The Hammered Dulcimer
A 17 yr-old from Pennsylvania named Adam Sutch placed 3rd at last month’s National Hammered Dulcimer Competition held during the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas.
The Herald Standard has a feature on him and on the hammered dulcimer:
Brenda Hunter, of Bakersfield, Calif., placed second in this year’s Walnut Valley Festival.
She has competed in the festival eight times, placing first in 1996 and third in 2002, having first played the instrument in 1993.
She is a high school teacher who has made it her goal to turn her students on to traditional music. Sutch would like to take that a step further.
Sutch said he doesn’t view the hammered dulcimer as an instrument strictly for playing the traditional Irish tunes it is most often associated with. He’d like to show others the versatility of the instrument that he said originated in Persia and was a forerunner of the piano.
“The inside of a piano is kind of a hammered dulcimer sideways”
I would associate the hammered dulcimer more with traditional music of England than Ireland, as I believe it came to Ireland much later. They are largely unknown, never mind played, in most of all Ireland save for a pocket or two in the north of Ireland.
David Kettlewell’s site on the dulcimer is the most informative I’ve come across.
Music & Slideshow
You can also listen to Adam Sutch play and talk while viewing a slideshow HERE
See Also:
• ‘Wild and Wicked Youth’ New CD by Tullamore
• Gerald Trimble and the Bouzouki
• Majoring in Bagpipes
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