Amanda Stickney said she was 11 or 12 years old when she first picked up a fiddle, under the guidance of the Pittsfield Youth Workshop’s director at the time, Heather Mike Morris.
Morris had started playing at a coffee house talent show, entertaining and intriguing a group of youngsters who would go on to form their own fiddling community in Pittsfield.
Stickney, a 2004 graduate of Pittsfield’s high school who now lives in Manchester, said she wasn’t much of a country music fan, but Morris showed her that “anything can be turned into a fiddle tune if you practice hard enough and try.”
And that’s what she and others did. She practiced for years, started going off to a fiddle camp in Maine, played in the background of Contra dances and eventually competed at the Pittsfield Fiddle Contest.
“At one point, there was I want to say 10 of us” from Pittsfield in the fiddling group, Stickney said. “We went out on excursions and all kinds of other fun outings. She encouraged us to play publicly.”
On Friday, Stickney surprised herself and Morris when she played again in public for the first time in years.
It was the Pittsfield Fiddle Contest again, this time in its 14th year, that brought fiddlers from all around into the Pittsfield Middle High School lecture hall.
Morris’s two young girls kicked things off with the youth division, and then she sparked the adult division herself, while the girls danced in circles around her.
Morris, of Strafford, who has since moved on from her role with the Pittsfield Youth Workshop, said she loved to introduce the youngsters to all the things she loved: kayaking, rock climbing, Contra dancing and, of course, violin. She was five or six years old, she said, when she started playing.
She was able to furnish the Pittsfield kids with violins and started giving lessons. Some, like Stickney, went on to take years of lessons, and others just learned the basics.
“I don’t know how many kids over the years have at least learned to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’ ” she said.
Morris said it was a natural move to create the fiddle contest as a way to boost the Pittsfield Youth Workshop and show off the progress of its fiddlers.
“I had a bunch of kids that knew how to play something. We wanted a way for them to showcase what they’ve been working on. And we needed a fundraiser, so there you go,” she said.
These days, Morris said, the contest is also a way to keep in touch with the folks at the youth group and some of her proteges.
As Stickney stepped onto stage to play her two tunes – one fast and one slow – she explained that, after the past few years of sitting in the audience, she’d decided in the spur of the moment to participate.
“I kind of practiced in the parking lot, not going to lie,” she laughed.
But by the time she was done, the audience exploded in applause. Morris was sitting in the front row, ready to give her mentee a hug.
Stickney said she’s glad the contest, which also includes a silent auction to benefit the Pittsfield Youth Workshop, is still going for the Pittsfield youth today.
“It was a very positive and growing time of my life,” she said. “This place helped out a lot.”
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)