Zola

Zola playing fiddle on Nephelidia

Finley and Maureen

Maureen fiddles while Finley paints. This picture was taken two years ago, while we were staying in a gîte near Agripoli, south of Naples, just before carnival. We brought all the instruments with us, including Finley’s electric piano.

Finley's First Swipe at the Fiddle

The Boy's Lament for his Dragon

Jeff, Maureen, Peter, and Zola

Awfulness Alert: This recording was made last winter. It’s an ill-favored thing, but significant to me less for how it sounds than what it is: people getting together and playing music purely for the fun of it, without worrying about whether it is any good, or what anybody else might think of it.

This tune isn’t actually in The Fiddler’s Throne. I think it’s in The Portland Collection. I was planning to make a recording of something from the book, but it has been a while and I’m still inventing excuses and so I thought I had better strike out quickly against the voracious specters of the cult of excellence.

The Boy's Lament for his Dragon

Sheet music from Nigel Gatherer’s Traditional Music Pages. (Click on the image for a full size copy.)

Also known as “72nd’s Farewell to Aberdeen”. Dragon apparently means kite.