A Fiddler’s Holiday, featuring the Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band performing with the UMW Philharmonic at Dodd Auditorium, airs this winter on PBS. Photo by Jim Brown.
Last December’s fiddling frenzy on the stage of Dodd Auditorium can now be viewed in your living room.
The UMW Philharmonic performed its annual Holiday Pops concert in 2011 with the Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band. In addition to filming the concert, a television production crew shot footage around campus and at various locations in Fredericksburg.
It was all a gamble. The University hoped PBS would pick up the show – and it has.
Created by Emmy Award-winning producer Jim Brown, A Fiddler’s Holiday showcases the talents of the UMW Philharmonic and its conductor, Kevin Bartram. PBS has agreed to forward the finished program in its entirety through a national feed to all PBS channels. Thanks in part to UMW alumni requesting it of their local stations, it will be carried on many PBS affiliates.
Brown said the concert is appropriate not only to the time of year but also to the time in history.
“The music celebrates the winter season, the holidays, and is performed in one of the most historic towns in America,” he said. “At the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fredericksburg, this concert, in its own way, brings the North and South together.”
Highlights include a poignant performance of Ashokan Farewell, the ethereal melody made famous by Ken Burns’ PBS series The Civil War, and the powerful tune Darkest Days, Brightest Nights, which depicts the bleakness of a winter’s day, the beauty of which emerges only as the sun recedes to shadows.
See a preview of A Fiddler’s Holiday and a list of local PBS affiliates at special.umw.edu. Check with your PBS station to learn if and when the program will air in your community.
Describing their fiddle playing as “hauntingly beautiful,” Ken Burns said, “Jay Ungar and Molly Mason play music from the heart that reminds us of the best in all of us.”