Savannah Music Local and Sustainable April 15, 2026 JoAnna Farrer Episode 1

Tonight on Savannah Music Local and Sustainable I have a promised return visit from JoAnna Farrer, concertmaster of the Savannah Philharmonic.  But it is a different JoAnna Farrer, not one of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, but the one of folk fiddling.  We are going to be spending most of our time listening to and taking about her album Liminal Paths. 

1. King of the Cats 04:43
Tunes in this set:
Dunie Mains - Scottish traditional strathspey by James Stewart-Robinson, from the Athole Collection of 1884
Wake the Cats - Jig by JoAnna Farrer 
The Pullet and the Cock - Irish traditional reel
Wolf's Run Reel - reel by JoAnna Farrer

JoAnna Farrer, violin
Natalie Haas, cello
Yann Falquet, guitar


2. Sonata No. 2 in A minor for solo violin, Op. 27, No. 2: Obsession 02:40
1st movement - prelude & poco vivace
Eugene Ysaye, composer 
JoAnna Farrer, violin


3. Mending Wall, by Robert Frost 02:55
Recital of poem
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

4. The Mending Wall Set 03:49
Tunes in this set:
Mr. Graham of Orchills - Scottish traditional strathspey, from the Skye Collection
Trip to the Woodlands - English traditional, from the 1850 manuscript of the fiddler William Winter.
Old Noll's - English traditional country dance, from Henry Playford's Dancing Master, published in 1701. (The title may refer to Oliver Cromwell, who was sometimes called "Old Noll."

JoAnna Farrer, violin
Natalie Haas, cello
Yann Falquet, guitar
Mike Stewart, fiddle
Jeff Kalmar, guitar