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A Thank You
with Photos from the Bachand's Summer Experience
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The last leg of our trip
was spent in Mallorca, Spain where we had the opportunity of meeting a
great musician, PJ, who is 19 years old and a master of whistles,
flutes, and pretty much all other Celtic instruments including fiddle,
bagpipes and more… we first “met” PJ cyber-ly so to speak, through
YouTube – he is known as TinWhistler
(www.youtube.com/TinWhistler)
Before we met he had never really heard of Vancouver Island – now he is
one more person who knows about our strong fiddle community!
So thank you Victoria
Fiddle Society for supporting the fiddle community through the many
activities you sponsor and for making sure the youth in the society are
exposed to so many musical opportunities.
Musically yours,
Qristina & Quinn Bachand
www.myspace.com/QristinaQuinnBachand
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