I went to an awesome session in North Hollywood at the Celtic Arts Center! If you live in the LA area and want a great ceili/session to go to, let me know and I'll get you the info!
I discovered Irish Fiddling when I was in 10th grade. My school symphony played an arrangement of Lord of the Dance for our end-of-year pops concert. I was so excited, because I was just returning to Irish Dance! That summer, I kinda let off about wanting to fiddle, but the next year my wish was renewed when my string orchestra played a tune called Molly on the Shore, by Percy Granger, labeled as an Irish Reel.
That year, my dance school director invited me over to her house to visit with my dance teacher, who just returned to Ireland. She told me to bring my violin, because my teacher had bought a bohdrn, and she said we should jam. I was so excited! Learning to play the fiddle has been hard, as I didn't have any sheet music, a big crutch to my classically trained mind. Improv? Hah, it was a foreign word to me. I learned an appalaichan tune first surprisingly, but the roots in Irish are really strong. the tune was called, "the girl I left behind me". Shortly after, they handed me a tape with a song from the movie "return to Roan Inish" and asked me to learn the tune by ear. So I did, at first it was so hard, but has become easier as they hand me more tapes and say, "here, learn this". We decided one day that we were a band, and called ourselves Crinne Hill. Since then the name has been taken by the children of our band members, who are starting off on a folk/pop careersrc="/ut/EireLibra/images/violinblue.gif"> font color="black"> My Band, Crinne Hill, played on the 9th of February as part of the Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah!!!!! p>
