BELLOWS FALLS — Stone Church Arts presents Orkney fiddler Louise Bichan and American mandolinist Ethan Setiawan on Friday, Feb. 28, at 7:30 p.m., at Immanuel Episcopal Church, the stone church on the hill, 20 Church St.
Bichan and Setiawan's paths are steeped in the fiddle traditions of their respective sides of the Atlantic. Their musical journey wends through Scottish, old time, and Swedish-inspired music interwoven with contemporary compositions.
Bichan is an artist and musician who grew up in Orkney, a group of islands in the north of Scotland. She graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011 with an honors degree in visual communications, specializing in photography.
As a fiddle player, she enjoys a wide variety of music, but mostly plays and writes folk and traditional Scottish music. After being awarded a scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music, she traveled to Boston in September 2015 to explore other genres of music.
Between her studies, Bichan has been concentrating on her project Out of My Own Light, exploring her family ties to Canada and her own connection to her late Grandmother, Margaret Sarah Tait.
Setiawan is a Boston-based mandolin player who has won such accolades as the National Mandolin Championship and the RockyGrass Mandolin Championship. He is a member of bands Corner House, Mudskippers, and The Harmolodic String Band, and freelances with musicians including Darol Anger and Tony Trischka.
A move to Boston in August of 2015 to attend Berklee College of Music on a full ride scholarship brought about a new chapter in his life. He's been a catalyst for several projects in the Boston area and elsewhere, including Mudskippers, a progressive string band, Corner House, which draws from Scottish, Appalachian string band, and bluegrass styles, and the Harmolodic String Band, which plays the music of Ornette Coleman on bluegrass instruments.