Event

Fiddlers Four

This years fiddlers showcase has been assembled by acknowledged virtuoso Geoff Seitz, and we are greatly impressed! Geoff himself, who began playing music at 8 years old, was from a musical family: his father played mandolin and fiddle. Geoff, as he says in his understated biography, has won a few fiddle contests, and acts as a judge in others. His choices this year for our listening enjoyment, include Irish fiddler Andrew OBrien, who grew up in Dublin in a large musical family, hearing and playing with the cream of musicians in that very musical city. Although the necessity for work has limited his performances, Andrew still finds time to teach at the St Louis School for Irish Arts.

Next on the program is Vesta Johnson, born in 1922 in Linn County, Missouri. She learned her fiddling from local musicians, having no radio or phonograph when she was growing up, and her style of playing is the nearest thing Missourians have to the original local sound. Still active as a performer and teacher, Vesta is a recognized authority on Missouri fiddling and tunes. To round out the group and provide yet another facet to this versatile instrument, we have bluegrass and country swing virtuoso Bo Chaloupek! Bo arrived in St Louis in 1983 from Pilsen, Czech Republic already accomplished in country fiddling (which he had learned as a child from GI radio and Radio Free Europe) and upon arrival here has played all over Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri with many different musicians and bands.