Master Fiddlers offer free concert at Folklife Center
On Monday, November 26, at 7 p.m., The Frank and Jane WV Folklife Center will be hosting an old-time fiddling performance by Doug Van Gundy, a master-fiddler and an eighth-generation West Virginian, and Annie Stroud, his apprentice. The event is free and open to the public.
Doug grew up around a wide range of music while living in Elkins, West Virginia. During his time studying at Davis and Elkins College, he decided to drop rock and roll in 1993 and pursue an apprenticeship under Mose Coffman through the National Endowment for the Humanities folk arts apprenticeship program at the Augusta Heritage Center. Since then he has played throughout the Northeast and upper Midwest with Dwight Diller, Melvin Wine, and in The Yahoes, with Paul Gartner and Pam Lund. His music has been featured on a commercial for ABC-TV, the Outdoor Life Network, and The Crook & Chase Show on the Nashville Network. He has also performed at the Kennedy Center, the Oldsongs Festival, Hostos Community College of NYU in the Bronx, The Appalachian String Band Festival at Clifftop, WV and The Calliope Emerging Legends Concert Series in Pittsburgh, PA. Now, you can find Doug performing with Paul Gartner in their duo, Born Old.
Annie, a Greenbrier County native, plays the fiddle with the Allegheny Hellbenders string band and is a member of the Morgantown Friends of Old-Time Music and Dance. She graduated from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio in 2010 with a B.A. of Political Science, French, and Music. Annie currently is an apprentice under Doug Van Gundy through the West Virginia Humanities Council apprenticeship program.
The apprenticeship program grants are administered by the West Virginia Folklife Program at the West Virginia Humanities Council in Charleston and are supported in part by an Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. West Virginia Folklife is dedicated to the documentation, preservation, presentation, and support of West Virginia’s vibrant cultural heritage and living traditions.
Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Centermaster fiddlersDoug Van Gundy
