Inuvik (Sep 03/04) - After hearing the sweet sounds emanating from the music room at Sir Alexander Mackenzie school last Monday afternoon, it was hard to believe that this was the first time ever playing the fiddle for this determined bunch of violin students.

For a week, 14 students aged eight to 58 listened, learned and played together as participants in the Strings Across the Sky fiddle camp.

"Three days ago, this group, with the exception of one, had never touched a fiddle," said an impressed Andrea Hansen, co-founder and musical director of Strings Across the Sky, an organization that since 1988 has been teaching the art of the fiddle to youth in the far North.

"I never even saw (a fiddle) before this," said Inuvik's Karley King-Simpson.

"I've only heard somebody playing and thought it would be fun."

While Hansen was pleased to credit her group's musical progress with its knack for quick learning, much of the credit has to go to Hansen and her assistant Leslie Knowles' abilities to teach what is often referred to as the hardest instrument to play.

However, their job was made much easier by the enthusiasm of the class.

"The kids were calling out to play scales," said Knowles after the lesson.

"It's amazing how keen everybody is to learn."

The idea behind Strings Across the Sky was hatched around Frank Hansen's kitchen table in 1987 with Andrea Hansen, then a Toronto Symphony Orchestra violinist.

She was in town to perform with the orchestra at the Igloo Church.

The Strings Across the Sky program has since been working with the goal of keeping the art of fiddling alive in the North.

And the spirit of the project, now in its 17th year, is rubbing off on players such as Allen Edwards, the only returning student of Inuvik's class of budding first-time fiddlers.

"I want to carry on the tradition of fiddling and dancing," he said. "And maybe someday I'll be up there on stage fiddling for a dance."

If Edwards' goal is any indication of how the program has touched the crop of students this season in Fort Resolution, Fort Providence and Rae-Edzo, fiddle playing will be in good hands throughout the territory.

Wearing her SATS t-shirt with "Music is Everything" emblazoned on the back, Hansen's shear delight from watching her students gain confidence by making progress seems to arise not from surprise that her students are "getting it," but rather from her belief that everybody has an ability to play music.

"If you can sing it in your head, it can come out through the fingers."