Fiddle Fest

The UTC Fiddle Fest is a new venture into American folk music for the Department of Performing Arts at UTC. Come and join award-winning fiddlers Jim Wood and John Boulware, and guitarist Inge Wood, for a day-long festival learning about and playing American fiddle tunes and folk music in an informal orchestra setting with musical arrangements of the tunes made by Jim Wood.

The Fiddle Fest Orchestra is open to violin, viola, cello, and guitar players at the Intermediate to Advanced levels, grades 9 – 12 and Adults. Reading music fluently is required. Jim Wood will teach the orchestra about playing fiddle music and will share solo spots with his pupil John Boulware. Sandy Morris will conduct the orchestra. Pre-registration is available at www.utcmusic.org, then click the button for UTC Fiddle Festival.

Participants will gather at 9:30 a.m. on Sept. 23 at the UTC Fine Arts Center Roland Hayes Concert Hall, and begin rehearsal on the fiddle music at 10:00 a.m. Following a lunch break, Jim Wood will lead a clinic on an interesting aspect of folk music, then more rehearsal. The Festival will conclude with a public free concert at 5:00 p.m. in Roland Hayes Concert Hall. 

Jim Wood has won over 160 first prizes in folk music competitions, including at least seven fiddle championships. John Boulware is also a Tennessee state champion in fiddling. Along with Jim’s wife Inge Wood, all three of these clinicians are multi-instrumentalists. Orchestra director Sandy Morris is well-known in the region for her work with the Chattanooga Symphony Youth Orchestra, as well as her teaching at the Center for Creative Arts high school and her work as a clinician and adjudicator. She was honored by the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts. Currently she leads the UTC Cadek Community Orchestra.

A participant of last year’s Fiddle Fest said, “This festival was SO much fun! (It) was so good that it made the hair on my arms stand up. It reminded me of the music I heard as a kid sitting on the porch.” His granddaughter was playing in the fiddle orchestra that evening.