1. ‣Sunday August 12, 2012
   3:00 - 6:00 in the field near the Parish Hall (inside if it rains)
   

2. Some Useful Links:
   

   Here are some links you may find useful or interesting:
   

   Invitation (2012) - This is the invitation to the Picnic; feel free to copy and distribute it.
   

   Publicity Flyer (2012) - Again feel free to make copies.
   

   Fiddler's Picnic Tunes - These are intended as ideas to help us be prepared, not as a list of tunes to learn - so don’t panic if you don’t know them, and don’t feel like we have to be confined to the list.
   

   Fiddler’s Picnic Photo Page - Photos Page Index; click on the link for photos of the Picnic from previous years so you can see what it’s like.
   

   Directions to Canterbury - This is a PDF file with directions to Canterbury.
   

   Canterbury - Town Web Site.
   

   Conservation Commission - The Conservation Commission web site.

   ‣Bring musical instruments and a contribution for the pot-luck.
   All instruments welcome; I’ll provide a keyboard.
   Supper will be in the middle of the picnic time.
   

3. ‣Tell your friends - Invite both musicians and non-musicians!
   

Teresa Wyman & Peter Yarensky invite you to join us for a Fall Celebration of traditional Fiddle Tunes of New England, Canada, the British Isles & Scandinavia by the Parish House in Canterbury (inside if it’s raining).

The Fiddlers Picnic is sponsored by the Canterbury Conservation Commission (CCC), and is a benefit for the CCC Land Protection Fund; while there is no admission fee, all donations are appreciated!

Contact Information: Please download a copy of the Publicity Flyer to get the latest information. The web address for this page is http://www.nhcountrydance.com/picnic.

The Canterbury Fiddler’s Picnic has occurred in Canterbury in the late summer every year for over a decade. Its roots go back even further than that.

Brief Background. I remember quite a number of years ago Dudley mentioned having read about a “gathering of fiddlers”, which was the inspiration for the original Gathering of New Hampshire Fiddlers which happened for a number of years at Charlie & Mary Lou’s in Loudon.

At some point the idea of a Fiddler’s Picnic came about. For a number of years it was sponsored by the Canterbury Historical Society, and different people served as hosts each year, including many or most of the best fiddlers in Canterbury (Dudley, Jordan, Patrick, and many others). At some point Teresa and I (a part-time resident) pretty much took over the role, in part because we enjoyed it and did a good job, and in part because they could count on it.

Ginger was the most enthusiastic supporter in the Historical Society, so when she stepped down from her role we ended up moving to the Conservation Commission for sponsorship in 2007; it seems to be a good match.

What is it? Well, we sit around and play tunes, either individually or mostly as a group. We invite fiddlers from all over the state, and from surrounding areas, and get anywhere from a dozen to a couple dozen showing up. We also invite

Canterbury residents and anyone else who is interested. Sometime in the middle we have a pot-luck picnic. Given the time of year and the fact that it’s in Canterbury, you can be sure there will be lots of excellent food: corn, tomatoes, fresh fruit, etc., and with lots of good cooking as well. Then we play some  more tunes. So, it’s a great afternoon of music and socializing.

Musically and socially it’s particularly enjoyable because we get not only the people from town whom you might expect, but a variety of others as well. We get some of the old-time fiddlers like Clarence who play crooked French Canadian tunes; we get excellent younger fiddlers like Liz who has won many fiddling contest and is an excellent dance fiddler as well; Adam shows up from Vermont to represent the great old-time repertoire of that state; altogether it’s a marvelous musical time