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Judy TurnerFounder and retiring Musical Director, June 2011 Sixteen years of fun with the famous fiddlers |
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When I started this group in 1995 I was 42, married to the father of my children, and I had brown hair and a somewhat more svelte shape. In fact, I looked a bit like the picture above, taken by Michael Kilpatrick at a 90’s Celtic Festival! My family and I lived in Heidelberg and I worked at the Australia Foundation for Culture and Humanities. In the intervening 16 years I have happily remarried, to the wonderful Neil Adam, gained two step children, seen all 5 kids through school and most through uni, moved house 5 times, changed jobs 8 times, gone completely grey (are you surprised?!) and put on quite a middle aged few kilos. Perhaps the one constant in my life over the past 16 years, aside from my own family, has been the large, funny, generous and hospitable family that has grown up around the Melbourne Scottish Fiddle Club - and for the fun and friendship that you have given me I can’t say thank you often enough……what follows is an attempt….. How to sum up the club and its achievements over a decade and a half, is a puzzling question. As we prepare for the Celtfest gig it’s a perfect time to take stock, as the very first gathering of the group – in August 1995 – followed the passing round of a brief note at the old Celtfest then held at GPAC in Geelong, on a wet and muddy weekend in June of that year. And just one year later (June 1996) we were back on stage, again at GPAC, a small group of enthusiasts, with Graham Witt on keyboard, Athalie Brooks on bass, and Janine Lancaster and Greg O’Leary (yes, truly!) providing the written scores and some harmony parts for about 12 fiddlers. Of our current players I think maybe only Kristin Marriott and Harry Gardner were at that first gig, as well as Athalie and me – but forgive me if this is wrong. My motivation as most people know by now, was to recreate the sense of community around music that I had found such a haven when the family and I moved to Boston in 1993. The group had met monthly at St John’s Church in Heidelberg, and we very soon noticed that the tunes (and the sumptuous afternoon tea) had become quite a draw card. A highlight of that first CeltFest gig was seeing lots of elderly tartan clad ladies with tears rolling down their cheeks as we played a sad tune that took them back to the hielands. The repertoire then was mostly made up of tunes I had borrowed from the Boston Scottish Fiddle Club and the arrangements owed a lot to Ed Pearlman, legendary founder. Our playing was pretty rough, it has to be said, and music stands were de rigeur. No songs at that stage – not till we recruited (drum roll) Neil Adam, in 1997, with his fantastic guitaring and singing. Owing to the great tunes and the friendly and inclusive ethos, interest in the Club grew. We decided early on to be an audition free zone, and that meant all were made welcome. Matt Robertson moved down from Canberra in 1997-8 and soon became a key part of building the repertoire and encouraging tune writing. We had quickly become a group that aspired to perform as well as to gather to share tunes, and this meant we were forever moving the bar higher. Gigs started coming in, as people in little festivals and church communities began to hear about us, and to know we would go anywhere and play for free! Encouraging tune writing was an easy thing to do, as both Matt and I were really keen writers, and Neil (a songwriter of course) was a great arranger. It was a musical adventure that never really stopped. A seminal moment came in 1998 when Alasdair Fraser came out and played the Brunswick Festival with Tony McManus, and we were lucky enough to support him (thanks to John McAuslan, a long time friend to the Club, who can also be heard on Red Hot Scots doing the ground breaking rendition of Tam Lin that became so famous on the internet via mp3.com). Alasdair joined us and heard us play a tune written by Matt in his honour. Another great moment at St John’s was when we welcomed Martin Hayes for a workshop- he arrived late and we greeted him (this must have been 1997) with a great tune he had taught to Matt and me (also Chris Duncan) at Alasdair’s Valley of the Moon fiddle camp in ’96 - someone or other’s Barn Dance….. you know the one! Martin walked in and was rather gob smacked by this little hall full of people desperate to hear his wit and wisdom. You could have heard a pin drop through the whole hour of gentle talk and playing. The Sunday afternoons in Heidelberg had a special charm and a homeliness that were rather threatened when the church redeveloped and shaved the meeting rooms in half, leaving no space for my daughter Rebecca to do her pony drawings lying on the floor any more, and we knew the writing was on the wall – it would soon be time to find a new home. Patricia and Andrew Gilmour put a lot of thought into where we might move to, and we looked at a rather large and gloomy Masonic Hall in Preston for a brief moment, before I remembered the St Aidan’s Hall on the edge of Greythorn. I was working at the City of Bororondara at that time and had seen it on my work travels. It suited Neil and me just fine as we were about to move from Greensborough to Blackburn! Needless to say, it suited Athalie even better, and after all, as she is apt to say, Box Hill is the geographic (and perhaps cultural) epicenter of Melbourne. |
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In 1998 Pria and Louise Schwall-Kearney had joined the group and a whole new level of energy was added. Up till then we had had an ad hoc committee and a lot of people and contributed to helping to promote and run events, but with Louise, committee member extraordinaire, the whole thing rose to a new level of professionalism. Neil and I went off to get married and take a little honeymoon break in 2000, and Louise took on the challenge of getting the group incorporated. She quietly and with good humour led us to become more organised but never too slick. She took on all the key roles over the next ten years, and without her the group would never have achieved all it did. A giant step for the Club was releasing our first album in 1999, when we were still raising money from selling chocolate frogs. Good on Michael Kilpatrick for thinking of the chocolate drive, and good on Hugh McDonald for taking on the challenge of recording us all at the PLC Music Department. Chris Duncan came down and began an association with us that continued strongly for the next decade and more. The decade following our move to Balwyn was a very fertile one, with biennial music camps in Benalla and Mansfield, where Chris led the teaching and our young fiddlers were encouraged to take up the tutoring role. We partnered with SA Scottish Fiddlers and ACT Scottish Fiddlers for a couple of these camps, and a great time was had by all. The O’Learys were a constant presence in our first ten years with Shannon and her little sister Kate being at all practices and gigs that I can remember, sitting alongside the Davidsons, little Pria and lovely Colleen Butler, one of the many fiddle club alumni now a parent, along with Lisa Christensen our brilliant graphic designer, Christina Sbaratto, Melinda Moore, Anne Estaugh, Sarah Davies and many more. The O’Learys brought with them another Ace organizer in the person of Sue, who has been the other crucial partner in this exercise from day one, organizing all our tours from New Zealand to New South Wales, and doing it so well that you felt you were in the hands of a professional. |
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But I was talking about the 90s, and of course as well as our music camps and our tours we made albums. You can see a timeline of Fiddle Club achievements here (hyperlink), but suffice to say, that it grew and grew and gradually from the humble and somewhat daggy beginnings, has become an awesome performing outfit, thrilling crowds all over Australia and New Zealand, and just waiting for the right sponsor to launch itself on the rest of world! Some of the most rewarding moments and best memories for me are listed below. I know I will miss the club terribly and don’t plan to stay away forever, but know too that the moment is right to pass the baton. My heartfelt thanks go to Matt Robertson and the entire committee for agreeing to take it on. It’s been a labour of love for me and Neil, involving countless hours, and bringing us into great situations with marvelous friends. Three of our five kids have made good friends through the club – for Winnie going on tour with us to NZ and sharing with Pria was unforgettable, and for Bec and Gus, now working on becoming professional musos themselves, they will never escape those many Google references to the role they have both played in recording and performing some of our best hits!
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