"Play" dates...

Fergies session...Dylan covering his face.

Haley may be 8yo but don't tell her that and don't tell her she's smaller than everyone else.

This is the child who, when at 5yo or 6yo fiddling with a group of adults at a session, never wanted to have a chair where her feet might reach the floor because "then everyone will know I am little." (Uh, what??!! Like they can't see that anyway??) Her feet are still swinging but if she sits on the edge of a chair and points her toes, they now reach the floor.

Haley has fun whether she is playing toys with friends or adults at an Irish session. It is all the same to her.

Yesterday, she wanted to go to an Irish session near her orchestra rehearsal but she really wanted one of her favorite fellow fiddlers, Paraic, to come. He only shows up at this session occasionally. It isn't a given that if we go he'll be there. So, she texted him to see if he could "come out and play with (her)."

He texted back a few minutes later saying he'd be there then came out in the pouring rain to play with Haley. I know I've said it before but I just love Irish musicians. They are some of the nicest people ever!

Spring?!

I don't know what it is about warm weather that makes me have so much more energy. Haley and I were so happy it was almost 80 degrees yesterday. 

Last week, I started getting up early in the morning to run with my boys. I have to tell you that 5:45am comes very quickly when you are really tired but I make myself get up, go run, and feel better afterward. I am shooting for 3-4 days a week and need to build my endurance back up after a winter of no exercise.

We are back into our routine of Mondays and Tuesdays at home for the most part. We cram in a lot of schoolwork and a lot of practicing.

Schoolwork for yesterday included....
-two lessons in Saxon 78
-a lesson in PLATO Biology on Genetic Engineering complete with test
-pre-reading for a lesson in Best Short Stories with writing assignment
-reading two chapters in History of US (we are almost to the Revolutionary War after spending all year on Colonial Times...there is just so much cool stuff to do)
-started a project for Artists lapbook
-coloring in history coloring books
-reading for book club...currently "Out of My Mind"

Practicing included...
-Orchestra...They got two new pieces to learn for PRYSM. Not very difficult pieces...one for the side-by-side with PRYSM-Young Artists. She worked on the new pieces and practiced half of her already learned pieces for both orchestras.

-Fiddling... She has two new tunes this week, a reel and a slipjig, plus part of the reel she is learning for All Ireland. She's heard all three tunes so can already play them (shhhh! don't tell Brian...he wants to teach her the Ireland reel himself) and is just working on bowings and phrasings. She went back and played some of her older tunes for review.

-classical music...scales and arpeggios, shifting exercises, double stop exercises and current pieces in progress. "Meditation from Thais" and Bach E Major Concerto. Thais is in practice mode and she is learning the Bach bit by bit trying to perfect each bit before moving on. She has a little over a page to learn in the Bach then the last couple pages are repeat of what she already knows.

We had Poppop over for a nice chicken cacciatore dinner. Delicious!

Then we took Newt to wrestling practice. Newt had a great weekend wrestling. He took 2nd in the MAWA regional tournament so will wrestle in the national tournament in three weeks. Haley and Dylan had a fun Sunday playing Irish music with Next Generation then spending the evening playing at Pl*ugh and the St*rs. I didn't think they'd ever want to leave. They played and had fun from 5-9pm and were still going strong. I finished an entire book while sitting listening to them.

Fleadh 2011

Meet the 3X MidAtlantic Regional Fleadh under 12 solo fiddle champion! Haley placed 1st for the 3rd year in a row. She gets to return this huge trophy to its spot on her shelf for another year. Her name will be the only one on it for the third time and she still has 3 more years in this age group.

She performed beautifully. Her teacher said, "Perfect!" She definitely blossoms under pressure.

 Here is her brother, Dylan, who placed 2nd in his first ever Fleadh in the under 15 Accompaniment competition. He plays guitar but was the only guitarist competing against mostly pianists and a couple harpers.

Both kids qualified for the All Ireland so we get to travel back to Cavan, Ireland for the Fleadh in August!

Haley played for Dylan in his competition and together they are magic. One of the judge's comments, besides the glowing comments about maturity of chord use, chord progressions, and rhythm, was his ability to get along with his fiddler. (He should come to our house and see how "well" they get along. LOL)

Haley was asked to play on the festival stage later in the afternoon before the presentation of trophies. As soon as Dylan came down from the hotel room, she called him up, introduced him to the crowd, and they played a couple sets together.

For the past few years, the competition has been held in a school with competitors staying in various area hotels. This year, the festival was held in a hotel which was much better and more festive. There were sessions and ceilis (dances). The kids swam together and played music well into the nights. It was wonderful to see all these kids who compete or have competed against each other making friends, playing music, and hanging out. Even if my kids didn't place, it would have been a great musical weekend.

Haley and Dylan on stage.

Playing session style with friends.

Friday night kids' session

The One Who Started It All...

This man is the reason my daughter is fiddling. When Haley was 4yo, we were in the library one day and I happened to notice a poster on the events board advertising a local concert with Kevin Burke and Cal Scott. I thought it would be nice to introduce Haley to a different kind of "violin" music and for her to hear live music.

We went to the concert and sat in the very front row. She was enthralled...sitting in rapt attention, tapping her feet, clapping her hands. At the intermission, we walked over to the table where there were CDs and a How to Play Celtic Fiddle DVD. She begged me to buy that DVD. The lady selling the items told her it was something for older people but I bought it anyway. We also bought a CD and we listened to it all the way home.

The next day, I put the DVD on, handed Haley her fiddle, and went to catch up on email. She came in a few minutes later playing a tune. The next day I did the same thing and she learned another tune.

A couple weeks later we were attending a Suzuki Institute and one day Haley and I were the first in the room for masterclass so she was fooling around with her fiddle tunes. A mother and daughter walked in and the little girl said she knew the tune so she and Haley began playing it together. The mother told me that her daughter's Suzuki teacher does fiddling with her group class once a month. That sparked the idea to find Haley a fiddle teacher.

When we got home, I found the local Irish society on the internet and someone gave me the name of a local fiddle teacher...it happened to be the lady selling the CDs and DVDs that night at the concert. She wasn't sure about starting a child so young but after we met her and she heard Haley playing her Kevin Burke tunes, all her doubts were resolved and she taught Haley until about a year ago. She is also one of the leaders for the Next Generation kids Irish session so we still see her fairly regularly.

We attend every concert within driving distance if Kevin is playing...actually any live concert we are able to get to no matter who's playing. Haley learned every tune on his CDs and on youtube videos, she emails him now and then and we also attended a summer Celtic music camp so she could have workshops with him. This week he and his guitarist (also a songwriter/composer whose music I could listen to all day), Cal Scott, gave workshops Wednesday and a concert Thursday with a local string quartet so they could perform their Irish Session Suite. It was lovely to hear it live...so much different than a CD.

At the workshop, Kevin told Haley he "hates" to have her in his workshops because she knows all his tunes and he always teaches something she knows already especially this time because there were a number of people there who'd never played Irish music and it had to be something fairly easy to grasp. At the end of the workshop when someone asked him to play something he had written he asked Haley to play Across the Black River with him and she was thrilled. 

Cal had only two adult guitarists and Dylan in his class. He said Dylan helped him teach the class and was very positive about the advances in Dylan's playing in the part year. He went to dinner with us and a couple other families and sat next to Dylan talking guitar. Haley had a blast playing with the other kids who will all be going to the Fleadh this weekend and are now fast friends.

                                                

Look How Much She's Grown...

 Haley came down from her bedroom a couple minutes ago proclaiming that something horrible had happened to her fiddle. Now we've had horrible things happen to fiddles at times like a broken bridge, unravelling strings, etc...at times when it has been extremely inconvenient to drive into the city for a fix so she did have me going...until I looked at her. She was carrying her first fiddle, a tiny 1/16 or 1/32 size violin (we aren't exactly sure of the size because we bought it as a 1/16 but when trading up to the next size at a different luthier found out it was an entire inch smaller than any 1/16 fiddle he had so she ended up going from this fiddle to "another" 1/16 size) and telling me her fiddle shrunk. She found it in the top of her closet though I am sure Dylan helped her get it out. I couldn't bear to get rid of it. Notice the blue moleskin on the chin rest with padding underneath to make it more comfortable for her "sensitive" self and the finger tapes. Her tiny bow still has moleskin attach as a "pillow" for her pinky and another bit for her thumb.

We thought it would be fun to see how much bigger her current 1/2 size fiddle is so we put the two together and discovered that her first fiddle is the size of the body of her current fiddle.

Fiddle, fiddle, and, oh yeah,...more fiddle.

 It seems like every post lately has been about fiddling. Actually all we've done lately has revolved around Irish music but I think that is mostly due to the fact that it is March...the busiest month on the Irish calendar.


This past week Haley and I attended two different concerts featuring fiddle/accordian duos. The first duo was Oisin MacDiarmada and Seamus Begley playing at the home of Haley's first fiddle teacher. It was a lovely concert playing a nice variety of music with some very funny stories and jokes thrown in by Seamus for good measure.


Haley was asked to play for them during the 2nd half of the concert. I hadn't taken her fiddle with us...note to self to keep it handy from now on. So, Oisin offered her his full size fiddle but when she realized it was tuned in E flat (to match the E flat accordian tuning) her teacher went and got her fiddle (also full size) for Haley. Haley played a couple tunes then they asked her to play with Seamus so she played Oisin's full size fiddle tuned to E flat and played a tune she'd only just learned. (Not quite sure how she does that...hmmm!) Granted her intonation would have been better on her own fiddle where her fingers would have been able to reach and her left arm wouldn't have been completely straight. LOL
Saturday, Haley opened for the other duo...Matt Cranitch and Jackie Daly in North Jersey. They mostly played polkas and slides because they are from Sliabh Luachra area of Ireland where those types of tunes are played. It was also a very nice concert followed by a well attended session. We were out very late and spent the night with a friend before going to Haley's fiddle lesson in NY the next morning bright and early.




Sunday, Haley had an early morning lesson (well, 10am but we were 1.5 hours away so had to get up early to drive). After the lesson we went to the nicest mall we know to look around then drove to Cornwall, NY for Haley to join her fiddle teacher, Brian Conway, and a number of his students in a library concert. From the concert, we went to her fiddle teacher's session where Haley played for another couple hours before we made the long drive home.

Haley spent a lot of time fiddling this weekend and a lot of time in the car. Much of the car time was spent practicing her classical and orchestra music with her music propped up on the open glove compartment. I am not so sure she'll be able to do that when she moves up to a full size fiddle.
We have another very fiddle filled week this week and weekend then things should slow down a bit.

PT Mom

A few people have asked me what the "PT" means in my blog name. A couple asked if it meant "part-time." LOL Not quite sure how one can be a part-time mom unless you are a stepmother or something. Anyway, that is not it.

The PT means physical therapist. I work once a week as a physical therapist for developmentally delayed kids 0-3 years old. I love my job, though I miss doing the homeschooling on that day. I meet many interesting families and love the kids I see. I get to set my own schedule, make a bit of money, and help families. I love watching the kids I see develop their skills. It never ceases to amaze me when a little one takes their first steps.  Whether they are 9 months or 33 months old...I still cry in happiness right along with their parents.

My job also has it's share of sadness...kids in sad situations or with heart-breaking diagnoses. I always remind myself that I am there helping the family deal with whatever they are going through and it makes those times more bearable.