Uncle Hokum’s Fiddle for TWO violins

Description

What’s more fun than Uncle Hokum’s Fiddle for solo violin? How about Uncle Hokum for TWO violins? Goodness Gracious Me! After Karen Bentley Pollick In 2022 asked for a 2 violin version of my fun, flashy, fantastic, fiery fiddle piece for her Virtuosos De Camara’s Fiddlefest (Karen Bentley Pollick and Philip Brezina, violins) I set about adding a second violin part as the “rhythm section” to the existing solo part. I also did a small rewrite in the slow section (which is reflected in the solo version, it’s now “version 2.0”). The second violin part in Uncle Hokum² is full of chopping and other goodness. So now you have a choice: one violin, or two? Shaken, not stirred? It was premiered on  February 26, 2023 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Uncle Hokum’ s Fiddle is a fun, virtuosic solo violin “fiddle” piece with a Blue Grass flavor – think “Wieniawski meets Orange Blossom Special!” – commissioned for the 2013 Irving M. Klein International String Competition. The title comes from two main sources. The word “hokum,” which basically means nonsense, bunk, or something silly, and also used in theater to describe some sort of stage gimmickry designed to elicit a crowd pleasing response from a jaded audience. The second source is hokum, or “double shuffle” bowing, as heard in country fiddling pieces such as Orange Blossom Special. For more info about this work click here.

Score is available as a downloadable PDF file.