Victoria Fiddle Society- A Thank You and Bursary Report from Quinn & Qristina Bachand

September 21, 2008

Dear VFS Board and Members:

I would like to take a few moments to thank you for the Bursary I received and let you know how it was put to use this summer.  As you probably already know my sister Qristina and I were invited to be part of the 2008 Aberdeen International Youth Festival which is the biggest festival of youth arts in the world.  The festival ran for 10 days and featured groups and individual performers from all over the world. 

The experience of meeting youth from all over the world was very enriching. We had the opportunity of meeting the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of Hong Kong, we made friends with the Tamana Pioneers Steel Orchestra from Trinidad & Tobago and with a fabulous young musician from Senegal, Joel Sebunjo.  We also enjoyed meeting the members of  Ceol Mor Traditional Music Big Band when we performed together in Fraserburgh, as part of the extended festival program.

Through our performances we were able to raise the awareness of folk fiddle and in particular BC fiddle among other festival performers as well as the audiences that heard us play.  We participated in the festival for one week during which we performed at least once a day at a major festival gala.

A highlight of the Aberdeen Festival was our very first performance, at the Aberdeen Music Hall.  Here is a link to a video of us playing Daniel Lapp’s “Kathryn’s Castle” and “Lost in the Loop” by Liz Carroll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlihV2QxCtY

We not only shared our love of fiddle music in Aberdeen, we also performed at Speyfest, in a town called Fochabers in Northwest Scotland, and then in Ireland at the Feakle Traditional Music Festival. 

The sharing of BC music was not just at festival performances – we also attended traditional music sessions all over County Clare (Ireland).  We were very proud to be able to play some of our favorite Canadian and BC tunes.  We were interviewed on Clare FM radio station, they played two tracks off our new CD “Relative Minors”, we had a nice on-air chat with the host and then we played two medleys live.  The segment was 30 minutes in length & very positive comments were received at the radio station through calls and emails.   We both felt very proud to be able to represent our BC and to present Canadian fiddle music to listeners in Ireland – the hotbed of fiddle music.