President’s Message

During the past two years, all five chapters of the PEI Fiddlers have faced many challenges and restrictions. However, we are all starting to come out of the worst phase of the pandemic and practice sessions and jams are starting up again around the island. On May 15, we held a small AGM and Jam session at the BIS, which has been a very supportive venue for fiddle events during this time. It was very good to see people from around the island again and to discuss ways to improve participation in our group and to raise money for helping young people learn fiddling through scholarships for free lessons and for tuition for fiddle camps. During the next year, we will do what fund raising we can to enable us to begin giving scholarships again in 2023, when we hope the Fiddle Festival and the Fiddle Camps around the Maritimes will be able to run again at full tilt.

We discussed what has happened since May 2019, our last AGM, and found a lot to celebrate. We managed to fundraise our way back into the black through chapter dues, sales of Tunebooks and other items at the 2019 Rollo Bay Festival and at the Murray Harbour Farmer’s Market, and were able to fund the website redesign project has been a much needed improvement. Concern was expressed that the website retain all the past issues of the much loved but recently discontinued Island Fiddler Magazine, so we made a point to be sure to include all back issues on the site. Each of the five chapters has tunes listed on their section of the site and many of the tunes can be printed off with pdf and listened to on mp3. Information on practices for each chapter is available, and some photos are also posted. The website designer, Connie Zoeller, has continued to help us by updating the website and we wish to thank her for her assistance.

We plan to have another meeting in October to discuss how things are going and to have fun at another Jam, hopefully with more fiddlers able to attend.

On May 16th, I went up to Rollo Bay to attend the Eastern Kings Fiddlers Family Night celebration which highlights the playing of everyone young and old who has attended the free group fiddle classes there over the past year. Despite the difficulties of various covid shutdowns and occasional bad weather, the Eastern Kings group managed to pull off classes from October 2021 to May of 2022. It was amazing to hear that this was the 45th year of these classes being given! Due to the hard work of Kevin Chaisson, Darren Chaisson, Kathryn Dau-Schmidt, and of course the late Peter Chaisson, these classes have flourished in the Souris community and are much appreciated by everyone who has attended over the years.

Plans are afoot for some fiddle camp activities in July before the concerts at Rollo Bay Fiddle Festival this year, so please keep an eye out for announcements when these are finalized. Also, we heard that the Cape Breton Fiddlers are planning concerts in late August this year, and special events for their 50th Anniversary celebration in 2023. See capebretonfiddlers.com for information about their events.

Best wishes for a good summer of fiddling across the island as we hopefully find our way back to normal.