Van Diemen's Fiddles

Van Diemen's Fiddles

Van Diemen's Fiddles formed in 2019 from a simple question: what happens when you put a modern experimental violinist, a klezmer fiddle player, and a baroque violinist together? Three musicians, one instrument, but worlds apart in our approaches—from cutting-edge electronics to historically informed performance on 17th-century instruments.

The magic lies not in making everyone sound the same, but in letting different musical universes collide. During pandemic lockdowns, we dove deep into new repertoire and experimentation, including weaving vocals into our sound, experimenting with the different colours we could create on our instruments and turning traditions on their heads.

What's emerged is a sound that doesn't fit neatly into any one category—and that's exactly the point.

This recording traces musical threads across millennia—from 12th-century Hildegard of Bingen's haunting chants to windswept British Isles traditions. Lutruwitan/Tasmanian composers contribute works inspired by Tasmania's landscapes, and we explore the raw emotional power of traditional klezmer music, Balkan rhythms and the sounds of 17th-century Ottoman courts.

These are stories of how music traveled with merchants, migrants, and mystics—how melodies born in one century bloom again in distant lands, revealing the surprising connections that weave through human experience across time and geography.