Hometown at Conestoga

 I am also now doing some Celtic fiddling with the ScIrish Mob and Lahey and Co. We took part in PirateFest this summer and it was great to be dressed up in costume channeling my inner Celt -)

Right now we are doing some recording and scheduling gigs - that's the tricky part, finding time when everyone's available but look for news on that soon :-)

I am actively working on what will be my first solo cd  and looking at some more very interesting proposals for in front and behind the camera.

Fiddling's a hit at Roy Thomson Hall and the Toronto Symphony!  

I performed "St.Anne's Reel" as part of the TSO school concert series, joined by Maestro John Morris Russell on spoons, Jeff Beecher on bass, Neil Deland on banjo and Etsuko Kimura on violin - making her fiddle debut !  We had a great time and the kids did also. I am lucky and proud to have such great colleagues to make music with.

In the meantime, Hometown Bluegrass 2nd CD "Home Again" is getting great airplay and comments. We are staying busy playing and planning for next summer. Very happy to say we have been invited to appear again at the Conestoga Trail Bluegrass and Gospel Festival and are looking at some out of province offers too - roadtrip!!!

At the Conestoga Bluegrass and Gospel Festival 

 Hometown Bluegrass - We now have a number of videos on YouTube -

Our new CD  "Home Again" has now been released and is doing very well. We enjoyed making it a lot and are pleased it is making listeners happy. We are getting set up for the next one and I am working on doing a video project for the band.

Read where we are called "insanely talented" in this

interesting review of the recent Tottenham Bluegrass

Festival

Recording @ Jason's

Many thanks to Jason LaPrade  at Crystal Clear Sound who is just wonderful in every way - including being very patient!  It was very difficult to choose what to put on this CD with all the great tunes in the band's rep, but we have come up with a good variety which really represents the band well. My featured contributions are "Amazing Grace"  plus "Doc Harris the Fisherman" (that's the one everybody calls a gypsy tune the way I do it :-) and a super sassy one I sing called "You Tried to Ruin My Name" I'm also singing harmony on some others. We are proud at Hometown to have developed into a very versatile band where everyone sings and plays also. It is definitely a plus to have the ability to choose from a lot of possible approaches for tunes and it's a very rewarding process finding out what feels right to us and working things out -

see Hometownbluegrass.ca for more 

Hometown @ the Gladstone recently........

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Eclectic is probably the best word to describe my rich, and  quite varied artistic life. As a violinist, violist, mandolinist, singer, and actor, I'm excited to find myself an ever expanding variety of creative adventures.

Toronto Symphony Orchestra concertgoers will know me as one of just a handful of TSO violinists permanently seated in the first violin section, where I have been a fixture since joining the orchestra in 1975. On occasion I've also played in the orchestra's viola section, and have played mandolin for them as well.

Once in awhile I will be asked which type of music I prefer - classical or bluegrass and my honest answer is neither. I think we all have unlimited capacity to love, and for me the love I have for music just expanded to include bluegrass and country when I started in four years ago. The ability of all music to transport ourselves and listeners in time and space as a shared  experience is wonderful thing, powerful whatever the genre, and I am pleased to be a part of it always.