11 – 13 MAY 2012

A rare chance to spend the weekend under the tuition of Gina Le Faux.  The event is being organised by JSArts and being held in Grantham, Lincolnshire.  Click HERE for information, prices and booking form.

If you are interested in private lessons on fiddle or mandolin, Gina has places available for players of all standards including beginners.  For further information, get in touch. Click HERE to send a message

Tim Van Eyken Band  Christmas Tour

Gina will be touring with Tim Van Eyken from 26 November to 21 December 2012.  She will be playing fiddle, mandolin and guitar in Tim’s Band.  Click HERE for details

An old friend and fellow musician, Gerald Trimble, came over from Kansas City and visited Gina while he was picking up a 17^th century English viol. Gerald was best known as a cittern player through the 80’s but turned his attention to the viol family and has spent the last twenty years playing 17^th and 18^th century music.  Gerald used to stay with Gina in the early 80’s in Edinburgh where they played music with Jim Sutherland.  Gerald and Gina are hoping to do some gigs together on viol and baroque violin, playing baroque dance music.

Here’s a photo of Gerald and Gina taken in Hebden Bridge.

photo by Cherri Graebe

As well as my luthier work, I give private lessons and I have a few spaces available for new students on fiddle or mandolin. If you’re interested in lessons or need a repair to your fiddle or mandolin, please get in touch here.

If you haven’t heard my fiddle playing (or even if you have!), try this link.

You can also check out my mandolin playing here.

I’m planning to record an instrumental CD in the spring and hope to include some Bach, Vivaldi and Corelli, along with traditional tunes and some swing. I’ll be playing arrangements on fiddle, mandolin, viola, mandola, mandocello and guitar! I’ll also be teaching at a fiddle workshop in Grantham in May 2012. More details on that to follow soon. No live dates planned at the moment other than private functions, but watch this space . . .

A couple of weeks ago, Ira Bernstein and Riley Baugus were on their way over from the USA for their annual tour. Their popular Appalachian Roots show combines Riley’s old time banjo playing with Ira’s traditional Appalachian clogging and flatfooting, and they both play fiddle too. Just before they left the States, Ira discovered that he had problems with his fiddle:  the centre joint of the back was coming apart. There was no time to get it fixed before he left, so Ira sent me an email asking if I could fix it. I never got this email, but luckily he had also emailed Sue Coe, who got in touch and filled me in with the details.

When a very jet-lagged Ira turned up at my house shortly afterwards, I had a good look at the fiddle. There was no way of repairing it without taking off the belly and this work would take some time to do. Ira and Riley were off on tour the following day, so I decided to loan Ira my Bridge “Woodstock” fiddle whilst I worked on his. The show must go on! To make things easier for him, I set this fiddle up with the same string heights as his own instrument. I also copied the curve of the bridge on Ira’s fiddle on to a new bridge, which I fitted on the Woodstock fiddle.  

Back to the main job of repairing Ira’s fiddle. I re-glued and studded the back joint and I noticed that some previous repairs had not been done properly. The fiddle had a sound post crack to the belly but there was no patch fitted. I fitted a sound post patch and a new sound post. I tidied up the instrument and set it up with Ira’s original bridge. 

Ira and Riley had a few gigs followed by a couple of days off. So they headed back up north and stayed with Pete and Sue Coe in Ripponden, just a few miles from my house (Pete and Sue help to run the brilliant Ryburn 3 Step organisation which promotes traditional music, song and dance of all kinds). Ira came over and picked up his fiddle and we played some music together. As well as being good fun, I needed him to play the instrument so that I could make some final adjustments. Ira was very pleased with the work I did on his fiddle. I went to see the Appalachian Roots show at The Square Chapel in Halifax, West Yorks and thoroughly enjoyed it – especially the bit where Ira advertised my skills as a luthier!