MUSIC

The Madison Music Makers program schedules several formal concerts a year for its sixty students in venues ranging from local churches to the stately Overture Center, but on a chilly Sunday afternoon they got together somewhere a little more casual: the High Noon Saloon. The venue saw perhaps its youngest crowd yet as the Old Tin Can Sting Band invited some of the city’s youngest fiddlers to join them on stage for some bluegrass and Celtic music. As long as they knew the tunes that is.

This was the third family friendly Sunday afternoon show this year that the Brocach regulars have played at the High Noon. The shows offer an alternative to the usual sticky sweet children’s fare that parents normally have to choose from, while also giving them a comfortable place to spend at afternoon. The children sit on carpet mats scattered across the floor, when they aren’t dancing or showing off their musical skills, while their parents sit at a nearby table or bar stool.

Previous shows have featured students taught by band members Shauncey Ali and mandolinist/guitarist Chris Powers, but this was the first to invite the entire program. Fiddler Ali gives lessons in the home of executive director Bonnie Greene, and has worked with the Music Makers on several occasions. She describes him as “a very skilled teacher and a wonderfully gentle and sensitive personality to have working with kids.” Learning that he had spent a half hour before the show tuning violins only reinforced her praise.

These qualities were also evident as Ali invited the children up on stage during the first half of the show. “I’m going to call out a tune, and if you know it, come on up on stage,” he announced, before adding, “slowly.” He also cautioned them that if they just think they know it, or maybe they used to know it, “you might want to think twice about coming up, we don’t want anyone to be embarrassed up here.”

As they ran through a set of traditional tunes, the largest number of kids ventured up for the most familiar: “Frere Jacques,” “Ode to Joy,” and “Twinkle” (as in “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”). However, a call for “Cripple Creek” stumped them. “How come none of you kids know that one?” teased upright bassist Chris Boeger, “Who’s your teacher?” He also couldn’t resist commenting that they must be “skittish about schottisches” when only a few braved the “Linda Schottische.”

Other than keeping the songs G-rated, the band, which also includes guitarist Pat Spaay, doesn’t do anything different for these afternoon shows than they do during their regular Thursday night gig. They still play everything from Bill Monroe to the Grateful Dead, but instead of Guinness their audience downs 16 ounce bottles of Sprecher root beer and huge slices of Glass Nickel pizza.

“Performance is a source of great motivation for the students,” explained Greene as the reason the program schedules as many performances, formal or otherwise, as possible a year. The Music Makers program began in January of 2007 with the goal of giving instruments and lessons to motivated low-income children.

“We are reaching Hispanic, southeast Asian, and African-American children,” she continued, “the same groups who too often need support with academic achievement and the opportunity for a comfortable life.” The lessons are given in three community centers -- Goodman, Bayview and Centro Hispano -- where the students have easy access after school.

While the program began with major grants from the Madison Community Foundation, the Pleasant Rowland Foundation, and the American Girl Fund for Children, “our ongoing funding comes less from foundations and more and more from private individuals,” stresses Greene. “We welcome any support so that we can continue this work with Madison's low-income kids.”

Observing the grace, poise and skill the second through fifth grade fiddlers displayed on stage left no doubt that the group is accomplishing its goals.