Mountain Peak Valley of the Moon Fiddler's Camp is a music-maker's Brigadoon by David Templeton

Dear Reader,

Well, what began with a couple of hot, hot days and the intermittent threat of rain has finally ended with a hot, hot Celtic concert and the predictable, final downpour of bittersweet tears. Yes, after an intense 186 hours at Camp Campbell, way up in the mountains above Santa Cruz, California, the 20th annual Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling School once again has come to a close.

For all those who attended, from August 22 to 30, these have been seven long days, during which new friendships have been formed, old tunes have been learned, remarkable music has been made, and a few new fiddlers have been coaxed into gleeful life. Sponsored by the Scottish Fiddlers of California and founded in 1984 by fiddling legend Alasdair Fraser, the Valley of the Moon (VOM) camp has become a worldwide model for how fiddle power—not to mention guitar, cello, piano, and percussion power—can be meaningfully and entertainingly generated.

This year, over 200 musicians of all types, ages, and levels of skill, from as far away as Canada, Scotland, France, and Sweden, met up in the redwoods for a solid week of work, study, fun, food, dancing, singing, and late-night jamming. Fraser's own Scottish fiddling tradition blended beautifully with the Appalachian and Swedish fiddling styles of Bruce Molsky and Ellika Frisell, respectively, who served as fiddle instructors alongside a team of others that included 19-year-old cello phenom Natalie Haas and guitar-master Steve Baughman.

The VOM camp has given rise to a number of beloved traditions over the years. There are cabin raids and "slow jams," a Wednesday-evening ceilidh (pronounced KAY-lee)—a much-anticipated event that plays like a demented talent show and ends in a Celtic rave party. There is even a Thursday-night costumed banquet. And there are the themed years. Nineteen-ninety-nine was "Come as Your Favorite Tune" year. For 2003, the theme was not clear—there were fairies and wizards, hippies, and WWII airmen, and a pirate or two—but the highlight was Fraser appearing as "the spirit of Music," garbed in robes and flowers, with an inflatable musical note dangling from his hat.

The most high-profile tradition, as always, was the big community concert, in which all the players and instructors assemble onstage somewhere down the mountain to share a last musical hurrah and to show off a few of the tunes they've learned throughout the week. This year it was held at the Civic Auditorium in downtown Santa Cruz. While acting as a demonstration of what a week of fiddle power can accomplish, the concert also serves as a gentle transition out of the fiddler’s-sanctuary mindset of the camp, and back to what is skeptically referred to here as "real life." But let's not think about that right now.

It's better to focus on the rare experience that is VOM camp itself.

"Alot of string players are taught that there's this hierarchical thing where you learn the technique and then you learn the music," explained Fraser on Thursday, after the morning classes, as he waited in a courtyard jammed with musicians, most of whom have magically formed into small groups, sneaking in another quick jam session before lunch. "I see a different way of learning," Fraser said. "You set emotional goals. You begin playing and you make a mess, but out of all that blurt and babble you develop a passion for the music. You become voracious about finding solutions to musical problems."

To that end, Fraser asserted, VOM has developed into a place where players, young and old, new and established, become ever more voracious in their musical appetites.

It seems to be working.

Said Carley Williams, a VOM regular since she was 10, "I've been coming here over half my life. It's become a huge part of who I am. This is how I fell in love with music, by coming here to play with others who love the same music. I try sometimes to imagine my life without this—and I can't!"

Nearby, a group of kids practiced for the daily lunchtime concert, at which the year's scholarship winners were invited to perform. The scholarship program is an important part of the VOM experience. This year, 39 scholarship students attended, and throughout the week, the more seasoned campers made a game of devising new ways to raise money for the scholarship fund. A few days earlier, an afternoon snack-date with Molsky was auctioned off for $1,400.

Organizing-committee member Howard Booster explained that the wide mix of skill levels and ages is one of the things that makes the camp work so well. "Maybe 15 percent of our campers are professional musicians," he said. "A lot of us are skilled amateurs, and a lot of others are brand new to the fiddle."

While VOM annually receives twice as many applications as can be accommodated, one-third of the available spaces are given to applicants who’ve never attended the camp. A lottery system is used to select applications. And once the camp is in progress, everyone seems to get in the noncompetitive groove, with each player supporting every other, all in the name of spreading the love of fiddle music. "Our chef may be the only nonplayer here," joked Booster, "but we're working on him."

"No jamming on the street after the concert in Santa Cruz tomorrow, since the neighbors tend to complain!" said Fraser, addressing the murmuring mass assembled in the cavernous dining hall.

"I no longer allow myself to be amazed at the first-time fiddlers who come through this camp, or at what they accomplish in just a few days' time," he told me later. "I've seen it too many times to be amazed anymore. But I continue to be impressed!"

Time for another VOM tradition: the annual performance of first-time fiddlers. This year it's 12 adults who before this week had never touched a fiddle in their lives. Their playing was rough, but accomplished with buckets of brio and passion, and as the tune concluded and the entire room exploded in applause, the newbies were treated to their first official standing ovation. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to final classes of the year, and to prepare for the annual costume banquet.

"This is the only time all week when the place is quiet," said Ryan McKassan, who's been attending VOM for ten years. "Nobody's jamming. Everyone's off dressing up for the banquet."

From here on out it was a roller-coaster rush to the banquet—a whimsically theatrical affair—and on through an evening of skits, poetry readings, and toasts. Oh, yeah, and an enormous, raucous jam in the dining hall. In the morning, after breakfast, everyone gathered for the last time in the same hall for the first official concert rehearsal.

It was the first time all of the classes had played together. There were over 175 fiddles, two dozen guitars, a handful of cellos, and several other odd instruments, and when Frisell stood up to lead the group in a Swedish polska, the unified sound was loud and scruffy—and breathtaking.

"It's such a rush," proclaimed Molsky, after rehearsing the group in his portion of the concert. "Standing in front of all that music, it's so powerful. That's my reward as an instructor at this camp. To be on the receiving end of all that spirit and excitement and exhaustion, it's almost spiritual, the rush it gives me."

Molsky, an exciting fiddler in his own right as a member of Fiddlers 4 and other ensembles, has been a VOM instructor several times over the years. "As a performer," he explained, "You live for those perfect times, when you are in the moment and the music becomes everything. This camp is a whole week of that!"

Maury Richmond, who lives on a mountain in Spain but comes to VOM every year, likened the experience to a certain mythical town in Scotland. "Brigadoon, of course," he said, "the magical town that appears once every 100 years, appears out of nowhere and fades away again the next day. This is our Brigadoon. There is magic in the music, magic in the people, and then it ends.

"Fortunately for us," he added with a smile, "we only have a wait one year between visits."

Sincerely,

David Templeton

p.s.: The downtown concert went off beautifully, as always. Afterwards, as all 200 musicians danced and fiddled their way down the aisle and out to the parking lot—where they couldn’t resist a little bit of jamming—Fraser stood on the steps, beaming.

"I used to wonder how many years this could go on," he said. "Now I realize it will never stop, with or without me. This much power and passion and magic is just so much bigger than me. I believe Valley of the Moon will go on forever."