Welcome to the POPS, Jennifer! We are so excited that you are joining us for Memorial Salute.  

Thank you! I am very excited to return to Philadelphia for this amazing concert.  

 

How did you become a fiddler? 

 

I was always very interested in that side of violin playing. When I was quite young, like 12 or 13, I went to a summer camp and summer festival in Alberta, Canada. At the camp, there was another young violinist from Calgary that taught me how to play the song, “Orange Blossom Special,” which is a big, upbeat, fiddling song. It was the first fiddling song that I had learned. I would always play that song to impress all of my friends as a teenager. In my twenties, I was then introduced to Celtic Fiddle playing as well as this band called The House Band. The fiddle player of The House Band taught me a few fiddling tunes and wrote out a few fiddling tunes for me. I got pretty good at fiddling then, but I didn’t pursue it further at that time.  

Years later, when I moved to Pittsburgh and started playing for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Pops conductor at the time, Marvin Hamlisch, asked if anybody in the orchestra played anything outside of the classical realm and wanted to be featured in the concert. I was brand new to the Symphony at the time, so I went up to him during a break in rehearsal and said, “Well, Maestro, I actually play “Orange Blossom Special,” and it was in the program we were performing. He asked me if I wanted a solo during the song and I said, “Why not!”  

That was 20 years ago and people in Pittsburgh just assumed that I was a fiddler, and I became a one song wonder. Now, Byron, the current Principal Pops Conductor at the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, heard that there was a fiddler in the Symphony and asked me to play this concert. 

 

 

I love the way that the violin feels in my hands. I love the rhythm, the beautiful tone of the instrument, and the violin has truly become my musical voice. I miss it when I don’t play. When I wasn’t playing for a few months last year due to a tendon overuse issue, I wasn’t myself. I hated not being able to play, and when I finally was able to play again, it felt horrible at first, but I got back into the swing of things. Now that I can play again, I am even more thankful than before to have this outlet, which is playing the violin. 

 

 

This version of the song is based on a version that Ella Fitzgerald once performed. It is very fast and witty. It goes into many different keys, continues to leap up steps, and gets faster and faster. It is so much fun for both the performer and the audience. Byron really loves this version of the song, so he hired an arrange to arrange the song for a violin soloist and orchestra to play. It is based in jazz and scat. It is crazy great!