Big Fiddle Band article for Fiddle On Magazine
Family, friendship and fiddling with the Big Fiddle Band
By Linda Wilks
Chatting in the summer sunshine to James, project manager for the rejuvenation of Cosgrove’s Iron Trunk Aqueduct, his remark ‘it’s all about community’, struck a chord. I’d just arrived, feeling nervous, ready to play with the Big Fiddle Band in our final gig of the season. As a Cosgrove-based band we had been asked to help celebrate the Aqueduct’s unveiling and it gave me a warm glow to hear James’ enthusiasm and realise how much our contribution was appreciated.
Being part of community-run events is one of the most satisfying aspects of playing with the Big Fiddle Band, and James’ gratitude echoed that of other organisers over the previous few months. This season we have played at the Great Linford Waterside Festival in Milton Keynes, the Woburn Sands Folk Festival, the Milton Keynes Rugby Club, and given our annual concert at our rehearsal home, the beautiful 13th century St Peter and St Paul Church in Cosgrove. All of these concerts have been much enjoyed by us all, but two of the gigs this year have been extra special. We were part of an event celebrating Band member, Clare Abbatt’s exhibition, ‘Step into my Shoes’, at the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery; and also had the honour of being invited to play at the very first Fiddle Festival of Britain held in Oxfordshire (and sponsored by Fiddle On). More on those two events later.
The Big Fiddle Band is a group of amateur fiddle players of all abilities and a wide range of ages, led by professional fiddle player, Jenny Newman from Cosgrove, Northamptonshire. The Band was first set up by Jenny around sixteen years ago, when Jenny was asked to take the members of her adult education class to play their fiddles in Milton Keynes shopping centre. They were spotted by Stony Stratford Folk on the Green organisers and given a slot in that locally-renowned festival. And so it went on from there, with band membership rising and falling and rising again as the years went by. This season there have been fifteen performing members: the youngest aged ten and the oldest, 82. Skill levels vary from beginners like me, who first took up the fiddle later in life, only three years ago, to expert fiddlers who have been playing for many years.
Tea break at Tuesday night rehearsal at Cosgrove Church, including gorgeous home-made cakes from two band members in celebration of Jenny’s birthday, and I took the chance to get people talking. ‘What do you get out of being in the Big Fiddle Band?’ was my first question. The theme of community came out strongly again. ‘It’s the enjoyment of playing with other people’ said Clare, with Linda adding ‘with like-minded people who all enjoy doing the same thing’. Fiona explained further: ‘it’s the playing together so everyone’s playing something different but it’s that feeling that it’s bigger than the sum of the parts’. Lorna observed too: ‘without the Big Fiddle Band we’d just be playing on our own in our rooms wouldn’t we?’. Playing for other people also came out as a strong community-related motivation, with me chipping in to say how much I like the pleasure our music seems to give to audiences. Others agreed, recalling playing for a ceilidh at the Wavendon Stables, and playing last year for our largest audience which was at Milton Keynes Camphill Community (that word again!) for people with learning disabilities.
Conversation then turned to why people had been inspired to take up playing the fiddle. Clare summed it up perfectly for us: ‘because I love the music’.
The role of family also came up, reminding us that we have several inter-generational members of the band. John, a past band member, has recently re-joined bringing along his ten year old daughter Eve; while Jim has been bringing his daughter, Niamh (or perhaps she brings her Dad along?), now aged 14, for several years now. Eileen joined the band to encourage her teenaged daughter not to give up playing. Her daughter did find other interests, as teenagers do, but Eileen stayed on: result! Jenny’s ten-year old son Alfie has also become a valued member of the band, confidently taking centre stage with an E-drone tune-linking solo this season, no doubt the first of many future starring roles. So we can add the related strand of ‘family’ to the thread of ‘community’ too.
The role of family in inspiring band members to take up the fiddle was mentioned by David. He explained that his grandchildren had given him a book on making wooden folk instruments, so he made a teardrop fiddle (as you do). Once made, he decided that he wanted to learn to play it, although it was the classical fiddle he made next with which he progressed. David recalled taking his fiddle to one of Jenny’s church concerts and asking her if she could cope with teaching ‘a left-handed geriatric with a home-made fiddle’. Luckily Jenny said yes and David has been in the Band ever since.
Other fiddle stories came out as people reminisced. Linda’s story was the classic one of finding a fiddle in the loft which had belonged to her partner’s deceased father. Soon after this, Linda went on a trip to Ireland and just thought, ‘well it’s meant to be really, someone should play this fiddle’. Her partner (family again!) found Jenny’s classes for her and she’s not looked back since. An Irish link was part of Fiona’s story too. She described how she had been to classes at the Liverpool Irish Centre and someone who was part of the Comhaltas Irish music group found her a fiddle to buy. ‘I love this fiddle, I think it’s gorgeous’, said Fiona, ‘but it did sit around for quite a long time not being played. I knew I had to do something about it so I found Jenny’s classes and that’s how I got started’.
Jenny’s role as a teacher and enabler was starting to emerge strongly, and was also emphasised by John. He explained that he had bought a fiddle after seeing a programme on television and thought ‘I like the sound of that’. Having taught himself to play guitar, he had thought he would be able to do the same with his new fiddle. However he realised after ten minutes that it wasn’t going to be that easy, so signed up for lessons, first of all with a classical teacher, then, when that teacher left the country (not because of him he hastened to add), later transferring to folk-style with Jenny. John’s daughter Eve is also learning classical-style violin at school, but confirmed that she really prefers the learning-by-ear emphasis of the Big Fiddle Band: ‘I like just playing it’.
It was time to get back to practising for our big moment at the Fiddle Festival of Britain, so I asked everyone for a final comment on what is the best thing for them about playing with the Big Fiddle Band. ‘Having fun, but being challenged’, said Fiona; ‘a positive shared experience’, said Linda and ‘everyone’s friends’, said Eileen. Lorna reflected that ‘I just like the fact that it really makes me work on the music because I want to play as well as I can when we’re all together’. John agreed that being part of the band makes him want to practise and gives him something to aim for, while Lynn values the chance to play in front of an audience. Emphasising community again, Liz identified ‘the comradeship’ and not wanting to let others down, as key, while David summed it all up as ‘simply the chance to play the fiddle with other people’. So, cups washed up and cake remains reluctantly abandoned, we all got back to playing together ready for the all-important next performance.
Having gathered the views of the band members, I wanted to get Jenny on her own to find out more from her on how the Big Fiddle Band fits with her life as a professional fiddle player. Managing to grab half-an-hour with her after a lesson, I started by saying how impressed I’ve been by the way in which the band gives to community. ‘Absolutely’, confirmed Jenny, ‘we play at fetes and family days, like at the Milton Keynes Rugby Club this year, and have done candlelit concerts to raise money for the church’. Jenny emphasised again that being asked by the Cosgrove Village Council to contribute to the Iron Trunk Aqueduct celebrations was a huge deal, being such a high profile local project.
I asked Jenny what have been the best bits with the Big Fiddle Band recently. ‘Playing at the Fiddle Festival of Britain’ was the answer: ‘everyone was terrified, going a bit further afield, and with ‘Britain’ in the title, but everyone played really well’. Jenny also highlighted the Northampton Museum exhibition event, where we co-operated with the museum’s Creative Writers Group to put on the ‘Words and Music’ concert as a key feature of the year. This had inspired Jenny to emphasise the exhibition’s theme of journeys and to add the tunes of local Northamptonshire poet and fiddle player John Clare to the Big Fiddle Band’s repertoire. Four Clare-related tune sets were included in the Big Fiddle Band’s 2012 gig season. Marionettes, Highland Mary, Tink-a-link and Tikali were existing tunes, collected by Clare, which Jenny arranged for the band, and 80-mile Walz was written by Jenny especially for the series.
One of the things which has struck me about the way Jenny gets the Big Fiddle Band playing together is the creativity she brings to the arrangement of the tunes we play, whilst still catering for our range of abilities. Jenny explained the philosophy behind the Big Fiddle Band.
‘One of the things that I think is important is that everybody, regardless of their ability has equal importance. Even the D drone, that adds so much. And the range of ages as well, I know we have this joke about 8 to 80, but I get a real buzz out of that. And also, for me personally, now that Alfie is part of it and John and Eve and Jim and Niamh, I just think it’s great. There aren’t many places where you can really do that. It reminds me of the brass bands in the community where the little ones come along.’
(Note that word, ‘community’, again!) Continuing with thoughts on musical philosophy, when I asked about how she selects the tunes for the band, Jenny explained: ‘you can’t just have a good tune and certain tunes don’t sound right with massed fiddles. I try to choose the sets of tunes really carefully: you’ve got to find tunes that are musically satisfying, but not technically too difficult, and which lend themselves to being arranged’. From where did Jenny get inspiration for the band’s range of tunes, I wondered?
‘The repertoire is intentionally drawn from a wide range of traditions. My original inspiration dates back to the time I was playing with the Shetland band, Rock Salt and Nails, and with them alongside Shetland Young Tradition who I thought were fantastic. We do still play Scottish and Irish tunes in the Big Fiddle Band, including tunes from the likes of John Doherty, The Glackin Family and Mairead Ni Mhonaigh. Arrangements of English, Scottish and French tunes tend to fit the Big Fiddle Band best.’
Expanding further on the range of the repertoire, Jenny added that the band also performs traditional tunes from the Ukraine, Appalachia, Sweden and Wales. I asked Jenny about the newer tunes which she includes too, and she identified Cliff Stapleton, Kevin Adams of Stocai and Alan Lamb of the Late Night Band, as favourite contemporary composers. Particularly impressive to me and the rest of the band is when Jenny casually mentions that a tune we have recently learned was composed by Jenny herself: so our Big Fiddle Band repertoire also includes premieres of completely original tailor-made material!
This part of the discussion reminded me of a comment from Clare during the band’s tea break conversation: ‘I like getting an insight into other musical cultures through learning tunes from different countries and feeling those subtle differences’. The origins of the tunes take on particular significance sometimes too, with the Irish or Scottish roots of some of our members being emphasised through tune selection.
Continuing to chat about the creative arrangements, I reminded Jenny about the unusual features of the Big Fiddle Band’s performance that sometimes get added in and make us all smile, such as virtuoso sniffing (for ‘rests’ obviously) by Jim, and Russian fur hats (to add visual impact to the Russian tunes). Jenny carefully judges whether sniffs are ‘in’ or ‘out’, according to the ambience, and briefs us beforehand: they were ‘out’ of the museum performance, but ‘in’ at the Fiddle Festival.
Things haven’t always been plain sailing with the band of course. Jenny remembered a low point when there weren’t really enough strong tune players, so they all took a break for a while. The balance is good again now though, and Jenny says that she feels that there is a real sense of achievement, growth and companionship coming through at the moment: ‘when it’s a bit smaller people pull together and work really hard’. She does say that she aims to encourage people gently, rather than to criticise: ‘people are there to enjoy themselves, rather than to be told off for not practising’. ‘Something I notice is that after we’ve done a run of concerts, everyone’s playing has gone up another level’ added Jenny with satisfaction.
I wondered how the Big Fiddle Band fits with Jenny’s professional career.
‘It’s a fantastic recruitment thing for me and my classes, I love it, but I really like the fact that personally I’m doing lots of different things. If it was just Big Fiddle Band I wouldn’t have the balance right. I like playing for myself and with my band, 3 Sticks, and with Andy’s band, Solstice. But with the Big Fiddle Band, I find it really musically challenging to come up with good arrangements and that’s something that I’ve developed and I enjoy developing. Everything seems to feed each other, and interweave, it’s great.’
Finally, I was interested to know about Jenny’s plans for the future of the Big Fiddle Band. ‘Just more gigs and more practising and more tunes. It would be good to do a CD and possibly a book of all the arrangements’, was the response. And a final comment from Jenny on community and fellowship: ‘it’s been a fantastic season. I feel very privileged to be able to bring together such a lovely bunch of people. Onwards and upwards’.
Family, friendship and fiddling with the Big Fiddle Band
By Linda Wilks
Chatting in the summer sunshine to James, project manager for the rejuvenation of Cosgrove’s Iron Trunk Aqueduct, his remark ‘it’s all about community’, struck a chord. I’d just arrived, feeling nervous, ready to play with the Big Fiddle Band in our final gig of the season. As a Cosgrove-based band we had been asked to help celebrate the Aqueduct’s unveiling and it gave me a warm glow to hear James’ enthusiasm and realise how much our contribution was appreciated.
Being part of community-run events is one of the most satisfying aspects of playing with the Big Fiddle Band, and James’ gratitude echoed that of other organisers over the previous few months. This season we have played at the Great Linford Waterside Festival in Milton Keynes, the Woburn Sands Folk Festival, the Milton Keynes Rugby Club, and given our annual concert at our rehearsal home, the beautiful 13th century St Peter and St Paul Church in Cosgrove. All of these concerts have been much enjoyed by us all, but two of the gigs this year have been extra special. We were part of an event celebrating Band member, Clare Abbatt’s exhibition, ‘Step into my Shoes’, at the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery; and also had the honour of being invited to play at the very first Fiddle Festival of Britain held in Oxfordshire (and sponsored by Fiddle On). More on those two events later.
The Big Fiddle Band is a group of amateur fiddle players of all abilities and a wide range of ages, led by professional fiddle player, Jenny Newman from Cosgrove, Northamptonshire. The Band was first set up by Jenny around sixteen years ago, when Jenny was asked to take the members of her adult education class to play their fiddles in Milton Keynes shopping centre. They were spotted by Stony Stratford Folk on the Green organisers and given a slot in that locally-renowned festival. And so it went on from there, with band membership rising and falling and rising again as the years went by. This season there have been fifteen performing members: the youngest aged ten and the oldest, 82. Skill levels vary from beginners like me, who first took up the fiddle later in life, only three years ago, to expert fiddlers who have been playing for many years.
Tea break at Tuesday night rehearsal at Cosgrove Church, including gorgeous home-made cakes from two band members in celebration of Jenny’s birthday, and I took the chance to get people talking. ‘What do you get out of being in the Big Fiddle Band?’ was my first question. The theme of community came out strongly again. ‘It’s the enjoyment of playing with other people’ said Clare, with Linda adding ‘with like-minded people who all enjoy doing the same thing’. Fiona explained further: ‘it’s the playing together so everyone’s playing something different but it’s that feeling that it’s bigger than the sum of the parts’. Lorna observed too: ‘without the Big Fiddle Band we’d just be playing on our own in our rooms wouldn’t we?’. Playing for other people also came out as a strong community-related motivation, with me chipping in to say how much I like the pleasure our music seems to give to audiences. Others agreed, recalling playing for a ceilidh at the Wavendon Stables, and playing last year for our largest audience which was at Milton Keynes Camphill Community (that word again!) for people with learning disabilities.
Conversation then turned to why people had been inspired to take up playing the fiddle. Clare summed it up perfectly for us: ‘because I love the music’.
The role of family also came up, reminding us that we have several inter-generational members of the band. John, a past band member, has recently re-joined bringing along his ten year old daughter Eve; while Jim has been bringing his daughter, Niamh (or perhaps she brings her Dad along?), now aged 14, for several years now. Eileen joined the band to encourage her teenaged daughter not to give up playing. Her daughter did find other interests, as teenagers do, but Eileen stayed on: result! Jenny’s ten-year old son Alfie has also become a valued member of the band, confidently taking centre stage with an E-drone tune-linking solo this season, no doubt the first of many future starring roles. So we can add the related strand of ‘family’ to the thread of ‘community’ too.
The role of family in inspiring band members to take up the fiddle was mentioned by David. He explained that his grandchildren had given him a book on making wooden folk instruments, so he made a teardrop fiddle (as you do). Once made, he decided that he wanted to learn to play it, although it was the classical fiddle he made next with which he progressed. David recalled taking his fiddle to one of Jenny’s church concerts and asking her if she could cope with teaching ‘a left-handed geriatric with a home-made fiddle’. Luckily Jenny said yes and David has been in the Band ever since.
Other fiddle stories came out as people reminisced. Linda’s story was the classic one of finding a fiddle in the loft which had belonged to her partner’s deceased father. Soon after this, Linda went on a trip to Ireland and just thought, ‘well it’s meant to be really, someone should play this fiddle’. Her partner (family again!) found Jenny’s classes for her and she’s not looked back since. An Irish link was part of Fiona’s story too. She described how she had been to classes at the Liverpool Irish Centre and someone who was part of the Comhaltas Irish music group found her a fiddle to buy. ‘I love this fiddle, I think it’s gorgeous’, said Fiona, ‘but it did sit around for quite a long time not being played. I knew I had to do something about it so I found Jenny’s classes and that’s how I got started’.
Jenny’s role as a teacher and enabler was starting to emerge strongly, and was also emphasised by John. He explained that he had bought a fiddle after seeing a programme on television and thought ‘I like the sound of that’. Having taught himself to play guitar, he had thought he would be able to do the same with his new fiddle. However he realised after ten minutes that it wasn’t going to be that easy, so signed up for lessons, first of all with a classical teacher, then, when that teacher left the country (not because of him he hastened to add), later transferring to folk-style with Jenny. John’s daughter Eve is also learning classical-style violin at school, but confirmed that she really prefers the learning-by-ear emphasis of the Big Fiddle Band: ‘I like just playing it’.
It was time to get back to practising for our big moment at the Fiddle Festival of Britain, so I asked everyone for a final comment on what is the best thing for them about playing with the Big Fiddle Band. ‘Having fun, but being challenged’, said Fiona; ‘a positive shared experience’, said Linda and ‘everyone’s friends’, said Eileen. Lorna reflected that ‘I just like the fact that it really makes me work on the music because I want to play as well as I can when we’re all together’. John agreed that being part of the band makes him want to practise and gives him something to aim for, while Lynn values the chance to play in front of an audience. Emphasising community again, Liz identified ‘the comradeship’ and not wanting to let others down, as key, while David summed it all up as ‘simply the chance to play the fiddle with other people’. So, cups washed up and cake remains reluctantly abandoned, we all got back to playing together ready for the all-important next performance.
Having gathered the views of the band members, I wanted to get Jenny on her own to find out more from her on how the Big Fiddle Band fits with her life as a professional fiddle player. Managing to grab half-an-hour with her after a lesson, I started by saying how impressed I’ve been by the way in which the band gives to community. ‘Absolutely’, confirmed Jenny, ‘we play at fetes and family days, like at the Milton Keynes Rugby Club this year, and have done candlelit concerts to raise money for the church’. Jenny emphasised again that being asked by the Cosgrove Village Council to contribute to the Iron Trunk Aqueduct celebrations was a huge deal, being such a high profile local project.
I asked Jenny what have been the best bits with the Big Fiddle Band recently. ‘Playing at the Fiddle Festival of Britain’ was the answer: ‘everyone was terrified, going a bit further afield, and with ‘Britain’ in the title, but everyone played really well’. Jenny also highlighted the Northampton Museum exhibition event, where we co-operated with the museum’s Creative Writers Group to put on the ‘Words and Music’ concert as a key feature of the year. This had inspired Jenny to emphasise the exhibition’s theme of journeys and to add the tunes of local Northamptonshire poet and fiddle player John Clare to the Big Fiddle Band’s repertoire. Four Clare-related tune sets were included in the Big Fiddle Band’s 2012 gig season. Marionettes, Highland Mary, Tink-a-link and Tikali were existing tunes, collected by Clare, which Jenny arranged for the band, and 80-mile Walz was written by Jenny especially for the series.
One of the things which has struck me about the way Jenny gets the Big Fiddle Band playing together is the creativity she brings to the arrangement of the tunes we play, whilst still catering for our range of abilities. Jenny explained the philosophy behind the Big Fiddle Band.
‘One of the things that I think is important is that everybody, regardless of their ability has equal importance. Even the D drone, that adds so much. And the range of ages as well, I know we have this joke about 8 to 80, but I get a real buzz out of that. And also, for me personally, now that Alfie is part of it and John and Eve and Jim and Niamh, I just think it’s great. There aren’t many places where you can really do that. It reminds me of the brass bands in the community where the little ones come along.’
(Note that word, ‘community’, again!) Continuing with thoughts on musical philosophy, when I asked about how she selects the tunes for the band, Jenny explained: ‘you can’t just have a good tune and certain tunes don’t sound right with massed fiddles. I try to choose the sets of tunes really carefully: you’ve got to find tunes that are musically satisfying, but not technically too difficult, and which lend themselves to being arranged’. From where did Jenny get inspiration for the band’s range of tunes, I wondered?
‘The repertoire is intentionally drawn from a wide range of traditions. My original inspiration dates back to the time I was playing with the Shetland band, Rock Salt and Nails, and with them alongside Shetland Young Tradition who I thought were fantastic. We do still play Scottish and Irish tunes in the Big Fiddle Band, including tunes from the likes of John Doherty, The Glackin Family and Mairead Ni Mhonaigh. Arrangements of English, Scottish and French tunes tend to fit the Big Fiddle Band best.’
Expanding further on the range of the repertoire, Jenny added that the band also performs traditional tunes from the Ukraine, Appalachia, Sweden and Wales. I asked Jenny about the newer tunes which she includes too, and she identified Cliff Stapleton, Kevin Adams of Stocai and Alan Lamb of the Late Night Band, as favourite contemporary composers. Particularly impressive to me and the rest of the band is when Jenny casually mentions that a tune we have recently learned was composed by Jenny herself: so our Big Fiddle Band repertoire also includes premieres of completely original tailor-made material!
This part of the discussion reminded me of a comment from Clare during the band’s tea break conversation: ‘I like getting an insight into other musical cultures through learning tunes from different countries and feeling those subtle differences’. The origins of the tunes take on particular significance sometimes too, with the Irish or Scottish roots of some of our members being emphasised through tune selection.
Continuing to chat about the creative arrangements, I reminded Jenny about the unusual features of the Big Fiddle Band’s performance that sometimes get added in and make us all smile, such as virtuoso sniffing (for ‘rests’ obviously) by Jim, and Russian fur hats (to add visual impact to the Russian tunes). Jenny carefully judges whether sniffs are ‘in’ or ‘out’, according to the ambience, and briefs us beforehand: they were ‘out’ of the museum performance, but ‘in’ at the Fiddle Festival.
Things haven’t always been plain sailing with the band of course. Jenny remembered a low point when there weren’t really enough strong tune players, so they all took a break for a while. The balance is good again now though, and Jenny says that she feels that there is a real sense of achievement, growth and companionship coming through at the moment: ‘when it’s a bit smaller people pull together and work really hard’. She does say that she aims to encourage people gently, rather than to criticise: ‘people are there to enjoy themselves, rather than to be told off for not practising’. ‘Something I notice is that after we’ve done a run of concerts, everyone’s playing has gone up another level’ added Jenny with satisfaction.
I wondered how the Big Fiddle Band fits with Jenny’s professional career.
‘It’s a fantastic recruitment thing for me and my classes, I love it, but I really like the fact that personally I’m doing lots of different things. If it was just Big Fiddle Band I wouldn’t have the balance right. I like playing for myself and with my band, 3 Sticks, and with Andy’s band, Solstice. But with the Big Fiddle Band, I find it really musically challenging to come up with good arrangements and that’s something that I’ve developed and I enjoy developing. Everything seems to feed each other, and interweave, it’s great.’
Finally, I was interested to know about Jenny’s plans for the future of the Big Fiddle Band. ‘Just more gigs and more practising and more tunes. It would be good to do a CD and possibly a book of all the arrangements’, was the response. And a final comment from Jenny on community and fellowship: ‘it’s been a fantastic season. I feel very privileged to be able to bring together such a lovely bunch of people. Onwards and upwards’.
