By Sean Smith
Special to the BIR

Even when she was a little girl, Lowell native Natalya Kay Trudeau knew that she wanted to play Irish music—to the point of fairly exasperating her classical violin teacher. “I started out playing classical, but as I got better I tried to teach myself Irish music,” recalls Trudeau, now a high school student, who drew inspiration from her fiddle-playing grandfather. “I don’t think my teacher liked it very much when I’d come in with some jig or reel and ask him to teach it to me instead of a piece by Bach or Vivaldi.”

Fortunately, Trudeau eventually found a fiddle teacher in Laurel Martin, who helped her to develop her childhood interest for Irish traditional music into a full-fledged passion. But just when Trudeau thought things with Martin couldn’t get any better, they did.

Last year, Trudeau and Martin were awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Traditional Arts Apprenticeship grant, which enabled them to set up a far more comprehensive and intensive program of study in Irish fiddle for Trudeau. In the months to follow, Trudeau would go beyond learning tunes and develop a greater appreciation for regional styles of fiddle, particularly the County Clare style favored by Martin, influential musicians in Irish tradition, and other aspects of the music.

“I think the moment fiddling became so much fun for me and when I started getting really excited about it was at a time when most students my age would start begging their parents to let them quit,” says Trudeau. “I so much enjoyed listening to the decades-old muffled recordings of [legendary Sligo fiddler] Michael Coleman, trying to pick out all his ornamentations and debating with Laurel whether it was this way or that. It was really like unlocking a mystery, and I appreciated the tunes so much more after I had spent hours listening to them over and over again. Every once in a while I have to go back and refresh my mind on exactly how he played ‘Bonnie Kate’ or ‘Farrell O’Gara.’”

Last month, Trudeau gave a public demonstration of her Irish fiddle training when she and Martin, along with Irish dance expert Kieran Jordan and her apprentice student, Emerald Rae, performed two concerts—one in Lowell, the other at the Blackstone River Theater in Rhode Island—that showcased the MCC Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program. Also featured was another master-apprentice pair, Irish dancer Kevin Doyle and Nicole Leblanc, who worked together during the past year under a similar grant program for southern New England. And appearing as a special guest, and further symbolizing the MCC program’s success, was acclaimed fiddler Seamus Connolly, who had taught Martin under an apprentice grant nearly 20 years ago.

Public funding for the arts has often been a hot-button topic, sparking debates about the appropriate measure of art’s value to society, but MCC Folk Arts & Heritage Program Manager Maggie Holtzberg feels the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program must be viewed beyond dollars and cents—especially during an era of severe financial constraints. “This isn’t a matter of dabbling with an art form—it’s passing on a tradition,” says Holtzberg, herself a talented Celtic fiddler. “Traditional music, dance, and other arts are the heart and soul of who people are. And in tough times, people are more prone to turn to their traditions to help them through, to give them reassurance.”

The Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program, which is supported in part through the National Endowment for the Arts, reflects Massachusetts’s diversity, Holtzberg notes: Grants have supported projects involving Portuguese fado, North Indian tabla, Russian iconography, Chinese calligraphy, and Albania folk dance, among others. “We’re reaching underserved populations, seeking them out and helping to preserve their traditions.”

But, Holtzberg adds, those who seek the grants have to make a very good case for themselves. Applicants must lay out specific and achievable goals for the duration of the grant (Sept. 1-June 30), and detail how the funds will be spent in meeting these aims: purchasing books, recordings and craft materials, for example, or paying for travel. Grant recipients also must present a public concert, such as the ones featuring Martin and Trudeau and Jordan and Rae, an exhibition or other event that conveys the purpose and results of their collaboration.

“We can only fund a few projects at a time, but we want to make the grants large enough to make an impact,” says Holtzberg. “What’s important to realize is that while these are relatively small amounts, in the range of $3,500 to $5,000, the grants really make the project possible. We get a big bang for the buck.”

For the project to be feasible, Holtzberg says, “the master and the apprentice have to find each other before they consider applying for the grant. These are people who know each other, and may even already work together. Ultimately, the rapport between the two of them is critical to whether the apprenticeship is possible.”

Martin and Trudeau certainly met the criteria, so when Holtzberg contacted Martin—who had taught under an apprenticeship grant in 2002 -- about applying to the program again, Martin thought Trudeau would benefit greatly. “We wanted to come up with a theme that was interesting and fun, and could lead to a number of different things based on Natalya’s proficiency,” says Martin, who drew on her experience with Connolly in devising the project. “With Seamus, I wanted to understand the old regional styles of Irish fiddle, and how I could listen and learn on my own. Essentially, the idea was to train me to be able to teach someday. It was very foresighted of Seamus, because there was an assurance that what he passed along to me would continue.

“I wanted Natalya to have a similar experience, to look at musicians who also were composers, like Sean Ryan, Junior Crehan, Paddy O’Brien and Ed Reavy, and the characteristics and challenges their tunes presented. One of the goals also was to acquaint Natalya with the resources available for Irish music, so some of the grant went to CDs, books, and tickets to concerts that would expose her to this music, as well as a digital recorder so she could record musicians on her own. We also went to the Irish Music Archives at Boston College so she could listen to recordings and watch videos. So now she has a sense of how she can learn independently.”

Trudeau, for her part, was quite satisfied with the results. “I couldn’t ask for a better teacher. Laurel is very talented, knows what she’s talking about, and has also given me so many opportunities to perform and meet other musicians. We meet every week for 90-minute lessons. We learn almost all of the tunes by ear, which is really fun.”

Traditional Arts Apprenticeships are not necessarily the paradigmatic expert-neophyte model, though, as the Kieran Jordan-Emerald Rae collaboration illustrates. Rae, a top-class fiddler who is a member of the band Annalivia, is an accomplished dancer in the Cape Breton tradition and also familiar enough with Irish dance to teach as well as perform. But when she began getting more offers to teach Irish dance, and at higher levels, Rae felt she needed she a more thorough grounding in the tradition.

Rae had become acquainted with Jordan—renowned as a teacher and choreographer as well as a dancer in the sean-nos style—via the local Celtic music scene, and believed she was the perfect choice as a mentor to help Rae become adept at teaching performance-based old-style Irish dance (as opposed to teaching competitive dance, which requires certification). The apprenticeship grant allowed for a “full-immersion” indoctrination into set dances, soft and hard-shoe dance “and other material I had never done before,” says Rae.

Jordan also helped Rae develop a better understanding of different styles of Irish dance, from old to new and “traditional to hybrid,” and of the athleticism involved. In addition, Jordan offered some valuable advice on coping with the aches, pains, and physical demands associated with dancing—no small importance to Rae, who like Jordan has endured dance-related injuries. “Kieran is so supportive and understanding, and talks to you like you are a peer,” says Rae, who plans to continue working with Jordan. “I’m not only better prepared to teach, I’m a stronger dancer than I was.”

To hear Jordan and Martin talk, apprentices are not the only ones who get something out the apprenticeship grants. “This felt like a very different experience than what you get in the usual teaching context,” explains Jordan. “I liked the structure we came up with to achieve the goals for what she wanted to learn, because it provided the opportunity to explore the background on the stylistics and lineage of the dances. Emerald was wonderful to work with, since she understands what the nature of a traditional art form is. This really became a partnership.”

“For me,” says Martin, “one of the best things about being involved in traditional music is the great feeling you have of being a small link in a very long chain. The apprenticeship grant program enables you to experience that feeling in a very personal and constructive way. But there’s more to it than that: This grant is a public acknowledgement of traditional arts, a demonstration of support and recognition that my community values traditional music and dance. It’s been so rewarding to see Natalya embrace Irish music, and to know that she will instill her enthusiasm for it in others—that she, too, will be a link in that chain.”