Education

Chops , Grooves & Blues instruction DVDs

Darol offers two instruction DVDs out on Homespun Tapes: one which demonstrates and explains all aspects of the Blues on the Fiddle, and
Chops And Grooves, which thoroughly explores Darol's infamous rhythmic techniques. Check out our new Chop page!

Darol also has a new Bluegrass playalong book & CD, published by Homespun tapes.
Find it here.

Just played an amazing concert ("Gypsy Jazz," see site for a video) with that amazing middle school orchestra from Seattle-- led by Beth Fortune. She's amazing too and so are the kids. We played Creaking Tree, Chopagroove (I had had her test it out last year with the kids, so we played it finally in public), altogether 5 of my orchestra pieces, and not just the easy ones: African Solstice is really tricky and I soloed on that Neal Hefti tune Lil' Darlin-- these kids are really good and so motivated. Joe Craven was on the show too, and we did the usual wild set within the context of the pieces, and whipped the kids into a roight proper frenzy.
Also the kids played an arrangement of that Green Day song (what was it? Street of Miserable Alt-Dudes? ), and it was great. Anyway, it's got me motivated to get some of my piecemeal string orchestra pieces laying about whipped into shape. Also made me think that we need more real rockers for ork, and I'm working on that right now, I'm real excited about it-- should have it together in a week or so.
Trying to find something super-simple but fun. I'm starting to get the hang of this rhythms thing for the kids, and trying to make it as much fun as I can.

The long-sought explosion of interest in contemporary improvising and vernacular strings is happening now. It's an exciting time to be involved, as a string educator, in the American String Teachers Association and with the Jazz String Caucus , because of the profound changes in string teaching, and the new generation of excellent musicians. It's the payoff for about 25 years of work for me and a few other even more knowledgeable and dedicated individuals, who have howled in a wilderness of our own design for so long.
And this has all blossomed big-time at the

2007 American String Teachers Association

National Conference, March 7-11 in Detroit, Michigan. It was a monumnental concentration of string educators, students, and music companies from all disciplines, swirling around together in the appropiately named Renaissance Center in a wintry downtown Detroit.
I reprised the Music In A Circle sessions, which were a big hit last year. Conceived as an opportunity for music teachers and students to blow off steam by playing simple fiddle tunes learned on the spot by ear, the sessions have become a favorite session for many, and were expanded to one each day of the conference. I promised participants that I would put a list of these tunes up here:

Simple tunes to learn by ear
Liberty!
Back up & Push
Wayfaring Stranger
Please Shove the Pig?s Foot a Little Further Into The Fire
Jenny Ran Away in the Mud and the Rain
Stony Lonesome
Ora Lee
The Dead March
Bill Cheatham
Cotton Eyed Joe
Road to Columbus
Little Rabbit
Sweet Georgia Brown
With Love from Me to You

Waltzes:
Midnight On the Water
Old Carpenter?s
Goodnight Irene
Josephines?s Baptism Waltz

The whole conference was an overwhelmingly positive experience. The promise of wider, effective string education is being fulfilled by all these incredible young musicians. Not only in the very strong Classical Music area, but demontrated forcefully and effectively in the Saturday morning Alt-styles contest winners concert, organized by educator and author Martin Norgaard. Great educational sessions in all styles with excellent presentations by dozens of great teachers, and great jamming and camaraderie the whole weekend.
The Turtle Island String Quartet played a concert at the convention, and it was unbelievably great: an apocalyptically profound performance for one of the most knowledgeable audiences ever. They have a new recording out- not out yet but soon- a tribute to John Coltrane on Telarc records, and in this writer's opinion, it's the best thing TISQ has ever done. They have gone so far beyond ANY other string player/composer/anybody working right now they are more like a force of nature rather than a music group. I'm very very proud of that group, and my past role in it.
Other related news: A fiddle tune of Darol's will appear soon in print, especially for high school and middle school orchestra, published by Alfred music.
Some photos from the conference will eventually appear here, as well as a pdf download of some easy fiddle tunes that were played in the Music In A Circle sessions.

The 2006 ASTA National Conference was a long weekend in Kansas City with a vast panoply of string teachers, builders, publishers and string teachers and enthusiasts of every stripe. See details about sessions. Above, a dinner party thrown by Strings magazine publisher David Lusterman, with well-fed alt-string instructor/clinicians. L to R: julie Lyonn Liebermann, Jesus Florido, DA, lauren Rioux, Renata Bratt, Daryl S, Fred Carpenter, Strings Publisher David Lusterman, Edgar Gabriel.

Ultimate Strings CD

Ultimate Strings, Volume 1: Alternative Styles compilation CD is on sale for $9.95 for a limited time.

It features tracks by Grammy-winning fiddlers Mark O'Connor and Alison Krauss, Grammy-nominated fiddler Darol Anger with his former student and bandmate Brittany Haas, the phenomenal jazz violinist Christian Howes, Berkelee's legendary Matt Glaser with pianist Bevan Manson, electric violinist and Emmy-winning composer Mark Wood, the Grammy-nominated Hampton (Rock) String Quartet, and more. All proceeds from the CD benefit ASTA WITH NSOA's National Foundation to Promote String Teaching and Playing.

Available exclusively at www.astaweb.com, Ultimate Strings, Volume 1: Alternative Styles is the first CD in a three-part series to be released by ASTA WITH NSOA. Upcoming releases will feature classical soloists and chamber music. Darol says, "This is a fantastic CD that will entertain and inform you about what is going on in the community of modern string players in America. And it's really worth finding out!"

Pittsburg Jazz & Fiddling Camp

A wonderful-sounding new summer camp for sting players has been brought to my attention and is located near Pittburgh, PA. It's the Pittsburgh Jazz and Fiddling Camp.

• Jazz String Orchestra led by Martin Norgaard
• Rock String Orchestra led by Matt Turner
• World Music Ensemble led by Julie Lyonn Lieberman
• Fiddling String Band led by Janet Farrar-Royce

In a prescient move, the camp is set up so that string teachers will be able to spend up to two hours each day in teacher training sessions, to prepare them to take it all back to their classrooms.

2005 American String Teacher Association Conference

2005's American String Teacher Association conference happened in February in Reno, Nevada, and was an incredible experience for any string player. helping to spearhead an explosion of interest in non-classical styles and pedagogy, Darol appeared at the conference as a clinician and a performer, and was able to meet or reunite with what seemed like hundreds of close friends and musical and business associates. These following photos depict Darol's well-attended Rhythm Chop clinic, with well-known cellist Renata Bratt and jazz violin phenom Christian Howes.

Chops & Grooves & Blues DVDs

As of February 2005, Darol offers two instruction DVDs out on Homespun Tapes: one which explicates all aspects of the Blues on the Fiddle, and the new one, Chops And Grooves, which thoroughly explores Darol's famous rhythmic techniques.

The new website of the IAJE String Caucus!

Darol premiers 3 movement orchestral piece at Icicle Creek Music Center

Darol taught again in June 2005 at the Mark O'Connor Fiddle Camp., in Nashville's Montgomery Bell State Park. This is one of the best learning experiaences for string players ever devised. Some instructors below: April Verch (canadian), Sara Caswell and John Blake (Jazz), Angella Ahn (classical), DA.

Darol will return to the O'Connor Nashville Camp in June 2006, and will also instruct at Rockygrass Academy in July 2006.

Past Instruction events

Darol spent a week in July 2002 with a select group of excellent student players from all over the country at the Icicle Creek Music Center, high in the eastern Cascade mountains in central Washington State. He taught improvisation and rehearsed his new work for solo improvising violin and orchestra, which was premiered on July 13. Darol played the solo violin part with the kids. The orchestra was conducted by Scott Hosfeld, at that time co-director of the Icicle Creek Music Center. Other highlights of the week included the performance of an original score to a historic Mary Pickford movie, written and conducted by Maria Newman, of the fabulous composing Newman family. Darol also participated in the performance of this score, playing "Fire On The Mountain" for a very long time.

IAJE String Caucus Poised for World Domination

The 2002 International Association Of Jazz Educators convention in Long Beach, California was another great one for our organization, the String Jazz Caucus. Marred by the absence of many East Coast musicians, the String Caucus nevertheless made good progress in string representation with 3 clinics, a panel discussion, some terrific student performances, and a jolly orchestra reading session for new educational string jazz music, covering elementary, middle school and advanced levels.

In attendance at the conference besides Yours Truly were cellist and our new Caucus Pesident Renata Bratt, violist/Secretary Tanya Kalmanovitch, our new treasurer and liason from ASTA, violinist/editor Laura Reed, violinist/author Julie Lyonn Lieberman, Uptown String Quartet co-founder Lesa Terry, violinist Randy Sabien (who conducted an excellent clinic in which he taught, in 45 minutes, a string orchestra to improvise on the blues), violinist/author Martin Norgaard, long-tme string jazz supporter John Kuzmich, cellist Christine Harrington, regional string stars Cathy Morris, Diane Delin and Susie Hansen, and many other great players and teachers, including some unbelievably hot student players.

Here are the minutes courtesy of Tanya.

The minutes for that meeting and last year's historic session may be viewed on our IAJE String Discussion email list, which also has questions and answers about the organization, and our Mission Statement, part of which I include here:

The Jazz String Caucus believes that interest in jazz on strings is greater than ever before, and that there exists a tremendous and largely unmet demand for educational resources. The Jazz String Caucus therefore strives to make a basic improvisational fluency available to every string player: a skill that we believe is essential in nurturing the complete musical development of the twenty-first century string player.

In regular English, that means we're trying to make it easy for string teachers to teach improvising, and we're trying to make it easier forjazz teachers to teach strings.

We're working on resources such as sheet music for alternative string groups, making available historic jazz string recordings, contacts with string clinicians like me & all the others. We're creating curriculum recommendations for string teachers who want to learn about jazz, and technical recommendations for the jazz teachers who don't know strings. We're working on a teacher training program for string teachers to get comfortable with improvising in jazz and fiddling styles. We're connecting people with questions to people with answers.

We're setting up ties with the American String Teachers' Association, including a new competition for alternative groove-based string styles. We have a website called stringscentral.com, which will list and help distribute instructional sheet music for all sizes of string chamber groups, including rhythm sections and so forth. We also list clinicians there, and their instructional products such as books and videos.

The discussion list is a forum where your questions, and possibly your knowledge, can be shared. Here is this page is a history of the first year of the String Caucus, traced through emails during the year 2000. Some interesting reading.

Join the String Caucus!

You don't have to join the IAJE, just get on the discussion list, it's free, though we voted in an optional $20/year dues to defray expenses for a new website which will support the email list plus whatever free resources we can get up there. Please check this out!!!

Relevant links

• International Association Of Jazz Educators website
• IAJE string caucus discussion list
• stringscentral.com
• American String Teachers Association website

Jazz violin Instruction methods: Martin Norgaard's Jazz Fiddle Wizard and Randy Sabien's Jazz Philharmonic have in the past 2 years pretty much established themselves as standard beginning jazz texts for strings. Martin's for individual work, Randy's for elementary and middle school orchestra.

Excellent new arrivals include Edgar Gabriel's book and package String Groove. This one looks very good, put together by a great Chicago player. The system consists of a book and CD of 12 original tunes written by Edgar Gabriel in the styles of: Irish Fiddle, Smooth Jazz, Jazz Blues, Rock, Middle-Eastern, Old-time Fiddle, Salsa, Heavy-Metal, Cajun Fiddle, Rock Blues, Swing Jazz, and Funk. Groove. One very good book of jazzy string orchestra music that could be played by late elementary and middle-to-high school orchestras is Kjos Music's Jazz Combo Session, by Dean Sorenson. You can't find it on the KJOS website but it's there Ñ email Kjos to find out how to order it.

For a gander at many of the books available, see over here.

SHAR products has released String Quartet arrangements for much of the Turtle Island String Quartet music and a selection of medium to advanced TISQ school string orchestra pieces; check them out at Shar's Website.

Darol Anger is available for a variety of educational situations

download a PDF of Darol Anger's String Workshop Information

From a one to two-hour hands-on string workshop dealing with blues, improvisation and learning vernacular styles, to extended residencies covering various aspects of jazz and/or fiddle technique, delivered with humor and directness.

Darol is a veteran of educational settings ranging from colleges to rural campsites, with music festivals to music stores.

He is committed to modern string education, and has co-led annual seminars with the Turtle Island String Quartet at Stanford, Oberlin and Amherst colleges, in Germany and Brazil, at Cazadero and Interlachen Music Camps, and innumerable lecture-demonstrations for all ages all over the world

He also guest instructs at Berklee College of Music and at Mark O'Connor's Fiddle Camp, and Alisdair Fraser's Fiddle Camp. He is a member of ASTA's Editorial Board, and is the String Resource Board of the International Association of Jazz Educators, in which he advises, organizes, and reviews string improvisational study materials. Info about clinics and orchestra and small group material

He may be reached for these services at his email address, or through this address:

Darol Anger
Fiddlistics Music
POB 19297
Oakland, CA 94619