David Klingler

Bio

I began playing the violin in 2000, but focused on Scottish fiddle music beginning in 2006 when I started studying with Dr. John Turner at the Jink & Diddle School of Scottish Fiddling.

Scottish fiddle music has a unique ability to make people dance and make people cry. I am known to play it in a distinctly stylistic way based upon the tradition from the Golden Age of Scottish fiddling, the 18th century. My teaching/pupil lineage goes directly back to Niel Gow (1727-1807) himself, the most iconic Scottish fiddler-composer in history. Like Niel Gow, I focus on playing the fiddle with emotional expression above all else while challenging assumptions in tune interpretation yet aggressively maintaining an ingrained traditional sense in my interpretation.

In 2010, I won the largest material prize in the history of our tradition, the Niel Gow Fiddle Award, the only time it was ever given, at the U.S. National Scottish Fiddling Championship, and have in other years won numerous other National awards and Regional awards. I've stopped competing in recent years as part of a boycott over the current competition systems.

I've personally written around 300 tunes in the Scottish idiom, a number of which have been performed by other notable musicians. The first tune I wrote in the Scottish style got 6th place in an international composition competition.