Tunes from Kirk Sutphin

Kirk Sutphin & Bertram Levy
Banjos, Bows and Bellows
Sunday, March 10, 2013, 6:30pm
Seman Violins (4447 Oakton, Skokie)

B.Y.O.B. Snacks will be provided.

Fiddler Kirk Sutphin, from Walkertown, North Carolina, joins with banjoist and concertinist Bertram Levy for a unique presentation of old-time tunes from the Blue Ridge Mountains. For more background, visit this earlier Fiddle Club post, or Bertram Levy’s website.

All fiddlers and friends of fiddlers, including players of other instruments, are welcome. $15 admission. Click here to register.

Kirk and Bertram will present a short concert, followed by a jam session. Here’s some of the tunes we’ll play in the session. (Some teaching may happen.)

The Rout learned from Burt Edwards

The Rout slower


Jump Jim Crow learned from Alan Jabbour

Jump Jim Crow slow


Paddy on the Turnpike learned from a recording of Frank Jenkins

Paddy on the Turnpike slower

Paul Tyler, convener

Fiddle Club guests for 2013

Two concert meetings * are now scheduled for the Winter and Spring to be held in fun new location with great acoustics, the back room at Seman Violins (4447 Oakton, Skokie) (Check ’em out.)
B.Y.O.B. Snacks will be provided.

Jimmy Keane

Jimmy Keane, Accordion Master
Sunday, January 27, 2013, 6:30pm

As a young boy, Jimmy Keane, Jr. chose, not the ubiquitous button box or melodeon, but the full scale piano accordion. And he mastered it fully, becoming All-Ireland champion while still in his teens. Today he rules the roost. A Chicago treasure, Jimmy was recently named the Irish “Male Musician of the Decade (2000-2010).” An accomplished solo artist, he has performed with such bands as Aengus and Bohola, and participated on numerous tours of “Greenfields of America” and “An Irish Homecoming.” He’s got some new tunes he wants to try out for us, and will teach us a few.

$15 admission. Click here to register.

Kirk Sutphin & Bertram Levy
Kirk Sutphin & Bertram Levy
Sunday, March 10, 6:30 pm

Banjos, Bows and Bellows

This unique program features two artists who learned their music back in the 1970s from the same Blue Ridge Mountain luminaries–Henry Reed, Tommy Jarrell and Oscar Wright. Kirk still lives near his birthplace in Walkertown, North Carolina. He is both an excellent fiddler and accomplished in clawhammer and old-time finger-style banjo. He plays with the New North Carolina Ramblers. Bertram Levy spent his younger years in North Carolina, where he was an original member of the Hollow Rock String Band. Some years ago he moved to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, where he helped found the American Festival of Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend. A virtuosic banjoist, favoring gut strings, Bertram also plays tango music on bandoneon in the band Tangoheart, and traditional American music on the Anglo concertina. Their recent CD, “The Bellow and the Bow” features duets with fiddle, banjo and concertina.

$15 admission. Click here to register.

* Our guests will present a short concert (one set), to be followed by jam session.