The Sizzlers Fiddle Group has been bringing upbeat fiddle tunes and accompanying dance moves to the streets of downtown Victoria for the past eight years.
The group is made up of roughly 15 young violinists between the ages of seven and 16 who come together to perform ensemble busking fiddle sets. Alongside their involvement in the Sizzlers, group members are also classically trained violinists at the Amati String Studio.
Thirteen-year-old violinists Noa Paster, Toben Elder and Malak El Ouadghiri have grown up performing with the Sizzlers and have been playing the violin for eight or more years.
“I’ve definitely made a lot of connections and learned a lot,” El Ouadghiri said. “It’s really cool to get to see each one of us add our own traits to the music.”
Amy Florence Paster founded the Sizzlers Fiddle Group in 1991 in Vancouver and the Amati String Studio in 2000. After moving to Victoria, she relocated her studio in 2011 and started working with a brand new group of young Sizzlers in 2015.
While the group practises year-round, the summer months are the busiest. Members are split into junior and senior groups to rehearse during the year, but in the summer, they all come together to perform at community events and busk on Government Street several times per week, sharing their musical talents with those passing by.
“People come and they’re not really expecting anything — we’re just people downtown sharing our music,” Paster said. “Then they hear a couple of songs that they know or that they wanted to hear and it brings so much joy.”
The Sizzlers recently finished a week-long fiddle camp, where the fiddlers came together to add and review repertoire and rehearse choreography. They finished off the camp with one main stage and two street performances at the Moss Street Paint-In.
This talented bunch of young violinists from the Sizzlers Fiddle Group always put on quite the show, fiddling and dancing at the same time. #yyj #VictoriaBC pic.twitter.com/FpMR6OzcfI
— Natasha Baldin (@natashabaldin) August 1, 2023
Performances often consist of upbeat Klezmer, Eastern European and Celtic-style music. Florence Paster said adding choreography to the performance is what “sets the group apart.”
“When you’re playing that kind of music, you want to move anyway, so to incorporate that movement into the performance is great for the performers, and also for the audience to have that visual as well,” Florence Paster said.
“We’ve been doing it for a while and at the beginning it was definitely the most difficult. But as we do it longer and longer, we definitely find it easier,” Elder added.
When the group performs at community events such as the Moss Street Paint-In, some or all of the earnings are donated back to the charity or organization. But when busking on Government Street, earnings are split equally between the performers.
“Sometimes it’s not a lot. Sometimes we’ll busk downtown and each kid will get five or eight dollars,” Florence Paster said.
“It’s not always necessarily profitable, but it’s nice for these kids to have some spending money.”
The young violinists agreed buying ice cream after finishing a busking set is a favourite way to spend the cash. Some members also choose to save up for a bigger purchase such as a pet or a new instrument.
“Depending on how much we go busking, we can actually raise money toward something we want if we have an end goal over a certain amount of years,” Paster said.
“I was trying to get enough money to get a dog, and now I have a dog,” she added with a laugh.
Looking ahead, the group plans on doing many more busking sets and can usually be found fiddling and dancing on Government Street Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, depending on weather and availability.
The Sizzlers are also rearing up for a south Island tour in early September where they will be doing performances and flash mobs in Chemainus, Nanaimo and Parksville.
