Laura Power
Northern News Services
Friday, July 20, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - There's a new girl in town, and almost anyone who has taken in some live music in the past month has seen her fiddling bluegrass, classical and East coast music.

Marisol Valerio, the Costa Rican fiddler, moved to Yellowknife in May and already has played with at least eight of the city's bands.

Valerio has been playing fiddle since she was four years old. She spent eight years in a classical music institute and has a lot of experience playing with orchestras. She moved to Canada three years ago to follow another path, and is now studying geological engineering at University of British Columbia.

But she has found the time to keep music in her life - in Vancouver, she plays with a Romanian band and with a pit orchestra for Gilbert and Sullivan light operas.

This summer, she moved up North for a co-op placement with Diavik. Following her love of music, she found herself at jam sessions and eventually in pubs playing with bands and musicians such as Jim Taylor, Big River Ramblers and 3-Across-Dee-Eye.

"I went to Le Frolic, 'cause I heard they had live music," she said. She was then in contact with musician Rick Poltaruk, who told her about After Eight Bar and Billiards' jam sessions, where she met a few other musicians.

"Everybody goes there, and I've been to a few jams at the Woodyard," she said.

Valerio quickly found her place in the Yellowknife music scene after spending some time at jams. It wasn't long before her talent was in high demand.

"I guess there's not a lot of fiddlers around Yellowknife now so it's good opportunity for me," she said.

Recently, Valerio has been performing for bigger audiences, playing with Big River Ramblers at Bastille Days as well as at Folk on the Rocks. She is also recording on Momentary Evolution's new CD and on Jim Taylor's live CD.

Taylor said when Valerio plays along with him, it changes the set.

"She makes all the difference in the world and I mean she's going to be playing fiddle on probably five or six songs on my CD," he said. "Obviously having another instrument to take a lead break adds so much to a song."

Taylor said he asked her if she expected to be playing so much music here when she arrived, and she said no. Now, he said, she doesn't have time to breathe and everyone wants her to play with them.

"Yellowknife is great for the music scene - there's so much stuff going on. I had no idea it would be like this," Valerio said.

But the young fiddler is enjoying the time she is spending with these musicians. She said while she is only staying for the summer, she hopes to make the most of her time in Yellowknife, meeting lots of people.