Fiddling at the Portage Library

By Jonathan Kleyer

As the Portage District Library holds a reception for the Michigan Art Education Association Region 5 Exhibit, showcasing art by students from kindergarten through the 12th grade, the Crescendo Fiddlers will be there to accompany the event with a variety of music.

The Crescendo Fiddlers will be performing with five violinists and one guitarist, including director Sarah Hedlund. Hedlund, a member of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, teaches the violin at the Crescendo Academy.

“I’m more classically trained as a violinist, and I teach violin, but I’ve had a lot of students express interest in folk music. So I banded them all together and we started meeting on Saturdays and we started learning it,” Hedlund said about the group’s beginnings. “Fiddling isn’t a different instrument, it’s just a different style. When you talk about fiddling, it’s a genre.”

Hedlund commented that in some of the group’s end-of-year shows, they will pick a theme for what they will play, but since the upcoming performance is meant to provide background music, they will stick with their general repertoire.

That repertoire is, however, rather impressive, as Hedlund added, “We play country, Celtic, Swedish stuff—just kind of all the genres.”

Since the Crescendo Academy is a nonprofit organization that provides musical training regardless of age or income, the Fiddlers are made up of both youths and adults. According to Hedlund, over the time since the group started getting together, she has continued to do more research and become more familiar with how it should work.

“Since all the students are classically trained violinists, we rely more on the music on the page than traditional fiddlers,” she commented. “We have a set of tunes and sometimes there’s two part melody-harmony kinds of stuff. Then the guitarist is there to fill in the chord structure behind the violin’s melody and harmony. It’s sort of like, you know, you can be singing a tune and have a guitar strumming along.”

Though the library’s exhibit reception is scheduled from 2 to 4 p.m., the performance by the Crescendo Fiddlers will be from 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

“We hope that people enjoy hearing it, because we enjoy sharing the music,” Hedlund added. “Playing in a library is kind of interesting. It feels like it’d be kind of loud for the setting.”

For more information, call the library at 329-4544 or go online to www.pdl.lib.mi.us.