Concert of “Southern Style Old Time Music” by Canadian duo Erynn Marshall and Chris Coole, June 20 at Berea College

Canadian fiddler Erynn Marshall and musical partner Chris Coole will perform a concert of “Southern Style Old Time Music” at Berea College June 20, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Gray Auditorium, Presser Auditorium.

Performing with them will be special guests James Miller and New Highway Bluegrass Band. Admission is $5 per person or free with CD purchase ($15).

Marshall and Coole share a love of old-time music that has put them on a long road together since meeting in 1998. Using fiddle, banjo, guitar and their voices they bring life to music from another era. The duo do not present any unnecessary showmanship but aim to capture the raw refinement that is present in the music to begin with – the subtleties and nuances that, when allowed to surface, stand on their own in making the music both powerful and in the moment, they say.

Marshall and Coole have performed at numerous venues, festivals and camps in both Canada and the United States. Marshall recently released her award-winning CD “Calico” which features the duo extensively. They also have appeared as guests on numerous other recordings. Both were featured in the roots music documentary “I’ll Fly Away Home” and perform together and separately in several groups around the Toronto, Canada area.

A native of Victoria, British Columbia, Marshall is also a composer, ethnomusicologist and author who has spent the past two months exploring Kentucky fiddle styles, tunings and song traditions at Berea College in the new Appalachian Music Fellowship program. Her work has included transcriptions of fiddle tunes by Hiram Stamper, J.P. Fraley, Stanford Kelly and others. She has interviewed members of the Stamper family and made a number of field recordings, which have given her the opportunity to meet many resident musicians and visit local traditional music gatherings in Rockcastle, Garrard, Knox, Pike, Knott and Rowan Counties as well as the Berea area. Several of the fiddle pieces and tunings she studied will be included in the June 20 concert.

Marshall earned an M.A. in ethnomusicology from York University in Toronto. Her master’s thesis “Music in the Air Somewhere: The shifting Borders of West Virginia’s Fiddle and Song Traditions” was published in 2006 by the West Virginia University Press. For several years, she made frequent trips to learn Appalachian fiddling directly from older tradition bearers Melvin Wine, Lester McCumbers, Leland Hall, Art Stamper and others.

For more information, visit www.hickoryjack.com or contact Marshall at Berea College Archives and Special Collections at (859) 985-3262.