The release of Darol Anger’s Diary of a Fiddler #2: The Empty Nest may lead those unfamiliar with his earlier project to check out Diary of a Fiddler, released on Compass Records in 1999. That project featured Anger in duets with many of his contemporaries—Bruce Molsky, Vassar Clements, Mark O’Connor and more. For the new record, Anger collaborated with three generations of fiddlers—more than twenty—whom he has either taught or mentored during his stellar career. While he has no plans to lay down his fiddle any time soon, he has said of this new recording, “If it happens by chance to be the last thing I release, I believe I can consider my work on this Earth complete.”
While most of the tracks are duos or trios, “Liza Jane Parade,” the opening number, sets the stage by bringing together more than twenty of fiddlers who play on the album. During the pandemic, the idea came to Anger to lay down the original track, then share with the other fiddlers, who recorded their own improvisations “remotely in bedrooms and basements across the country,” according to the album’s liner notes. Anger describes the track as “New Orleans Single-Line style.” The result is joyous.
