- CelticFest Vancouver, featuring more than 70 free and ticketed events at various indoor and outdoor venues, and the St. Patrick's Day Parade, in downtown Vancouver, March 10-18. Full schedule, artist line-up and tickets: www.celticfestvancouver.com.
IVONNE Hernandez has yet to find someone who doesn't like traditional music.
"No matter what style of music is your first choice to listen to, everyone seems to really love fiddle tunes, fiddle music," the 29-year-old violinist, singer and step dancer says. "It's happy, it's energetic or it's heart-wrenching. . . . I feel like everyone feels something when they hear it and has an immediate positive reaction to the music."
Ivonne and her sister Kalissa Hernandez, 23, who is likewise a talented fiddler, singer and step dancer, grew up immersed in the genre, drawing from both their Canadian and Chilean roots. Young fiddler phenoms, the Victoria natives earned countless provincial, national and North American titles between them. Now adults, they're professional recording artists and have embarked on two separate, yet parallel, career paths.
Both are driven by a passion for the music, a need to create and a strong interest in the exploration of different musical genres and collaborations with other musicians. While their careers have taken them to different coasts - Ivonne calls Boston, Mass., home and Kalissa, Vancouver - their shared roots offer a continued source of support, encouragement and understanding.
Both women are featured performers at the eighth annual CelticFest Vancouver, set for March 10-18. The festival offers approximately 70 free and ticketed concerts and events at a variety of venues, as well as the popular St. Patrick's Day Parade, kicking off at Drake and Howe streets in downtown Vancouver, Sunday, March 18 at 11 a.m.
Ivonne and Kalissa have a number of performances scheduled over the course of the festival. Ivonne is teaming up with singer/songwriter Jeremy Walsh for a free lunch time concert on the Plaza at Pacific Centre March 15 at noon and again with Walsh later that evening at 9 p.m. at Ceili's Irish Pub & Restaurant.
Kalissa is set to take the stage as part of the house band at From Texas to Tipperary, featuring a variety of songwriters, including Jim Byrnes, Steve Dawson and Babe Gurr, March 15 at the Edgewater Casino at 8 p.m. The following evening, March 16, she'll perform with her bands The Paperboys and Locarno at the same venue at 8 p.m. for the San Patricios Concert - From Galway to Guadalajara, also featuring Mariachi Los Dorados.
Ivonne and Kalissa grew up in a musical household, their mother, from Ontario, played piano and their father, from Santiago, Chile, a bevy of different traditional instruments.
"We grew up with a lot of music in the house," says Kalissa. "Mom had taken, in university, a course on music appreciation and had done some research on how music can affect the learning capabilities of children and the benefits of having musical knowledge."
Interested in giving their daughters the best start possible, they enrolled Ivonne, at age three, and then Kalissa, in violin lessons, specifically, the Suzuki method.
"I just loved it and took to that and I just never looked back," says Ivonne. As children, and then teenagers, they continued to excel, taking music lessons and attending fiddle camps and contests, eventually becoming teachers, camp instructors and contest judges themselves.
"We really fell in love with the music," says Kalissa. "Growing up together, we did all our performances, pretty much together. Very rarely, did we perform independently," she adds.
However, eventually they set out on their own respective paths and while in 2009 they released twin fiddle album Sisters, they now primarily work on their own projects.
"She's got the East Coast covered and I guess I take the West Coast," laughs Kalissa.
Ivonne moved to Boston five years ago and completed a dual major in violin performance and music business and management at the Berklee College of Music. She plays with a number of artists and ensembles, including The Fretless, a new group that fuses celtic, folk and chamber music into a sound they refer to as "rad trad."
"My whole life I've played classical and fiddle so I've always wanted to combine the two in some form," says Ivonne.
A string quartet format, the group is comprised of Ivonne and fellow Canadians Trent Freeman (Comox) and Karrnnel Sawitsky (Saskatoon, Sask.) who she met through the Canadian fiddle contest circuit growing up, and American cello player Eric Wright, a Berklee alumnus. They've just completed their debut album, Waterbound, and its official release tour will kick off in June, bringing them to B.C., including a stop in Vancouver.
At CelticFest, Ivonne will be playing with Walsh, a longtime collaborator. They released an album last year, entitled Live Off The Floor.
"We wanted to show what we can do in our live shows," she says.
"As a duo it actually really rocks," she adds. From April to June, Ivonne will tour the United States and the United Kingdom with The Outside Track, filling in for fiddle player Mairi Rankin, a member of the famous Cape Breton family, who's unable to make the tour.
"I've gotten to do a bunch of stuff with them last year as well," says Ivonne. "They're all really great friends of mine and great musicians so it will be really fun to tour with them for a couple of months."
For the last year and a half she's also been playing some shows with legendary American fiddle player Mark O'Connor.
"He's been one of my heroes growing up. So it's very, very exciting for me to play and just to be friends with him now," says Ivonne.
Kalissa joined The Paperboys, started by Mexican-born Tom Landa in the mid-1990s, three years ago.
"Since then, being able to meet all of these musicians around town and just seeing the respect that they have for Tom Landa and everything that he's contributed to the music scene in Vancouver as well is just amazing to witness," she says.
In addition, Landa fronts Locarno and The Starbirds, which Kalissa also plays in.
Joining such a well-established ensemble has resulted in one incredible opportunity after another.
"It's been so amazing to play legendary venues in Vancouver," says Kalissa, adding The Starbirds opened for Spirit of the West at last year's CelticFest, at the Vogue Theatre.
"That in itself was amazing. Sprit of the West is legendary," she says.
While she's friends with Geoffrey Kelly, one of Spirit's founding members, as he also plays in The Paperboys, it was an experience not to be forgotten.
The Paperboys are working on a new album, set for release in time for a fall tour in Germany, and Locarno is gearing up for a packed summer music festival circuit.
"I've been very, very lucky in my 23 years," says Kalissa. "I was seven or eight when I started performing professionally. Crowds have been very good to me. . . . The encores, they really give you a boost and make you remember that you've got the luckiest job in the world."
