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Polyphonic Ground Profile: World Fiddle Day Toronto

As part of this month’s Polyphonic Ground Digital Residency, we’re profiling the organizations and professionals who support Toronto’s culturally diverse music scene. See all of the profiles here.


What’s your name, role and organization?

Anne Lederman, founder, World Fiddle Day Toronto.

Tell us about World Fiddle Day Toronto’s signature events. 

We organize workshops and concerts around World Fiddle Day/Canada’s National Fiddling Day, held on the third Saturday of May every year. These events are meant to be as inclusive and participatory as possible, and they’re open to bowed string players of all ages, levels of experience and musical genres. Our signature event is the Around-the-World Jam wherein we include as many players as will play through a set repertoire drawn from the traditions of over 30 cultures. It’s all backed up by an awesome house band of lead and rhythm fiddles (or viola/cello), percussion, clarinet, piano/accordion and bass. 

Beyond providing great cultural programming, does World Fiddle Day Toronto have a larger mission you’re working towards? 

We are devoted to helping players improve their understanding of different forms of traditional and world music, and to learn the rhythmic and aural skills needed to improvise, play rhythms, harmonies and melodies within these traditions. We do this through workshops held throughout the winter, leading up to World Fiddle Day. 

Tell us about one highlight from a past World Fiddle Day Toronto event that illustrates why you love what you do.

Our collaborative finale at Fort York last year brought together our four guest artists: Rosalyn Dennett (Appalachian), Dan MacDonald (Cape Breton/Irish), Yosvani Castaneda (Cuban) and Mark Marczyk (Ukrainian) in a new piece that they worked out ahead of time. It was truly special. Each of them was featured in parts and they all joined together in others. Wonderful. 

Describe some of the specific challenges organizations like yours face in promoting world music in Toronto.

Toronto’s size actually works against arts programming. The city is so large, expensive, hard to get around and so full of events that it works like a small town in that word-of-mouth is really the only way to reach people. So small and mid-size arts organizations must build a loyal following, one person at a time, largely through personal connections. 

Name one artist, band or performer who’s taking part in an upcoming World Fiddle Day Toronto event that you think audiences will love. 

We have just rounded up our year’s activities at Hugh’s Room at the end of May, where our featured performers were Abebe Fikade (Ethiopian), OKAN (Cuban) and Shane Cooke (Canadian). It was an incredibly eclectic night of world music programming which everyone loved. 

Toronto music venues have been struggling to stay open in recent years. Have these challenges affected World Fiddle Day Toronto in any way?

It is always a struggle to find venues that work for both daytime and evening events and are also open to all ages, as well as large enough to allow for participatory events such as ours. We are grateful that Hugh’s Room Live was able to re-open its doors as a non-profit arts space after having been closed for more than a year. 

What are some of the benefits of partnering together with similar music/event promoters in Polyphonic Ground? 

The shared knowledge that comes from other world music presenters in Toronto is invaluable both on the organizing side and in terms of performers themselves. The shared load in working together also makes a huge difference in an arena where we often feel quite isolated. And there is also the shared audiences – all of those people who get a chance to discover new styles of music and new artists, or who get the chance to play with other like-minded musicians, all of which would not be possible without the kinds of cross-cultural events that we can create through Polyphonic Ground. 


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