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“Keep calm and fiddle on” was the motto last Saturday as the Blue Skies Community Fiddle Orchestra held its 8th annual Jam-a-thon & Pie Auction fundraiser at the Maberly Hall.

The hall was packed with music and musicians, and yes, the great majority of those were fiddles and fiddlers.

And right in the middle of it all was orchestra leader Cindy McCall, complete in her Yes (the band) T-shirt, handing out percussion instruments and providing some semblance of organization to all this (it’s a jam, after all, how much actual structure can there be?).

“I’m having a great time,” she said. “It’s our major fundraiser and we have more bands than ever participating — all ages and styles.

“There’s a lot of goodwill here — a lot of people brought food and donated things.

“Many people brought tunes they wrote and they gave me the music and charts to hand out.”

McCall has been leading the Orchestra for 10 years.

“There are 53 people in the orchestra right now,” she said. “There were 10 when I started.

“We’re in a pretty rural area here and there isn’t a lot of arts and music education in the schools.

“(But) the tradition of fiddle music is very strong here.”

And that’s important, she said, because passing on those traditions is a big part of what they do.

“If we don’t pass this on to our kids, it will die,” she said. “(The Orchestra) is a vector for musical education.

“It’s community based and next year will be our 20th.

“It’s touched hundreds of lives.”

To that end they’re planning a 20th anniversary concert, likely in the late summer or fall of 2020 which will include some of the musicians who got their start in the Orchestra like fiddler Jessica Wedden, Jaier Mullally, who’s studying opera at U of T and the Sullivan brothers, J. T. and Noah.

There have been plenty of offshoot of the orchestra such as Fiddlers and Friends and the current trio, The Space Between (Fern Marwood, Sarah Jeffrie, Willow Marwood) and others like Jerrard Smith, who’s still a member but on this day brought his own band DLUX (David Pollard, Diana Smith, Vicki Hanes, Marty Rennick and Larry Hanes) to jam along.

“The lending library gives me the tools to put a fiddle in any hands that want one,” McCall said. “And every fall, we start a new beginners class.

“This has become more than a full-time job for me.”

And for the record, that was Lois Webster behind the mask, auctioning off pies, most of which went in the $40 range.

“Thank you to the community for all its support,” McCall said. “We couldn’t do this without them.”

Published in Lanark County
Wednesday, 04 October 2017 19:58

MacIsaac and Wedden rock the hall in Dacre

Fiddler Jessica Wedden and her guitar player, Reilly Donnelly, are taking Southern Ontario by storm! They opened last Saturday night for three time Juno Award winner Ashley MacIsaac, originally of Nova Scotia, along with an appearance by Change of Step, a step dance group also from Nova Scotia and Ontario. The event was located at the DACA Community Centre in Dacre for the Festival of Small Halls Ontario. The Festival of Small Halls places Canadian musicians in small venues across Eastern Ontario. It is organized by the Team Behind Bluesfest.
To start off the evening, Jessica and Reilly opened with Celtic fiddle tunes. Jessica also did some step dancing and trick fiddling. Of course, for Ashley's set, he played some nice slow tunes and picked up the pace as his set unfolded with an appearance by Change of Step. For a dramatic ending to the show, Jessica rejoined Ashley on stage for a couple of tunes and Change of Step made one last appearance.

Jessica Wedden is a 15 year old fiddler, step dancer, trick fiddler and composer, passionately playing for almost six years. Jessica was nominated for a 2016 Canadian Folk Music Award, interviewed live a couple times on Kingston's CKWS-TV, and profiled in Halifax’s Celtic Life Magazine of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Jessica was the special guest of J.P. Cormier, the Larry Mercey Trio, performed at the Havelock Country Jamboree, Ottawa's Marvest at CityFolk and many others.

Jessica has been performing with Reilly Donnelly since last July of 2017. Due to last minute band cancellation, she was asked to perform at the Youth Showcase for the Stewart Park festival and needed a backup guitarist. The unexpected cancellation joined the two and they proved to be a dynamic duo. They have been building their musical partnership and merging their talents ever since.

Published in FRONTENAC COUNTY
With the participation of the Government of Canada