I know the first week of November was trying, but I keep watching for any reviews of Fiddle Hell whether good or bad and am finding nothing. If this is posted in the wrong place please let me know or just move it. If we're in this fix next year it would be nice to know how successful 2020 was and what may change. Thank you.
Hi TimeTension,
The event was very successful, and reaction (on our surveys and in emails and online posts) has been extremely positive. Of course, people missed seeing friends and jamming in person, but they were very happy with "front row seats" for all workshops and jams, with the quality of instructors and workshops, and especially with the opportunity to revisit (and slow down to half speed) videos of all 165 workshops, 35 jams, and 35 concerts. Styles ranged from old-time, bluegrass, jazz, blues, and electric, to Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, Klezmer, and Québécois. While Fiddle Hell has "fiddle" in the name, there were sessions for mandolin, guitar, cello, and old-time banjo as well.
We added several instructors who would not have been able to attend the event in person, and many attendees who live far away from Massachusetts joined us for the first time. There were 4 concerts from attendees - 2 open mic concerts, a teen concert, and an original tunes concert. We had innovative workshops such as "Channel Your Inner Cat to Improvise," and slow and guided jams for beginners.
Acting on our Racial Justice Statement (at https://fiddlehell.org/info/racial-justice), we had more Black and indigenous instructors and attendees than last year, and more sessions on salient aspects of history. The unified event platform Whova worked well for the agenda, community discussions, virtual exhibitors, and more. You can see what the sessions were at https://fiddlehell.org/Schedule and who the instructors and performers were at https://fiddlehell.org/Staff . It's still possible to sign up and view all the sessions through Feb 8th at a reduced price at https://fiddlehell.org/Register .
BTW, many musicians who attended Fiddle Hell Online post in the Fiddle Hell Massachusetts Facebook group rather than at Fiddle Hangout, although reviews and comments here are welcome.
Thanks for asking,
Dave Reiner
Edited by - dsreiner on 11/30/2020 05:25:49
Since I don't frequent Facebook, I'll comment here that it was an awesome event. I've been to several virtual workshops and festivals this year, and Fiddle Hell was the smoothest and best-run of any of them. Whova (I keep wanting to pronounce it "whoa-va" like the songs about the mule) was new to me and it is well-suited to this. I found it far superior to a bunch of Zoom sessions. Clearly an immense amount of work from Dave and his group was involved. And there was something for everyone - I'm a duffer playing at a pretty basic level (I do too many other instruments and love 'em all) and found plenty to do - I'm still watching sessions I didn't get to that week.
I've wanted to do FH for years but live 500 miles away and getting away during the school year (I teach) was tough. Now I'm going to find a way to attend in person next time.
Ken
It was good.
I think it worked out great, as a fact I just finished watching a recorded session a few minutes ago. They had someone on hand to help out with any problems during sessions and to read questions to the presenters when submitted by attendees. For learning I think this must have been better then attending in person. So far I have attended about 28 workshops, some of them more then once. Some people will miss attending the jams in person but I think the online FH was great and I have not even started watching the concerts yet. Thanks Dave FH well exceed my expectations.
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