Stewart Hardy

Geordie Music Night 2019
Saturday 2nd November
Seaton Sluice Community Centre NE26 4QX
7.30 pm (Doors 7.00 pm)
Featuring Jim Mageean, Stu Luckley, Stewart Hardy, George Welch, Barry & Ingrid Temple and Laura Connolly

£10 Adults. Please book tickets in advance.

Tickets available online via the shop
Tickets are also available to reserve by phone on 0191 298 0323  or  0191 237 1136.

Funds raised will support restoration of the Village Bell.

Holly & Ivy Roadshow
Friday 13th December
Jarrow Hall, Church Bank, Jarrow, South Tyneside, NE32 3DY
5.30 pm (until approx 6.30 pm)

Join David Oliver, Laura Connolly and Stewart Hardy for this lively, informal and participatory celebration of songs, stories, dances and customs associated with Midwinter, Christmas and the New Year.

Holly & Ivy Roadshow at the Festive Gathering 2019

Sunday 15 December, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Cecil Sharp House, London

Christmas concert with a folk twist.

This year special guests Holly & Ivy will bring their festive magic from the North East of England.  Performers Stewart Hardy, David Oliver and Laura Connolly will join Cecil Sharp House Choir on a lively and exciting journey through the midwinter customs and traditions of Britain. Join us for our annual yuletide celebration crammed with song, dance, music and good cheer.

George is a North East institution known for hilarious stories, driving tunes on guitar and moving songs in a fine baritone voice – the quintessential folk club entertainer! I am delighted to be joining him again, this time on board a floating Lightship! Join us at the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club Music Night in the South Harbour, Blyth.

George is a North East institution known for hilarious stories, driving tunes on guitar and moving songs in a fine baritone voice – the quintessential folk club entertainer! I am delighted to be joining him again as we return to the fantastic Davy Lamp Folk Club at Washington Arts Centre. See you there!

George and I will be returning to the fabulous Cramlington Folk Club again this year, on Weds 19th Feb. Join us for some more of George’s moving songs and hilarious stories. I’ll be doing my best to keep up!

Once you have heard George perform his songs, accompanied by his guitar playing with Stewart’s fiddle, there is no doubt that the success of this highly entertaining duo is built on solid musical foundations

Fiddle Technique

20th – 22nd March 2020
Rydal Hall, Ambleside LA22 9LX
3.00 pm start and finish time.

Join Stewart in the beautiful surroundings of Rydal Hall in the Lake District, for a weekend of intensive fiddle tuition. The workshop will typically take between 10 and 15 people from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon.This course can accommodate a broad range of experience and ability, ranging from competent beginner to upper intermediate, but is not suitable for absolute or early beginners. All tuition, resources, accommodation, food and daytime refreshments are included. Sheet music and mp3 files of the tunes covered are sent out in advance, and recordings of exercises from the course are sent on to you afterwards.

These courses are centred around the technical issues that come with playing fiddle music, with as much emphasis on the how as there is on the what. Focusing on left-hand and bowing technique, with stylistic interpretation of the music a key feature, these workshops delve deep into the tunes, extracting exercises to improve technique and allow its application to a wider repertoire. Tunes are carefully selected for their technical or stylistic content whilst also baring in mind practical considerations such as their usefulness in folk music sessions or as dance repertoire. The tunes are taught ‘as if by ear’, meaning they are taught phrase by phrase at a tempo and with sufficient repetition to enable learning without recourse to reading notation, but with notation available at any point should that be desired or necessary. This encourages the development of aural pattern recognition and general musicality, enhancing musicianship and the enjoyment of playing music in social settings.

For further information or to express your interest in this course, please email Ali (jsarts@stewarthardy.co.uk)

• – playing simple dance tunes at steady to mid tempo (e.g. reels and jigs at 50-80 beats per minute)
• – able to clap in time to a tune
• – have basic control of the bow on the string
• – able to slur notes together
• – comfortable in the keys of G,D and A major and familiar with their note names
• – familiarity with C major
• – able to play basic scales without notation
• – able to play at least 2 tunes without notation

• – attend other fiddle workshops
• – play with a community folk music group
• – join in folk music sessions
• – receive tuition on the fiddle/violin

Fiddle Foundation Technique

10th – 12th July 2020
Parcevall Hall, Appletreewick, Skipton, N. Yorks BD23 6DG
3.00 pm start and finish time.

Join Stewart in the beautiful surroundings of Parcevall Hall near Skipton, for a weekend of intensive fiddle tuition. The workshop will typically take between 10 and 15 people from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. The residential weekend fee of £335 covers all food, tuition, daytime refreshments and two nights single occupancy accommodation, some of which is en suite (for medical reasons, then first come first served). The non-residential rate is £250 and includes everything except bed & breakfast. Sheet music and mp3 files of the tunes covered are sent out in advance, and recordings of arrangements created during the course are sent on to you afterwards.

The Fiddle Foundation Technique workshop is a Standard Level course and is being run as an opportunity for musicians unfamiliar with Stewart’s teaching methods to look at, in some detail, the fundamental building blocks that he uses to create stylistic interpretations. He will be teaching some of the basic bowing patterns that help to bring out the distinctive flavour of the most common tune forms. For the left hand, he’ll be concentrating on hand frames and melodic motifs (those note patterns that occur again and again in folk tunes), as well as an approach to ornamentation which is designed to help players access ornaments in a way that is both natural for them and appropriate for the tunes.

This course can accommodate a broad range of experience and ability, ranging from competent beginner to upper intermediate, but is not suitable for absolute or early beginners. All tuition, resources, accommodation, food and daytime refreshments are included. Sheet music and mp3 files of the tunes covered are sent out in advance, and recordings of exercises from the course are sent on to you afterwards.

For further information or to express your interest in this course, please email Ali (jsarts@stewarthardy.co.uk)

• – playing simple dance tunes at steady to mid tempo (e.g. reels and jigs at 50-80 beats per minute)
• – able to clap in time to a tune
• – have basic control of the bow on the string
• – able to slur notes together
• – comfortable in the keys of G,D and A major and familiar with their note names
• – familiarity with C major
• – able to play basic scales without notation
• – able to play at least 2 tunes without notation

• – attend other fiddle workshops
• – play with a community folk music group
• – join in folk music sessions
• – receive tuition on the fiddle/violin

July Fiddle Workshops
Lower Intermediate

Learn a tune and all the fiddle techniques behind it to get the style and groove of the music into your playing. This live workshop will be delivered on Zoom, with notation and audio files provided in advance.

Zoom Workshop
Saturday 25th July: 10:00 – 12:00
Lower Intermediates: Little Fishie (from the Northumbrian Minstrelsy)

Little Fishie (Lower Intermediate): a beautiful and lyrical triple hornpipe from one of the great nineteenth century collections of Northumbrian songs and tunes, Northumbrian Minstrelsy. This is an ideal vehicle for exploring triple time grooves – the notes don’t zip by and a dance tempo is achievable for players who struggle with jigs and reels. It is in the key of G major but includes C sharps and F naturals to challenge our fingering technique. The melody points fiddlers towards mastering the technique of ‘broken thirds’ and we will also look at some basic ornamentation.

For full details, please see the July Fiddle Workshops page

If you haven’t attended a music workshop on Zoom before, here is a page of Zoom Workshop Tips to get the most out of your experience. A strong and reliable internet connection, plus headphones or an external speaker are recommended.