🎻 A sweet serendipitous moment (you never know what tune connections are going to spring up!)

Hi Reader!

If you were looking for one of those sweet, wow moment stories on the internet today, I may have you covered.

I wasn't expecting to burst into (happy) tears at the end of a Tune Supply workshop last week, but one second we're all saying good-bye and the next I'm pacing around my apartment with my eyes streaming saying "ohhhhh my god!"

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last Sunday, I attended a workshop put on by Tune Supply that was a conversation between Marta Cook and Maida McQuinn Sugrue. Maida is one of the last living students of the great Sliabh Luachra fiddle player, Padraig O'Keeffe.

I honestly had never heard of Maida until just over a week ago when Marta got in touch about spreading the word for the workshop. But my ears perked up when Marta mentioned who she had studied with! That name I knew!

And I'm so glad I went, Reader. From the very beginning of the call, when Maida spoke to many of us by name, though we were mostly muted on Zoom, I knew she was a warm and special soul.

During the call, she was asked to play a slide that was a favorite of her mother's. It was a slide Padraig O'Keeffe had written for her lessons, but he left it unnamed at the time. She decided to call it "Mom's Favorite."

As she started to play the tune, I instantly recognized. Not by the name "Mom's Favorite" but by the name Matt Cranitch gives it in his green tune book: "Art O'Keeffe's".

The reason why I instantly knew it was because it's the one slide I recorded on my latest album, At the Core. (In retrospect, I need more slides on there!) It's the third tune on Track 6 if you want to give it a listen!

But that's not why I started bawling...

Right at the end of the call when we were all saying good-bye, Maida let slip one more detail of her life.

Her mom's name was Hannah.

Hannah. Mom's Favorite. The one slide I have on my album. The one whose back story I didn't have the full picture of until just one week ago.

A tune I really didn't have much of a story for except that I got it from one of my favorite fiddle mentor's tune books.

I feel comfortable teaching Irish traditional music as it is today. But since I didn't grow up in the tradition, I feel like I'm still playing catch up with learning about its history and its people. Both of which are important factors in what this music is today!

This connection just hit me a different way, Reader. My own grandmother played viola and passed a lot of her love for music onto me. She had Alzheimer's for many years, but one of the last things to go was her ability to remember every single word to the Sound of Music.

Maida wrote her book to preserve her memories and share with her grandchildren so that they could know her story. It was truly a gift to sit down and listen to her share parts of this story on the call last weekend.

So perhaps this week's tip or insight into the world of Irish fiddling is less about how to physically practice your instrument.

Maybe it's more about leaning into the curiosity of who came before us. Who played these tunes and what was their life like? What's the same as what we have today, and what's different?

Something to be curious about!

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~Hannah

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P.S. There's still time to register for QDF SummerFest! I'm teaching four online workshops June 6th and 7th. Three are listed on the link above and you can find the fourth (for all instruments, not just fiddle) here!