
Anne
is an amateur bluegrass musician and fiddle jammer who lives in
Bowmanville, Ontario. She composed the tunes on this album, and
added a little mandolin.
After
playing bluegrass mandolin for fun for many years, Anne was given
the violin that her mother had played as a teenager. Recently retired,
she took up the long process of learning to play it. She was invited
by Ken Ramsden to take part in the Peterborough Celtic Jam, where
the more accomplished players welcomed her and encouraged her to
keep practising (quietly...)
Exposed
there to many wonderful compositions by modern fiddlers, particularly
those of Brian Pickell and Larry Unger, Anne decided to try to make
one herself, and came up with "Wind on the Shore". She
decided to write some tunes that she could play herself (slow ones,
that is), so she wrote a number of waltzes, including the "Snowy
Evening Waltz", which was played at the session.
Anne
was invited by Curtis Driedger to join the fledgling Mandolin Society
of Peterborough orchestra, where she enjoyed playing music from
a variety of genres; she composed a number of pieces for this group
of enthusiastic musicians.
While
in the process of publishing two books of her fiddle tunes, Anne
met Saskia and Steafan, who were newly arrived from the United Kingdom.
Saskia became Anne's violin teacher, and gave her a lot of advice
about how fiddle tunes of various rhythms should be written down,
and especially with violin bowing. Anne also sought the advice of
Peterborough guitarist Michael Ketemer about chords.
In
March 2019 Saskia and Steafan began recording some of Anne's tunes
in their Shmooosic Studio in Baltimore, fitting sessions in between
more time-sensitive tasks. They recruited Oisin and Sam to participate
in the project, and the album was finally finished in April, 2020. |