Mandolin and fiddler player Jeff Midkiff visits El Dorado High School
EL DORADO — Mandolin player and fiddler Jeff Midkiff took time to visit with music students of Greg Oden at El Dorado High School on Friday, May 12 before performing later on that evening with conductor Kermit Poling and the South Arkansas Symphony Orchestra at the El Dorado Municipal Auditorium.
Midkiff discussed his background and growing up in the countryside of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Roanoke area. He also told of his experiences getting to work with great orchestras as well as living in Chicago for 12 years.
Reminding students to keep an open mind about music and life, Midkiff lectured on the differences of writing one of his most famous bluegrass songs, which took him 15 minutes, but taking nearly two years to write his concerto.
Midkiff had the opportunity to live in many fabulous places and work with some amazing groups. However, as much as he liked those groups, they weren’t quite right, so he wrote a song about that feeling of not being quite right-not like home. And although there were challenges to being a professional musician, Midkiff was drawn to it (music) since he was 5 years old.
When asked how he started playing the mandolin, he mentioned as a 5-year-old having a neighbor that played one, and how that neighbor told him if he learned how to play it, he could have it. Midkiff thought
that was amazing, and it motivated him to learn on his own and to later take lessons.
He learned to play the clarinet, and in addition to teaching music in school, he continually composes and performs in both bluegrass and orchestral groups.
Midkiff took questions from students ranging from how to progress compositions that don’t sound as good as what the student may have had in mind when he starting, to what kind of music he liked other than bluegrass and classical. He answered R&B, pop, rock and others.