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Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Meg Wobus Beller and today I'll be bringing you a setting of Amédée from Joanna Clare. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. Today we're going to be talking to Irish Fiddler Joanna Clare, but before we start, just two quick things I wanted to tell you.
One is that I'm finally feeling much better. I appreciated people who got in touch. I did have long COVID for about the last six weeks and I'm pretty much back to normal and hopefully my voice is too. That is good news. The other good news is that I will be at Fiddle Hell the first weekend in November. It's a convention up in Massachusetts and if you're interested, I think they still have tickets. I would check it out. If you want to hear more about Fiddle Hell, I did post about it last year after I went. That is episode 14. I think it's called going to Fiddle Hell.
Joanna Clare is an Irish Fiddler and a professional musician and teacher in Baltimore. She performs and she competes on the fiddle. She plays in sessions and for dances. She composes fiddle tunes and also teaches fiddle and violin. Joanna, welcome, I'm so glad you could make it. (Thanks so much for having me, Meg). It's funny, Joanna and I both live in Baltimore now and we used to both live in Rochester, new York. I know, Joanna, that you started learning the violin with the Suzuki method when you were pretty young. I did too. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about starting the violin in Rochester and, I guess, how you got from there into fiddling?
Joanna Clare
Yeah. So I went to a concert of child violinists when I was about two. My mom took me to an Ithaca Talent Education concert. I ended up being so infatuated with the little music students who are just a bit older than me that I got out of my chair and jumped up and ran up to the stage and would have gotten on if my mom hadn't caught me soon enough. So that was the beginning force that propelled me to learn the violin. I then started playing when I was three at the Hochstein School and I had a really good time with it.
I grew up listening to all these different Irish albums because my mom was influenced by the late Mick Maloney when she was at University of Pennsylvania and he was at University of Pennsylvania. I grew up listening to albums like Three Way Street. There were a few Cherish the Ladies albums, a few Chieftain's albums, Eileen Ivers, Seamus Connolly , Liz Carroll. I kind of listened to a bunch of the greats from a young age and took a liking to it and started learning tunes from albums when I was about seven. I actually my first fiddle teacher was Dick Bolt when I was about five. I don't know if he knew of Dick in Rochester.
Meg Wobus Beller
Yeah, I did know Dick, when I lived there and I taught fiddle. Yeah, he was a character?
Joanna Clare
Yeah for sure. And his wife. I remember that she was big into knitting, doing some sort of fabric thing, and I loved her wool. I was just so obsessed with it Like I was almost more interested in that than fiddle at that age.
Meg Wobus Beller
Five is pretty young, yeah, so I understand that we almost crossed paths, because I started working just out of college at a different Suzuki School in Rochester the Kanack School and teaching fiddle there and started a fiddle camp and then, I think after I moved down to Baltimore you went to that school right and the camp and learned some fiddling there.
Joanna Clare
Yeah, the Kanack School. I took group fiddling lessons with Liz Hirshhorn, and then I also took improv lessons with Alice, so that was really great.
Meg Wobus Beller
Oh my gosh, Alice is the best. And how about after that?
Joanna Clare
I started taking lessons with Brian Conway when I was 11. So by that point I had moved to Syracuse. It's kind of funny how I started with him. I was also an Irish dancer growing up and I guess I still dance because I performed at the Maryland Folk Fest in dance as well as fiddle last weekend. But as a 10 year old I was going to feises, Feshanna and competing in Irish dance and they would also have music competitions there sometime.
So at Rockland County Feish, when I was 10, I met Maeve Flanagan, who said to my mother she said you know, you should really go to my uncle, Brian Conway, and I think at the time her mom, Rose Flanagan, wasn't teaching online and I lived in Syracuse and Brian lived in White Plains and so it was prudent to take lessons online as opposed to go in person. But about three quarters of a year after that my mom finally reached out to Brian and I started lessons with him and I actually took lessons with him for about nine years, so into college.
Meg Wobus Beller
Yeah, Brian Conway is just a lion in the Irish fiddle scene. For people who aren't familiar with him, he's been one of the top Irish fiddlers for many, many years. When I was Joanna's age, I was able to work with him in workshops and he completely opened my eyes to understand a lot more about how I was playing jigs and how I wanted to play jigs, so I'm forever grateful to him for that. What was it like working with him for so many years?
Joanna Clare
Brian is a real stickler and you play a role that's a little sloppy and he'll stop you and say, hey, do that again and make it cleaner. And why don't we change this bowing so that it sounds better and that you're following a few standard rules, which are you slur into the downbeat and you slur from lower string to higher string. Those are like two, like pretty major rules or guidelines that he has with slurring. So a lot of it was being really intentional about slurring and then being really intentional about ornamentation, borrowing ornamentation from the greats like Michael Coleman and Andy McGann that came before us, but also coming up with our own ornamentation variation.
Meg Wobus Beller
Yeah, so kind of developing your own style, and you also write tunes yourself. You write tunes in the Irish style. When did you start doing that?
Joanna Clare
I started writing tunes when I was 14 and actually my first tune, which is called the Mouse Catcher, named after my mom, my dad and my cat, who all, in various ways, caught mice in a week apart from each other. Yeah, so the Mouse Catcher was the first reel that I wrote 2014 and I competed with it and actually went over to Ireland and played it there in the newly composed tune competition.
Meg Wobus Beller
Can I ask you about competing? My understanding, the dance competitions are Feis, called a Feis, and then the music competitions are called a Fleadh . Yes, it's a completely different world from the New England contra dance world that I grew up with, because competing is a big thing in Irish music and they have flaws in the US and they have them in Ireland. How does it work when you go and compete with the categories and everything?
Joanna Clare
So there's age groups, so under 12, 12 to 15, 15 to 18 and over 18. And then there's different instruments like fiddle flute, and then there are like fun ones, like the newly composed tune competition, which is open to all ages and there's not different age groups. So you go to Parsippany, the Hilton in Parsippany. If you get in the top two in your competition, then you qualify to go over to the All Ireland Fla Keele, which this past year was in Mullingar and I was fortunate enough to attend that. But it moves around from city to city and so different parts of Ireland get the economic benefit of having the Fleadh there.
Meg Wobus Beller
So when you see in someone's bio like All Ireland, this or All Ireland, that's because they were competing in that national Fleadh (usually
Joanna Clare
Yeah, and it's a pretty big honor to get a All Ireland championship to win the Fleadh. All right. This person is like really great.
Meg Wobus Beller
Yeah, how do you? What's it? Kind of like the mindset, Because you also have performed for dances and for live dances and you play in sessions and stuff. So how is it different the competition scene?
Joanna Clare
I much prefer sessions and performances and dances to competitions. I think that it's a setting where the music is greater than the person and competitions are very eco-centric. And then Irish music is the music of a people and it's not really. It wasn't really made to be competed with. The competitions only started because Comholtas wanted to preserve Irish music and get people excited about it, which that does happen and I was really motivated to do the Fleadh Cheoil competitions because of Eileen Ivers having won All Ireland Fleadh , I was like, oh, I want to be just like her and so, um, yeah, so I started competing. I think it's also much more important for kids to compete than adults. Like I don't know if I'm going to compete for very long. I'm more internally motivated than I was when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I was very externally motivated, and so competitions were really good for getting me to practice. But now I care a lot more about practicing and playing music with people and less about whether I get external validation for that.
Meg Wobus Beller
That's so interesting, thank you. Speaking of playing music with other people, I know you moved down to Baltimore for college and you play with a lot of great musicians down here. What was? It like, how did you kind of connect with them moving to a new city and getting into the new scene?
Joanna Clare
Well, Brian Conway, my teacher, and Billy McComisky, who's the biggest of the biggest down here and the best of the best, are in a band together named Pride of New York, and so they know each other quite well. And when I moved down, I think what happened was Brian kind of said to Billy hey, Joanna's coming down, take care of her. And so I get the special treatment from Billy. He's kind of like a dad to me and he really helped me grow as a musician in many ways. I think that one of the big things was sending tunes back and forth that I had written to him during the pandemic.
We really kept in touch and I was up in Syracuse and he was obviously down here in Baltimore but we would call all once in a while and it made me feel still connected to the music scene in Baltimore. But yeah, I mean knowing Billy and then just going out to Cafe Hon when that was the thing when there were sessions there, and going to the Trad Fest and being available for performances and stuff like that.
Meg Wobus Beller
And those tunes that you were writing and a lot of the players that you connected with are on your album. Joanna has an album called Keep the Candle Burning, is that right?
Joanna Clare
Yeah, To Keep the Candle Burning. Yeah. So I included a bunch of musicians, a few of which are from the Baltimore area. So we have Billy McComisky, Sean McComisky, Myron Bretholz, Matt Mulqueen, Josh Dukes, Brian Conway, Catherine O'Kelly, and Liam Presser on the album. Yeah, it was really fun to collaborate with all those musicians.
Meg Wobus Beller
Where can people go online to hear you?
Joanna Clare
JoannaClaire.com. That's the only place where my album is currently available. It's for sale as a CD and for sale as an MP3. And it might be on digital platforms soon. But CD Baby is taking forever to send out the album, so it's been actually multiple months of me trying to get my album out on platforms.
Meg Wobus Beller
It's so annoying and you get nothing for it. I mean, people get to hear you. We have Joanna's album. It's really good. It's one of our rotations in the car. It's one of those five desks that stays in there. I know you're doing some teaching in Baltimore and you also have a workshop you're doing. Do you want to talk about how people can learn from you, learn with you?
Joanna Clare
So I teach at my home in Baltimore and I also teach for the Baltimore Music Company and the Baltimore Irish Music School. I teach privately. People of all ages come to me. I start kids as young as three, but kids that are three have to take in person. Older students can take online and I teach Suzuki violin as well as Irish fiddle. And then I'm also this weekend, October 1st 2023, I'm starting to teach a tune, teach workshop and low session. That should be really fun and that's at Racer's Cafe in Parkville from five to six. Anybody's welcome there. Bring any instrument, any level, although it's geared towards beginners and lower level intermediate students.
Meg Wobus Beller
So people can go to your website, Joanna Clare, and hear your music and also maybe find you on Facebook or Instagram to get updates about your teaching. Yes, well, our tune for today is one of Joanna's tunes. Can you say the name? I know it's a hornpipe, Amédée Amédée, and this is a hornpipe in G Minor that you wrote. Can you tell us about?
Joanna Clare
it, so I wrote this tune when I was 17. I was a senior in high school and my violin was getting seams opened all the time, and so it was one of these times where I had a loaner violin from Sullivan Violins. Were you aware of Sullivan Violins in?
Meg Wobus Beller
Rochester. When you lived there, I got my violins from Tom Hosmer in Syracuse. I grew up in Syracuse.
Joanna Clare
Oh yeah, I know, Tom, pretty well what a small world this is. So I had a loaner violin from Ken Sullivan and it left a like a rash on my neck. Oh no, something about the varnish I was allergic to, or something like that. I figured I would write a tune, after this silly violin that, you know, left a itchy rash on my neck. The maker of the violin was Amédée. I used that to name the tune.
Meg Wobus Beller
A sinister story for this tune, yeah.
Joanna Clare
Okay, and this tune actually won the newly composed tune competition in Parsippany. I was actually at my high school graduation and I had sent it over to Andrew Caden, who's from Bethesda, to learn and play at the competition. And all of a sudden I had just graduated and I get this picture of a medal on Facebook Messenger and the tune had won. So even though I wasn't at the qualifying competition, I still went over to Ireland and played in the Island.
Meg Wobus Beller
Awesome. Joanna Clare, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We're going to share this tune and be sure to everyone. Look her up on Facebook and on Instagram and check out our website, joannaclaire.com.
Thank you so much, Meg.
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