Arts & Etc.

Fiddle Me This

Old-time Music Plucks 14-year-old's Heart Strings

August 01, 1999|By Josh Noel. Contributing: Jim Mueller.

In the well-to-do North Shore suburbs, musically inclined youth tend to study a dignified sort of instrument -- cello, perhaps, or piano. But when 14-year-old Aaron Weinstein asked for music lessons at age 5, he was dreaming of the fiddle. And no one is sure why.

"I wish I knew, because everyone asks," Aaron said. "But I have no idea."

His mother, Linda Weinstein, has a theory: "I think it's an old soul in him, some past life experience. I really do. There's no other reason. That's the old hippie in me talking."

Aaron's inspiration might simply have been a sense of innate skill waiting to emerge. Since he began playing at 7, he has won a handful of trophies and honors, including the 1998 Illinois State Fiddle Championship, in which he beat comers of all ages to become the youngest winner in the history of the competition. He will defend his title Labor Day weekend in Arcola.

His instrument is technically a violin, of course, but the teenager has always favored playing it as a fiddle. Linda Weinstein said Aaron was miserable by his third lesson in classical violin, sometime around when his teacher spent an hour critiquing the way Aaron stood.

"Classical has such a system of class and rules," Aaron said. "If you don't breathe a certain way or don't stand right, you're not considered good. With jazz, if it sounds good, it is."

So Aaron began to study the music known as "old time," rural songs dating back to the Civil War that were written for square dances and folk dances and passed between the generations on front porches. He learned by ear, as is traditional, from a teacher who would play a song, break it into parts, then show him the fingering: no books, no paper, no sheet music. As a result, Aaron can't read music well, but he can easily piece together and reproduce a song after hearing it a few times.

His career graduated to a new level in June, when he released his first CD, "Fiddler's Dream," a collection of 18 songs fleshed out by a full band that includes his dad, David, on guitar. Aaron produced and arranged the CD himself, choosing what instruments he wanted for each song, as well as when the musicians would solo. Perhaps more impressively, he paid for it out of his savings -- including the costs of recording, printing and hiring the musicians. (The guitarist withheld his fee.)

Aaron says hearing the disc for the first time was magical. "After listening to all these CDs you have, then it's your turn and you put on your own CD -- that's a very interesting experience," he said.

The disc consists largely of old-time music, but also includes some jazz, a medium Aaron first tackled within the last year. Jazz, he said, allows him a bit more room to break out of the formulaic nature of old time, to improvise. Besides, it has generated a positive response from audiences at his live shows, which usually take place at coffee houses, barn dances and a few private parties.

"If I play `Johnny Don't Come Home Drunk,' no one knows that," he said. But when listeners at a nursing home, for example, heard a recognizable jazz standard, "people perked up and got out of their wheelchairs. Then I'd go back to old time and they'd be slumping back in their chairs again."

Though Aaron swears he'll never leave old time or jazz, in the fall he'll return to classical violin as a member of the New Trier High School orchestra. The speed and precision he will need to master will make him a better player, he says -- plus, it should improve his ability to read music. He knows he can stand to improve, even though the trophy that sits in the basement of his Wilmette home says Aaron Weinstein is the best fiddle player in the state.

"The competitions don't say much about how you play," he said. "I might have played better than everyone else that day or the judges might have thought so, but the next day it could have been someone else."