“About 20 years ago, Daniel Hoffman, a classically trained violinist who had turned his bow to Klezmer, found himself on the back of a moped of a fellow violinist, weaving through the back streets of Marrakech’s Old City,” reports Dina Kraft in Monday’s (3/19) Christian Science Monitor. “Mr. Hoffman and his teacher that week, a young musician he met playing in the town square, communicated in the little French they both knew…. ‘He played, and I copied him,’ Hoffman recalls…. That experience gave birth to an idea: What would it be like to try to learn how to play different violin styles around the world? And in just one week? Oh yes, and at the end of that week, play a concert…. It took almost two decades … to launch that dream, which has taken the form of a new documentary premiering on American public TV stations this week called, ‘Otherwise, It’s Just Firewood.’ In the documentary Hoffman travels to County Clare, Ireland…. ‘The big joke is, what’s the difference between the fiddle and the violin? It’s the person who plays it,’ says Niall Keegan, a traditional flute player and associate director at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, at the University of Limerick.”
Posted March 20, 2018
