoire. So I had to learn how to learn by ear, carry a
small tape recorder around with me capturing what people were
playing, and then go home and try to make out what they were
doing. This exercise, I decided, was essentially the old theory
class activity of taking dictation, except skipping the pencil
and paper part and going straight to the four strings and
four fingers.
The nice thing about an instrument, as opposed to the voice,
is that you can
practice as much as you want without hurting your instrument!
I went through an obsessive period, playing for hours every
day and learning tunes
as fast as I could. While that is over, I still make the time
to practice
by myself several times a week, and attend at least one session
weekly where I can play with players who are better than I
am and stretch my skills. I've had the opportunity to sit
in with a couple of the best Irish
traditional bands in Baltimore over the past year. In a way
I feel that I
have finally found the instrument and the music I was 'meant'
to play, where
the gap is not as great between what I know it's supposed
to sound like and what I am able to make it sound like.
Life is definitely what happens while you're making other
plans! I've been
working in the information technology field for 15 years now,
but in a way
I'm more of a musician that I have been since I left Mount
Holyoke. And I
have to say that my MHC education feeds both of those parts
of my life,
because I have the ability to learn and to be intellectually
captivated by a
new experience.
Links about Irish fiddling and my favorite fiddlers. Sound
clips and other
good stuff. General stuff about Irish fiddling <http://www.irishfiddle.com/>
List of places people have sessions (a little outdated)
<http://www.ceolas.org/pub/session-list.html>
James Kelly <http://www.onqueueartists.com/kellysproule.html>
Kevin Burke <http://pws.prserv.net/kevinburke/>
Liz Carroll <http://www.lizcarroll.com/>
Brendan Mulvihill <http://www.brendanmulvihill.com/>
Altan <http://www.altan.ie/>
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