Fiddle | Grant Flick | Intermediate | Period 1 | Week 2 (July 14-19, 2024)
This course is designed to focus on technique and tone. We’ll spend lots of time making sound(s) and exploring the many things the instrument can do. The class will survey technical concepts fiddlers might be expected to do/know and how to adapt our sound/playing to fit the musical situations we encounter with an emphasis on bluegrass and related idioms. We’ll look at practice strategies to make strong and efficient progress at camp as well as back at home. This will include technical and creative exercises designed not only for better fiddling but also greater musicianship. We’ll likely look at these concepts through the medium of common repertoire in addition to in a figurative vacuum. As always, student interest and needs will steer the course in directions that best fit said interests and needs!
About the Instructor
Grant Flick is a performer, recording artist, composer, and educator currently based in Ann Arbor, MI. He plays many instruments including violin, mandolin, tenor guitar, nyckelharpa, tenor banjo, and viola. Primarily, his interests are new acoustic music, jazz manouche, jazz/swing, bluegrass, and American old-
time. His current original music projects, Westbound Situation, Warren & Flick, and Hannah O’Brien and Grant Flick, explore the fusion of chamber music with the influences listed above. In these groups, he writes pieces influenced from many styles that feature the collective spontaneity and imagination of the fellow improvisatory musicians with whom he collaborates. Examples of his writing can be heard on “Accord” (Westbound Situation), “Tomorrow Worries About Itself” (Grant Flick), “Windward” (Hannah O’Brien and Grant Flick), and “Waxwing” (Warren & Flick). Grant has received numerous music awards including the 2013 Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin. He was a finalist in the 2015 Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Competition in Winfield, Kansas, as well as the 2017 Freshgrass Fiddle Competition in North Adams, Massachusetts. Additionally, several competitive collegiate awards and grants for improvisation, acoustic chamber music inventiveness, and music education have been presented to his original groups
in the past few years. Grant has been selected as a two-time participant (2015 and 2016) of the Acoustic Music Seminar held at the Savannah Music Festival in Savannah, Georgia. He has taught workshops at numerous camps throughout America including Augusta Bluegrass Week, Charm City Django Fest, the
Tenor Guitar Gathering, and River of the West Mandolin Camp. Grant also tours and performs regularly and has played at many music festivals including Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, ROMP Fest, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and the Savannah Music Festival. Frank Vignola, Mike Marshall, Julian Lage, and Darol Anger are just some of the notable musicians with whom Grant has appeared on stage. Grant recently completed a Master’s degree at University of Michigan in Improvisation.