INTRO: I met Gianna Williams (very briefly) at the Nonsuch Dulcimer Club’s annual weekend in October 2023. Gianna is the first mountain dulcimer player I know of from Italy. I asked her to tell me something of her background:
GIANNA: I’m based in the region of Liguria which is just over the border from the French Cote d’Azur, so we enjoy a very pleasant climate here and the best of Mediterranean and Alpine landscapes. What confuses people is that I’m a native English speaker because I was born in Australia, then when I was seven we moved to Chicago, Illinois and then moved again, this time to London, when I was 14. I moved ‘back’ to Italy permanently in 2001. I’ve been playing the mountain dulcimer for almost 10 months, so I’m technically a beginner I suppose! But I’ve taken it very seriously from day one and have worked hard on making progress as quickly as possible.
STEVE: The dulcimer is a fairly uncommon instrument in the North of England, where I live, and I guess it is very rare in your country. You’ve said that you only recently became a dulcimer player - tell me about how you got so fascinated with it? Also something about your musical background?
GIANNA: My Irish brother-in-law moved to Italy to be close to my niece who now lives here, while my sister works as a doctor in Guernsey, so they have a very international relationship where they try to meet up with each other twice a month in one country or in the other! When my brother-in-law moved over, he brought a vast collection of instruments with him. When I went to visit the family at Christmas, I spotted a mountain dulcimer on the wall, which he promptly gave me as soon as I asked if I could just try it. I knew it was a mountain dulcimer because I first saw a dulcimer when I discovered the folk harp, back in 2004.
I was singing in a Celtic-inspired musical production based on the life of Merlin, written by the Italian Celtic flautist and composer Gian Castello. In that production, there was a folk harp and I immediately fell in love with it, and that’s the instrument I now perform with. But in that same production, Gian would alternate playing recorders with a dulcimer. At the time, I was intrigued by the dulcimer but never actually tried it. Gian plays in a noter style that, though lively and engaging, doesn’t suit my taste completely and that was really my only experience of dulcimers and how to play them.
It was only after my brother-in-law gave me his dulcimer and I started looking around online for teachers that I discovered that there were other ways of playing. I hit upon Jessica Comeau and fell in love with her style, so we had our first lesson just a couple of weeks after Christmas. I remember watching a video of hers and thinking ‘Hey, that’s cheating. That’s a guitar playing in the background!’ only to discover that what I was hearing was actually a dulcimer. From then on, dulcimer became my number one priority. I was, and remain, completely hooked.
STEVE: I think you probably had a loan instrument when I met you, but tell me about the instrument your brother-in-law gifted you. Are you still using that instrument or have you moved on?
GIANNA: The instrument I was given is a Romanian Hora/Blue Moon dulcimer and it actually has been an excellent beginner instrument. I can say that, now I’ve been to the Nonsuch festival because, before that, I really had no way of knowing how my dulcimer compared with others. At the festival, I tried to get my hands on as many dulcimers as I could to work out how much they differ one from another. I can see why so many people become collectors! When I was planning to take my dulcimer to Ireland, I had a hard time finding a light but sturdy case for it and in the end I had one shipped over from McSpadden, which fits it perfectly. The people at McSpadden were incredibly helpful and made sure that their case would fit my dulcimer, despite it being a different make. So far, it’s been on planes, trains and buses with me thanks to that case.
STEVE: You mentioned at Swanwick (the Nonsuch weekend) that you are also learning with Brett Ridgeway. How did this come about – is it all done on Zoom? How does it work?
GIANNA: I have two teachers, both of whom teach me regularly on Zoom. With Jessica Comeau, we concentrate on a classical/medieval/celtic repertoire mostly, while with Brett we tend to work on traditional American folk music. I consider learning online a necessary evil when you don’t have dulcimer teachers in the vicinity. And that’s also why I immediately started looking around for festivals in the UK and even in the US that I could attend to get first-hand tuition.
Last week I attended my first-ever dulcimer festival, in Swanwick. Next month I’m flying to Pennsylvania to study, rehearse and hopefully record with Brett and then I’ll be attending the Evart festival in July. Brett and I have been experimenting with harp/dulcimer/banjo arrangements that are opening up exciting possibilities and we’re determined to develop these ideas, despite the obvious challenge posed by living in a six-hour time zone difference, on different continents! In-person learning is really important to me, as well as simply trying other dulcimers, meeting other dulcimer players, picking up tips and learning from other people’s experience.
For all these reasons, Swanwick was a massively important experience for me and I was so glad to be able to attend, thanks also to the people who bent over backwards to help me get there: Geoff Reeve-Black, who was one of the first people I ever contacted back in January, Shirley Warbrick and, most importantly of all, Steve Herron-Thompson and his wife Jane, who picked me up from Manchester airport and hosted me, without ever having set eyes on me in their lives.
STEVE: What sort of music interests you on the dulcimer – is there a particular style you are aiming for or are you still trying out possibilities?
GIANNA: I suppose my main aim is to supplement or replace performing with the folk harp with the mountain dulcimer whenever the opportunity arises. While my wedding work is really based on the appeal of the harp, there are other opportunities for the dulcimer that I’d like to develop, without having to stray from my preferred musical genres: medieval/renaissance music and Irish/Scottish trad.
The harp isn’t the easiest instrument to lug around, even a small folk harp, so the portability of the dulcimer has particular appeal and has already proved handy in situations where bringing a harp is just too complicated. For example, this spring I travelled to Ireland as part of an association that promotes cultural exchange between Ireland and Italy, the Green Butterflies association, and on that occasion I flew over with my dulcimer and played in Bangor, Northern Ireland, and in Dublin and Navan, in the Republic of Ireland. With the same association, myself and an Irish violinist, Catriona Grimes, travelled to Switzerland this summer and played together in St Gallen. Both in Ireland and in Switzerland, the dulcimer created quite a stir. No one knew what it was, even the many musicians I met in Ireland.
Everyone is fascinated by this unknown instrument, they’re even fascinated by the splints I use to correct my double-jointed fingers. It’s the same level of interest that the harp used to stir, except the folk harp is less of a novelty than it used to be. I’m due to go back to Bangor with my dulcimer next June. I’ve already incorporated the dulcimer in the Scottish duo myself and the singer Tanya Laing founded in 2009, called Heather Lasses, and hope to work it into the Irish folk ensemble Celtic Dream, which three of us here in Italy founded in 2017. I also hope to introduce the dulcimer in my madrigal group, Ensemble Fuori Tempo. Renaissance music works wonderfully on the dulcimer, particularly when you can make the most of the acoustics boasted by the many medieval chapels we have here.
Some people here express surprise when I rave about the dulcimer, they seem to consider it ‘inferior’ to a harp in terms of musical tone and aesthetic impact. But actually what I love about the dulcimer are the possibilities it offers for original arrangements. Even just playing around with it, you accidentally hit upon interesting harmonies and chords that you can’t even name but that sound exciting, transforming even the simplest tune. When I started playing harp, I was performing with it just weeks after I’d first laid hands on it because I passionately wanted to share the magic of it with others, and I feel just the same about the dulcimer. They are both instruments whose beauty stands out, no matter who is playing them.
STEVE: Some dulcimer friends of mine – the very same Steve and Jane – were telling me about your exciting project to hold a dulcimer event in sunny Italy next year. Tell me more about it – dates, format, tutor…...
GIANNA: As I mentioned, festivals and in-person experience are really fundamental, and when I realised that there weren’t any opportunities in Italy or in the south of France, I decided that, rather than waste time moaning about being isolated, I could actually try to create my own festival. I started with a Facebook group, Amici del Mountain Dulcimer, to see who was out there, in Italy, and gauge the response. In doing so, I discovered a number of friends, all musicians, who have dulcimers and have never had the chance to study them. In the end we’re starting small, with a two-day workshop on 8-9 March 2024, but there may be an opportunity to become part of a harp masterclass festival in July 2024, and the latter is something that I’m waiting to hear on in the next couple of days.
Back in May, when I started considering the idea of a workshop, I mentioned it in passing to Brett and he amazed me by saying that he was up for coming over to teach it. This will be the first time he ever sets foot in Europe! In order to cover the cost of his flight, and that of his wife, I looked around to see if I could also arrange concerts for him in local venues and, again, the response was astounding. Practically every theatre and venue I contacted said yes. The appeal of an American musician coming over here and playing American music on an American instrument is enormous. In the end, I had to stop contacting venues because we didn’t have enough time to play everywhere. If the masterclass goes ahead in July, we can have a look at playing in the other venues that expressed interest. The main challenge will be finding instruments for everyone, though so far everyone who is planning on coming has a dulcimer languishing in a dark corner of their closet!
As for the workshop format, it will follow what we’re generally used to here in Italy when it comes to folk music workshops: two full days of lessons that culminate in a public performance by all the participants. The local mayor has given us access to a beautiful renovated olive mill, which is where we’ll hold both the lessons and the final performance. As Brett will be performing locally both before and after the workshop, there will be plenty of opportunities for people to listen to him play and I’ve managed to source both a banjo and a ukulele for him as well. On the first day of the workshop, we’ve organised a dinner in a local vineyard with Brett performing afterwards and perhaps the evening will end in a jam session, depending on how brave workshop participants feel after dinner!
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| Chiusavecchia - where the dulcimer festival will take place |
STEVE: That sounds some setting for a dulcimer festival. I can almost taste the pesto! How can people find out more?
GIANNA: Pesto will definitely be on the menu, it’s our region’s most famous dish! To find out more, people can either contact me via the Facebook page, Amici del Mountain Dulcimer, or email me on gianna.quaglia@libero.it or even contact Brett on brettridgewaymusic@gmail.com . So far, we have a couple coming to the workshop from the UK, a couple coming over from France and two or three people from here, so it’s already become quite an international event! And I’d like to thank you, Steve, for this chance to talk about it on your blog. I hope to attend your Spring Fling one day!
STEVE: It would be great to see you in Newcastle Gianna.Ciaou!
Gianna’s website: www.giannatheharper.it