2008 Midwest Invitational Fiddle Competition (and a family visit)

It's been a very busy few weeks here, mostly due to two items that are more similar than I would have thought they'd be before I compared them closely. The fiddle contest, which long-time readers (all, what, three of you???) will remember I've entered for three years now, was this past Thursday, falling at the end of a week-long visit from my parents. You could have used the pressure in my life last week to cook several large pots of whatever it is people cook in pressure cookers. I'm too razzled to think of what that might be, but trust me, it's well-cooked now.

This year, for the contest, I enlisted the help of a very talented fiddler I met in fiddle classes a couple of years ago. The contest is a team competition, so I needed another melody instrument. I love the sound of two fiddles playing together, and with my piano-playing compatriot (and Twin Sister) Deborah accompanying us, I somehow thought we had a good chance to place this year. Well, that, and the fact that the contest organizer had pulled one of the best competitors into a new division of the contest (fiddle bands!), opening up a space in the usual top finishers.

We played French-Canadian tunes, two beautiful pieces that we worked to death in several intensive practice sessions, and which I privately practiced until I could finger them in my sleep, backwards, standing on my head -- and with my parents in the audience for the contest, I actually felt like I WAS playing them that way. I worked on that crazy quebecois foot tapping until I could barely lift my right leg (which does the faster work). You can hear it on the recording linked above -- the clunk you hear on the beat is one of three clunks that come around it, but the recording didn't pick up the other ones. I didn't talk much about it with my playing partners, but I worked harder this year than any other. I honestly thought we had a chance.

Well, we didn't place. Again. One judge came to us afterward and said he had tried hard to convince the other judges that we deserved to place, but he wasn't able to do so, and to make it worse, the wonderful guy who organized the contest, a good friend and the best teacher I've ever had, mistakenly announced our number as a winner and had to backtrack as I did the best about-face I could muster without crying, switching from excited celebrating to gracious clapping for the real winner.

It was a miserable moment, and capped off a week of the high emotion that always accompanies my parents' visits. This time it was pretty mellow, comparatively speaking, but I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for a bad mood to hit my father or for him to pull me aside for another talk about what I am doing wrong, what is wrong with my in-laws, or how something I did is affecting the overall happiness of him or my mother. I didn't get much at all of that this time, so maybe I can relax next time. My father even defended my music after the contest, saying he felt we SHOULD have placed -- a far cry from his suggestion three years ago that my merely entering the contest made me "foolish." Thank goodness for small miracles.

For now, I am regrouping and trying to get my emotions simmered down enough to consider the three invitations I have to play square dances this fall. I loved the one dance we played two years ago, and this time, we have the chance to play with some pretty amazing musicians and callers. Collaborating with my other Twin Sister continues to be one of the great pleasures of life for me, and every chance I have to do that again feels like a gift. As for my parents, I think probably they are as relieved as I am that there were not many ugly moments this visit, and they are probably as anxious as I am to return to their normal rhythm of life. A friend just wrote to me:


I agree.