Fiddles, Strings, and Friends

Building community through music

This post builds on one I wrote almost a year ago, and on a second post I published as an update on my learning about halfway through 2025. This second post talked a bit about building resiliency and community through music, and that is a theme I want to expand on here, along with my musical goals for 2026.

I have definitely played more music in 2025 than in any prior year going back 40+ years, before “life” made me too busy to enjoy actually living. And not just playing in some practice cubicle, but practicing in a group and performing in front of an audience, too! Our Arisaig Fiddle group has performed at a memorial, our summer concert, the Scottish festival in Antigonish, our winter concert, and various other events. Preparing to perform gives a strong focus to practice, and the performance builds confidence in the skills developed—a truly virtuous circle. Needless to say, the goal I set a year ago of 10 new tunes has been exceeded 3-fold. Considering only my learning goal, 2025 was a resounding success.

And yet that learning, as valuable as it is, pales in significance to the value of the community built through the musical journey, which extends (for me) beyond the Arisaig Fiddle group that has been the catalyst. I have told Hayley, the Arisaig Fiddle group music director, that she has no idea how much being part of that group means to me. This is my attempt to put that into words.

The fellowship of learning together—when we are learning a new piece, there are always moments where we struggle, and the group picks each other up. We support each other’s learning and performance, and in matters unrelated to playing. It truly is a community.

The magic of synergy and co-creation—there are opportunities to co-create, as three of us did for the winter concert. The process went from “wouldn’t it be great if we could…” to actually performing, and it was great! A little jig I wrote in the summer was performed at the winter concert, which was a thrill for me as well.

Extending the gift to a broader community—this is huge for me personally. I proposed to our community hall group that we hold a kitchen party at the hall, and we had three in the fall of 2025. There was enough success with it that we are going to continue monthly through 2026. Through hosting events at the hall, I met a local fiddler whose small group of Music Makers I have now joined, playing at local retirement homes three times a month.

Goals for 2026

• Improve my technical ability on the fiddle through lessons with Hayley.

• Improve my knowledge of music theory and apply that by writing at least two new tunes

• Learn the Pictou Old Time Fiddlers’ “songbook” of fiddle tunes to play with the Music Makers :D.

• Establish Churchville Hall as a place of music and fun!

How playing music and building community fit into the great “everything else.”

For folks who follow me on Substack, you know I have an “eyes open” view of what we are facing in the coming years. I take to heart David Suzuki’s advice that building community is what we need to do to help us make it through the trials to come.

And in the meantime, finding the fun to be had playing music with other people beats sitting in front of a screen, hands down!