Scroggins and Rose: “St. Anne’s Reel Improvisation”

Alisa Rose and Tristan Scroggins explore the possibilities of a bluegrass and Irish music favorite.

By: Dan Gabel

April 17, 2024

Alisa Rose joined the lineup of Peghead Nation fiddle instructors with her live workshop series Improvising for Fiddlers and Violinists, an eight-session class in which you’ll learn to improvise and connect to your own creative impulses through musical games, simple exercises, and fiddle tunes. See Alisa’s workshop introduction video on the main Improvising for Fiddlers and Violinists page and subscribe to learn more!

Alisa’s improvisation skills are on full display in Scroggins and Rose, where she and Tristan Scroggins often transform familiar traditional tunes and classical pieces into canvases for creative and exciting musical exploration. Each has a finely tuned ability to improvise, and together, they play off of each other in fun and unexpected ways, you can see in this performance on a fiddle tune equally popular in bluegrass and Irish music circles, “St. Anne’s Reel,” recorded in the Peghead Nation studios.

Alisa’s approach to improvising and practicing improvising was developed from years as a professional musician in a variety of musical contexts, including improvising on fiddle tunes with Scroggins and Rose, improvising for contemporary silent film scores with the Clubfoot Orchestra, improvising with the Real Vocal String Quartet, and as an Improvisation Ensemble instructor at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Please join us for Improvising for Fiddlers and Violinists, an eight-session workshop that will help you unlock your improvisational genius! Video recordings of all sessions are included with registration, so you can review material and catch up on sessions you might miss. More details here!

To learn more about Scroggins and Rose, click here.