As someone who loves to explore, the fiddle has been a wonderful passport for me, giving passage to foreign lands where I learned new ways of thinking, living, and making music. Over 30 years of travels, I have met many musicians who introduced me to their world. In celebration of these friendships, last year I traveled to Finland, Denmark, France and Hungary to record duets with some of these remarkable European musicians. We collaborated on selecting the material, which is a mix of traditional tunes, our own compositions, and a bit of early music. I play both violin and vielle (medieval fiddle) in duets with a variety of folk instruments (bagpipe, shepherd's flute, overtone flute, jaw harp, accordion, mandolin, mandola, guitar, singing bowls, harmonium, tárogató). Some tunes we approached very traditionally, some we purposefully mixed our American and European flavors, and in others we went somewhere totally new. -Ruthie Dornfeld