Manitoba Live Music Event

About

Manitoba has produced several internationally renowned fiddle players—like Sierra noble and Patti Kusturok—and The Frontier Fiddlers represent the next generation of Manitoba fiddle talent.
Made up of students in the Frontier School division, they come from as far away as Grand Rapids, Matheson Island, Berens River, and Norway House. 

They’re immersed in Métis and aboriginal fiddle traditions, like the Red River Jig, which they play with vigour, skill, and a sense of fun
… and all of them are teenagers or younger.

The Fiddlers, who maintain a special connection to the MCO’s northern outreach group and played a pre-concert recital at an MCO concert in 2010, will be featured front and centre in these two concerts.

First, they’ll treat us to a spectacular medley of traditional folk music. Then they’ll join the Orchestra in performing Water Circle, a new work by favourite Winnipeg composer Jim Hiscott. Inspired by the Métis fiddle music of the prairies, as well as the peculiar water dances of the loons who inhabit central Canada, Water Circle will give the Fiddlers the chance to show off in performing the fiddle reels inlaid in the piece.

During the evening version of this concert, the MCO will add a performance of JS Bach’s energetic second violin concerto. The piece poses an interesting challenge for MCO Concertmaster
Karl Stobbe, who conducts this concert and performs the concerto’s violin solo—which he’ll do with all the gusto it deserves. also performed at the evening concert is Bartok’s Divertimento,
an appealing modernist work decorated with folk colours.