Fiddlers come to campus
October 2, 2014
By Anne Halliwell
The only female fiddling duo in Letcher County, the SkiPdiPPerS, will perform in the Niles Gallery inside the Lucille Caudill Little Fine Arts Library at noon on Friday in the latest live performance in the “Appalachia in the Bluegrass” concert series at UK.
Billed by UKNow’s Whitney Hale as a “fiddlin’ skippin’ good time,” members Sylvia Ryerson and Carrie Jean Wells will play for one hour free to the public.
“Appalachia in the Bluegrass” is sponsored by UK’s John Jacob Niles Center for American Music, which is maintained by Fine Arts, as well as the UK School of Music and UK Libraries.
The Appalachian Studies Program and the UK Appalachian Center also support the concert series, according to the Niles Center website. All of the concerts are on Fridays at noon and last about one hour.
Ryerson teaches fiddle in Letcher County elementary schools and joined Appalshop, an Appalachian non-profit organization in Whitesburg that produces original media and music, as director of their citizen journalism project in 2010, according to Appalshop’s online staff biographies. She produces bi-weekly news and public affairs shows.
Wells is a member of a relatively prominent fiddling family from eastern Kentucky, Hale wrote, whose father and brother are some of the area’s most skilled fiddlers.
Kentucky musicians such as Art Stamper and Paul David Smith influenced the SkiPdiPPerS music, Hal wrote.
The “Appalachia in the Bluegrass” concert series’ goal is to present 13 folk musical acts from southern Appalachia, ranging from internationally celebrated musicians to those who may not have performed widely, Hale wrote. The series will celebrate the diversity of traditional and folk music.
There are nine more performances in “Appalachia in the Bluegrass’” 10th season, according to the Niles Center website, from groups like The Local Honeys on Oct. 10, and Julia Weatherford and Pearl Angeline Shirley on Oct. 31.
