www.melindacrawford.com
Experience Level: Expert/Professional

Interests:
[Teaching] [Helping]

Occupation: fiddler/ fiddle teacher

My Instruments:
Fiddle

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Profile Info:
Visible to: Public
Created 12/30/2008
Last Visit 2/5/2015

Melinda Crawford, a U.S. National Scottish Fiddling Champion, performs frequently for Scottish highland games, Celtic festivals, and concerts throughout the United States. She started fiddling when she was eleven, when her parents bought her her first fiddle book, The Scottish Violinist, while they were attending a highland games. She had just started to play the violin in school, and fiddling sounded like "fun." From that time on, she gleaned what she could from the annual competitions and workshops at the local highland games. Bonnie Rideout was a particular inspiration to her as a young girl. Since that time, Melinda has won numerous awards for her solo playing and her original compositions at regional and national Scottish FIRE competitions. She has achieved fiddling titles such as the Allegheny Mountain Fiddling Champion and the Potomac Valley Fiddling Champion several times prior to winning the 2003 U.S. National Scottish Fiddling Championship and becoming a sanctioned Scottish F.I.R.E. competition judge. A well respected teacher, Melinda has taught strings and orchestra for grades 4 through 12, and has been repeatedly invited to present educational sessions at national conferences to school string teachers about how to teach traditional Scottish fiddling in the classroom. She is the music director for the Scioto Scottish Fiddling Club in Columbus, Ohio, and is an instructor at the Jink & Diddle School of Scottish Fiddling in North Carolina. Melinda conducts workshops on Scottish fiddling all over the US and teaches Scottish fiddling privately and internationally to many students over the Internet. She frequently judges Scottish F.I.R.E. competitions at highland games and has been a judge for the national championships. Melinda is currently residing in western Pennsylvania while completing her doctorate in music education (from a distance with OSU!) with an emphasis in alternative strings pedagogy. She is also the national president for the Scottish fiddling association for North American, Scottish F.I.R.E.