Turbulent beauty

Terri Croft will perform with Nova Sinfonia on Tuesday evening. (Bruce Bottomley Photo)

Ever since Terri Croft started to learn the violin, her fiddling has taken second fiddle.

“I don’t do a lot of fiddling anymore,” says Ms. Croft, a fourth-year music student who studies violin with Prof. Phillippe Djokic. “Classical music is what I’m passionate about.”

On Tuesday, she puts her passion on display, performing as the guest soloist with Nova Sinfonia at St. Matthew’s United Church. Martin MacDonald will conduct.

She’ll play Brahm’s Violin Concerto, considered one of the most difficult pieces in violin repertoire.

“It’s an old favorite of mine,” she says. “But it’s incredibly difficult. It requires more thought than anything I’ve ever done before.”

The piece is 45 minutes in length and rather demanding on the soloist, requiring rapid scale passages and rhythmic variations. Brahms wrote it for his violinist friend Joseph Joachim. “There’s everything in it from turbulence to triumph,” enthuses Ms. Croft, 22, reached in the midst of a recent rehearsal. “You’ve got to hear it.”

From Riverview, N.B., Ms. Croft was four years old when she first started studying music. She began old-time fiddle lessons in 1996, and took up classical violin a year later.

She’s incredibly gifted at the fiddle, winning her first national title at the age of 10 and two more in subsequent years.

But in her mid-teens, her focus shifted to classical violin. She is now a six-time New Brunswick provincial champion.

Whether fiddling or playing the violin, it’s the same instrument. On loan to her, Ms. Croft’s instrument is a “couple of hundred years old” with a dark, rich tone. The difference is in the approach to the music. Fiddling is more instinctive -- “you've got to get your groove on,” she says -- while violin is more technically challenging and more intellectual. “You’re thinking on a deeper level ... it’s what you can make of the lines and phrases.”

She’s grateful for her experience at Dalhousie and to work so closely with a musician as distinguished as Prof. Djokic. She’s now applying for graduate schools in London, England.

Whether fiddling or playing violin, she’s a natural in the spotlight. “I find it very rewarding, and very humbling to have people listen and like what you do,” she says. “It’s a wonderful experience and one I couldn’t do without.”