MadFiddle

bluegrass · folk

MadFiddle is a youth fiddle program and performing ensemble based in Madison, Wisconsin, directed by fiddler Shauncey Ali and in its fourteenth season in 2026. Students, roughly ages seven to seventeen, audition into six graded ensembles that rehearse separately and perform together. Levels one through four meet for sixty minutes weekly and levels five and six for seventy-five; the 2025-26 season ran thirty-four rehearsals from September to May alongside twenty weeks of an original social and emotional learning curriculum built around five stated values of leadership, collaboration, process, growth and joy. The teaching emphasizes learning by ear and playing across generations. The curriculum moves through a wide range of folk traditions, including bluegrass, blues, old-time, ragtime, Scottish, swing, Scandinavian and South American music, and performances set traditional and contemporary fiddle tunes against rock, samba, jazz and string band grooves. On stage the students are backed by Highway 151, a band of professional players comprising John Christensen on electric bass, Louka Patenaude on guitars and Nicholas Vanhaute on mandolin and acoustic guitar, and the program regularly shares bills with touring musicians, including the Hanneke Cassel Band. MadFiddle performs at Madison-area rooms and regional venues including the Overture Center, the High Noon Saloon, the North Street Cabaret, the Stoughton Opera House and the Sugar Maple Traditional Music Festival, and has staged benefit concerts with other local youth music programs. Ali was named Teacher of the Year by the Madison Area Music Association in 2016, and MadFiddle received that organization's Youth Ensemble of the Year award in 2020.

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