World-champion fiddler, step dancer and singer April Verch will return to the Lied Center for Performing Arts on April 16, bringing her band’s irresistible blend of Canada’s Ottawa Valley meets old-time Appalachia with crack fiddling, electric step dancing and sweet singing.
The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets, starting at $18 for adults and $9 for students, are available at http://www.liedcenter.org, at the Lied Center Box Office, 301 N. 12th St., or by phone at 402-472-4747.
“April Verch is a triple threat in every sense,” said Bill Stephan, executive director of the Lied Center. “She is a world class fiddle player, an outstanding step dancer and a phenomenal singer. The April Verch Band is a Lied Center patron favorite.”
Verch is entering the second decade of her career as an internationally touring Canadian performer. Her ninth album,”Bright Like Gold,” captures an performer who has grown from a prodigy into an enduring artist with grace and grit.
The April Verch Band — rounded out by bassist and clawhammer banjo player Cody Walters and guitarist Hayes Griffin — is an energetic, virtuosic, tradition-celebrating outfit.
Verch was the first woman to win both the Canadian Open Old Time Fiddle Championship and Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Competition. She represented Canada’s fiddling tradition by performing in the opening ceremonies at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
During their April 16 performance, Verch and her band will be joined on stage by more than 30 Lincoln Public Schools students for a special performance concluding TimeWarner Cable’s Science of Sound Spring Break Camp. On March 13-14, the Lied Center and TimeWarner Cable teamed up to host a unique spring break camp led by John Bertles, Kennedy Center teaching artist and science educator, as well as local engineers and area music, theater and science teachers at Dawes Middle School. Dozens of students in grades 5-8 experienced music through Bertles’ hands-on curriculum, which demonstrates how sound waves are created by the vibrations of air through musical instruments that the students constructed themselves from recycled materials.
Throughout the camp, students rehearsed with April Verch Band recordings on their handmade instruments. On April 16, the students will have the opportunity to perform with professional musicians on the Lied Center stage.
“Having the opportunity to perform with Verch and her band onstage is truly an authentic culminating measure of all of the hard work the kids put into their instruments in March,” Stephan said.
