LAFAYETTE'S FIDDLERS Saturday, November 9, 2024 at 3pm Sydnor Performance Hall, University of Lynchburg Schewel Hall Lynchburg, VA $10 - $20 (free for UL students & faculty) (Presented by Amherst Glebe Arts Response)
In November 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette visited his dear friend Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville. His visit was heralded with great fanfare, including a grand banquet at the Rotunda on the grounds of the University of Virginia. The Scott family fiddlers, of Black and Indigenous heritage, provided the musical entertainment for this event.
Early Music Access Project will commemorate the 200th anniversary of Lafayette’s visit to Charlottesville and Monticello with two free concerts inside The Rotunda on Sunday, November 10, 2024. Based on his research as a fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies, EMAP artistic director David McCormick has curated a program that includes music that may have been played for the occasion and French songs that Lafayette and Jefferson admired. An actor will portray three Black historical figures who left written accounts of Lafayette’s visit.
Dominic Giardino, historical clarinets Benjamin Hunter, baroque fiddle, voice, banjo, and percussion Carmen Johnson-Pájaro, baroque fiddle Brandon Lee, actor and percussion David McCormick, artistic director and baroque fiddle Rebecca Scout Nelson, baroque fiddle, guitar, and voice Sam Suggs, baroque double bass
Charlottesville Music Teachers Associationteachers, students, and parents are invited to a meet-the-musicians reception in The Rotunda at 2pm. Members of Out and About (Charlottesville's LGBTQ+ social group) are invited to a meet-the-artists reception in The Rotunda at 6pm.
Thanks in part to a grant from Virginia Humanities, Early Music Access Project will be producing a new documentary on Monticello's Black fiddlers using using footage from our June 2023 "Rock & Reel" concert.
The 2024-2025 season is sponsored in part by grants from The Rea Charitable Trust, the Vesta Lee Gordon Fund at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, the Bama Works Fund of Dave Matthews Band at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, the Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge, and by the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.