In an era before recordings, live music was prevalent, and the violin was king. The same instrument was used in barns and at royal courts, for rustic country dances and for fashionable classical concerts—and the same players would do it all.

Join national fiddle champion Tim Macdonald to enjoy a huge range of early violin music, from wild dance tunes to plaintive laments to sophisticated sonatas, and learn how professional musicians competed to be the best players, teachers, improvisers, composers, and even dancers, all at the same time.

Wine & light refreshments

$15 tickets at the door

Bio:

Praised for his “athletic” and “impressive and stylistically Scottish playing” (Dr. John Turner & Dr. Melinda Crawford), Tim Macdonald is a regular performer, scholar, composer, and teacher of early fiddle music. His unique combination of years of experience as a folk dance musician with the carefully-trained technique of a classical player and the historical rigor of a scholar have taken him from New York City’s Frick Collection and Scotland's Blair Castle to the villages of Indonesia, university lecture halls and academic conferences, countless country and contra dances, and beyond. Tim is the only US National Scottish Fiddling Champion to win on a Baroque violin, and he has played with Trio Settecento, the Newberry Consort, Rachel Barton Pine, and the Mountainside Baroque orchestra, among other groups. He formed an internationally-touring Scottish fiddle duo with cellist Jeremy Ward whose "thrilling" music "only [gets] more thrilling as they shred [...] on" (Chicago Classical Review). The duo's debut album, The Wilds, is a "fresh and yet authentic sounding” (Dr. John Purser) celebration of the diversity of Scottish fiddle music in the 18th century.

 Learn more at www.tsmacdonald.com.