Teen-age fiddler takes stage at Lubec school > New Brunswick girl wows peers with her talents

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LUBEC – Stacey Lynn Read, a 15-year-old master fiddler from New Brunswick, came to Lubec Consolidated School, played, danced a little – and conquered.

Read, a resident of Sackville, New Brunswick, spent almost the entire day Friday at the Lubec school, playing a variety of old-time maritime fiddle tunes, Celtic songs, and anything else that came to mind.

On top of that, she talked with pupils about her art, life as a professional musician, and her take on life as a teen-ager – about the same age as some of her audience. That night, Read, the Black Socks String Band, and an aggregation called the 1st and 3rd Monday Evening Old Time Music Group gave a concert in the school cafetorium.

“It is a privilege to hear her play and talk to her, for her to come to our school,” said Cassie Rier, a sixth-grader at Lubec. “It was so cool to see someone so young that good.”

Nathan Matthews, another sixth-grader, agreed. “I like the music, especially the fast songs. It’s not what I usually listen to, but … I was surprised how good she was.”

If it were possible to reduce experience and accomplishments to fit in a display case, Read’s exhibit would be the size of a three-bedroom house.

She started playing the fiddle and performing at age 4. Instructed by renowned Canadian fiddler Ivan Hicks and classical violinist Margaret Wood, Read has won more than 100 trophies in fiddling and music tournaments across Canada. She has performed on television, made two cassette tapes and recently released a CD titled “Playing With A Full Deck.” Read plays, in addition to the fiddle, the piano and picked up the guitar about six months ago. She is also an accomplished step dancer, and teaches dance and, of course, fiddle to about 20 students.

One more thing: Read is a member of a Celtic band called banshee, from the Moncton area. She plays backup fiddle and sings with the group.

For the past three years, Read has been selected as one of five fiddlers from New Brunswick to represent the province at the Canadian Grand Masters Championships. It’s an open tournament, pitting the nation’s top fiddlers in competition, regardless of age or experience. So Read competes against older musicians, many of whom have been playing longer than she has been alive. Recently, she received notice of how she did in this year’s competition.

Out of all the best fiddlers in Canada, she placed fifth.

The genesis for Friday’s visit was a music festival in New Brunswick last summer. There, Alan Furth, a sixth-grade teacher at Lubec and a member of the area-based Black Socks String Band, met Read and was impressed.

“She is not only an outstanding musician, but she has great presence. So I thought it would be wonderful for our students to meet someone their own age, someone so accomplished and so dedicated,” he said.

The idea turned into a project supported by the Lubec Parent Teacher Students Association and, indeed, the whole community, Furth noted. Pupils made posters heralding Read’s appearance and called area newspapers to stir up publicity. The Eastland Motel in Lubec put up for free Read’s parents and younger brother while Read was performing and talking in town.

Between songs, pupils tossed numerous questions at Read, which she fielded with charm and humor. The questions included:

. “How many hours a day do you practice?”

. “Besides fiddle music, what kinds of music do you listen to?”

. “Are you proud of your accomplishments?”

. “Do you travel in a limo?”

For the record, Read’s answers were as follows:

“I’m really bad at that. Anywhere from a half-hour to a couple of hours a day. I try to practice at least an hour a day. I have to feel like playing. Because if I practice, just to put in the time, I won’t get anything out of it. It’s like doing your homework when your favorite show is on the TV in the other room and you know you don’t want to do the homework. You go through the motions, but you don’t get anything out of it. That’s not the way to practice.”

“I like to listen to anything on the radio. I don’t really have a favorite group. I listen to everything. Music is music. Except classical … that just never did it for me.”

“Yes, in a way. I don’t really like competitions all that much because a lot of politics are involved – where you are from, what kind of music you play, who you know, and all that – but I am proud of myself when I do well.”

“No.”

Read stressed to her audience that, except for her musical skills, she was a “typical” almost-16-year-old. “My parents sort of push me to have, you know, normal experiences. And I think I do. I have most of your usual high school experiences; I’m just not [at school] as much as the rest of the students because of my concert schedule,” she said.

“I mean, if you try to call at night, the line will probably be busy because I’m on the phone with my friends. If I’m not playing, I’m usually with my friends.”

Although Read is steeped in and dedicated to old-time or traditional music, she is starting to branch out into other types of music, such as bluegrass, Celtic, Western swing and American folk.

“I guess you can say I’m very stubborn. I was raised with old-time music. A lot of people told me to ‘Never leave your roots!’ Of course, people also told me to branch out. But I was very stubborn and stuck to old-time fiddling,” she said. “But now, I’m listening to other music and I realize I should have branched out long ago; I’d be that much farther along now.”

Read cited as influences her longtime teacher Ivan Hicks, Cape Breton fiddler Natalie McMaster, and bluegrass-country cross-over fiddler and recording star Allison Kraus.

Read said she doesn’t think about genres of music or musical roots or crossing over to popular music or, really, anything at all when she is actually playing. “That’s because I don’t play from my head. I play from my heart.”