Playing Didjeridoo!

Here's what I got to do this past July:

I played didjeridoo for the Australasian Choir, which performed twice at the GALA International Choralfest in Denver on Wednesday, July 11, 2012, under the direction of Dr. Kathleen McGuire.

Dr. McGuire was the conductor of the Rainbow Chorus in Fort Collins when I was commissioned to create and arrange a suite of songs (Beginnings).

This work was debuted at their Millenial Concert in 2000 at the Lincoln Center in Fort Collins.

It was recorded and we also performed it at the GALA International Choralfest in San Jose, California later that summer.

An interesting requirement of this commission was that it needed to be arranged for SATB Chorus, with accompaniment by didjeridoo and both kinds of dulcimer!

My friend and didjeridoo teacher, Paul Taylor, was the didjeridoo player for those performances and the recording.  After those performances I started on my quest to learn to play this marvelous and mysterious instrument.

This chorus was a gathering of singers from Australia, New Zealand, ex-pats from those countries in the USA, France and Canada.  I accompanied them on an indigenous lullabye, Inanay and on My Island Home.

Didjeridoo in the Ozarks!

On my 30 Dulcimer-Filled Years Tour this June (2010) in Memphis, Ilace Mears, Carolyn Mason and I head over to Celtic Crossings for dinner and an Irish Session. 

While Ilace and I sit outside chatting, up hurries a man with a familiar face.  We recognize each other but at first don't place the connection.  

Then he puts the pieces together:  "You play didjeridoo, don't you?!"  

(This is not the usual question I am asked, to tell the truth).

"Yes, I do."  

"I saw you play it at the Ozark Folk Center last summer during the Mountain Dulcimer Week,"  he explains. 

"And I have video, too!"

After dinner Ilace and I join the session and have a grand time playing dulcimers with the guitar/mandolin and other hammered dulcimer player, sitting in a tight circle, after the fashion of Irish sessions.

Barry Bianchi promises to forward the video and today it has arrived!  

I've invited Judy Klinkhammer, Margaret and Jerry Wright to join me and because my didj is "tuned" to Eb, Margaret has to re-tune (she is a REAL dulcimer player and can do that!).  Jerry chooses Rolf Harris's "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" to sing and play while I provide accompaniment on what I jokingly call the "Australian Dulcimer".

Special thanks to my tutor, Paul Taylor (http://paultaylor.ws) originally from Australia, who now lives in Laramie, Wyoming.