Anne Lederman

Originally from Manitoba, fiddler/singer/composer Anne Lederman was raised in a musical family, starting piano at the age of 5, and taking up the guitar at 12.  By age 15, she was a regular in the Winnipeg coffee-house scene and was hired for the Regina Folk Festival in 1966.  At 19, living now in Saskatchewan, she took up the fiddle, which soon became an all-consuming passion. A move to Vancouver, then in 1973 to Toronto, allowed her to spend time with many traditional fiddlers throughout Canada, old and young.  Her curiosity and willingness to improvise and experiment with her instrument led her into many musical worlds - Celtic, Klezmer, jazz, Latin and African. In Toronto, she got a degree in composition from U. of T., studied jazz with Gordon Delamont, violin with the legendary Eugene Kash, and began to play with local bands.

            Anne began her professional career as a fiddler in the late 1970s touring with Harry Hibbs, “Newfoundland's favourite son”. In 1983, as half of duo Muddy York with Ian Bell, she released the groundbreaking recording Scatter The Ashes: Music of Old Ontario.   In 1985 and 86, she returned to Manitoba to study and record the music of Native and Métis fiddlers, resulting in a 4-record archival set of recordings titled Old Native and Métis Fiddling in Manitoba (re-released in 2004 as a double CD set on The National Museum's Archive label). This was followed by work with Izvor, an ensemble devoted to Balkan, Greek and other East European traditions, and then The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band with whom she recorded two albums: The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band and Agada. In 1991, she released her own recording, Not A Mark In The World, a collection of Canadian traditional songs of social comment. This was followed in 1998 with a special collection of songs for children, Come From Every Way, about coming to Canada from all over the world.  In 1999, Anne began to work with Njacko Backo of Cameroon and his Kalimba Kalimba! ensemble, touring the Prairies, B.C. and Yellowknife. This group has released three recordings, Ka Koua (2001), The Conscience of Africa (2004), and Ba Ba Oh (2007). The year 2000 saw the appearance of Anne’s first fiddle recording, 7 Cats, featuring traditional tunes – Métis, French-Canadian, Irish, Scottish, Klezmer and Macedonian. This was followed in 2003 by Fiddlesong, featuring original music, a work hailed by critics as a groundbreaking expression of “Canadian World Music.”

            In 1992, Anne founded WORLDS OF MUSIC TORONTO, a school devoted both to teaching of musical traditions throughout the world and to cross-cultural performance. Throughout this time, she continued to teach Music and Canadian Folklore at York University, raise two children, compose and perform music for several theatrical productions in Toronto and Blyth, Ontario and back up numerous artists in live shows and on recordings (Grit Laskin and Ian Robb, Eileen McGann, Don Freed, Holly Cole, Cindy Thompson, Theresa Tova, Tom Leadbeater and Garnet Rogers among others). Anne was also fiddler and musical consultant for the popular Road to Avonlea television series for several years. In 1997, she wrote the script for a solo show, Spirit of the Narrows, about her work with Native and Metis fiddlers in Manitoba. In 2004, this work was turned into a play which premiered at the Blyth Theatre Festival to rave reviews and was remounted in 2005.  She continues to compose and perform for theatre, film and concert performance, most recently for two Veronica Tennant productions, A Pair of Red Shorts, and Roseneath Theatre’s Spirit Horse, a First Nations adaptation of the Irish movie, Into the West.