Welcome
Musical greetings for 2026. We are well into another great year for Strings Across the Sky (SATS)!
Since 1987, SATS has been working to revive and sustain fiddle music in indigenous and remote communities throughout Canada. This passion and dedication to restoring a once vibrant indigenous fiddling tradition, which was introduced by fur traders from Scotland in the late 1600’s, has continued for almost 4 decades. SATS teaching teams visit central and northern Ontario and other provinces, delivering a unique, innovative and fun music teaching method, with instruments, to the youth.
Today, SATS programs are flourishing and rapidly expanding with young fiddle students in Moosonee and other James Bay region communities, where fiddle music holds deep, much loved, historical and cultural ties. The success of the work of Strings Across the Sky is also evident by the established, active programs of other fiddle teaching organizations;
in BC, the Kole Crook Fiddle Association http://kolecrookfiddle.org and in NWT, the Aurora Fiddle Society http://aurorafiddlesociety.ca
Each attribute their inspiration and origins to SATS.
Encyclopaedia of Native American Music of North America writes…“There is a lively indigenous fiddling tradition in the Arctic region. The active fiddling tradition in northern Canada today has benefited greatly from the Strings Across the Sky (SATS) program. This began in 1988 after violinist Andrea Hansen noted the response of young persons to the performances of the Toronto Symphony on their 1987 tour”
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