My university music program was so intense (not to mention the fact that I was a tense player) that I developed tendonitis in my arms so severe I couldn’t lift a notebook without both hands and a lot of pain. I tried every healing modality under the sun to heal them until the only thing left to do was to leave my music major and stop playing completely for a year. During that year I taught English in China which kept me very occupied and batty so I didn’t miss it TOO much. When I got back to where I was living in Ottawa I found an envelope containing Irish fiddle tunes and a tape explaining how to play them in the Irish style that a friend in New Orleans had given me. This was perfect for getting my arms back in shape and I soon took my fiddle tunes to jam sessions in pubs around Ottawa. I developed such a passion for traditional fiddle styles that I never really made it back to a serious classical repertoire.

The most difficult part of the transition was learning how to relax and improvise! This is a skill most classical players do not have and part of my quest in life is to teach more classical players to play other styles of music and RELAX. It’s just music, after all.

Anyhoo, all this led to a great journey of street performance, jamming, tooling around Cape Breton Island, studying Cape Breton style fiddling with Duane Cote, and jazz master classes with the great Darol Anger, and the list goes on and on...

After all I realize that at university I was not learning about the soul of music, I was learning the mastery of an instrument. The soul of music is where my heart and passion will always be.