Giddens: "New to the Session" for Violin - Johnny Gandelsman

Giddens: "New to the Session" for Violin - Johnny Gandelsman

Performed live by Johnny Gandelsman at Tippet Rise Art Center on 25 September 2022. Located in Fishtail, Montana, Tippet Rise celebrates art, music, architecture, and nature: inextricably linked in the human experience, each making the others more powerful.

Giddens, Rhiannon: “New to the Session” for Violin

Performed by Johnny Gandelsman

Program book: https://tippetrise.org/library/2022-program-book

Produced in house at Tippet Rise Art Center

Camera Operator: Kelsey Franklin
Lighting Board Operator / Electrician: Peter Fedock
Editor & Colorist: Kevin Richey
Sound Recording: Monte Nickles and Jim Ruberto
Sound Editor: Dan Getty
Sound Mastering: Monte Nickles

I began my fiddling journey as an apprentice to a dance musician, and pretty late in life, as violinists go - so my repertoire and style is rhythmic and melodically simple, and always with a dancer in mind. They say write what you know - so when this opportunity came to create a piece for Johnny Gandelsman, I was thrilled to see what came out of my strings and off my bow. It’s called New to the Session because as a beginner fiddler I would sit in on Irish sessions sometimes and feel like I was in a whirlwind - no more than twice through each tune and it seemed like everybody knew everything but me; I wanted to capture a bit of that feel with the journey through the melodies.
- Rhiannon Giddens

“New To The Session” was generously commissioned for Johnny Gandelsman’s This Is America project by the 2021 Vail Dance Festival, Damian Woetzel - Artistic Director (Vail, CO)