Andrea Weber Steckly
was born and raised on a farm outside of the Ontario town of Elmira. As a child, she would sit and listen to her older sisters practicing the piano or the violin or singing in a children’s choir and her imagination was captured. Once Andrea turned 6 years old, the 3 of them headed off together to piano lessons and waited for one another as they suffered under the rule of their eccentric European piano teacher. Somehow, the love of music wouldn’t leave Andrea as she followed her sisters into the Inter-Mennonite Children’s choir. As the youngest member of the choir, in the early 1970’s, Andrea was able to make a presentation of a gift to Prime Minister Trudeau on behalf of the choir and she reveled in where she found herself because of music. She remembers standing in the kitchen one afternoon, gently tapping her toe against the oven door, getting under foot as she begged her mother yet again for violin lessons. Considering the many family trips to see the Toronto Symphony, her mother should not have been surprised that the violin would beckon.
With the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster Maria Riedstra living in town, Andrea’s violin studies were off to a wonderful start. From age 9, the violin was a good fit for her. The school system offered wonderful opportunities to play with others in school orchestras and small ensembles. Many of her friendships were formed in the music room, especially at Elmira District Secondary School where Fred Lenz led the school orchestra.
For several years, she sat as concertmaster of the Kitchener-Waterloo Youth Orchestra, marveling at the privilege of playing on stage at Kitchener’s wonderful Centre in the Square.
Once high school was over, she headed off to Toronto to study for her Bachelor of Music in Performance degree. She began a love affair with the music of Stravinsky and found herself drawn to the contemporary music ensemble, playing 20th century and new music. Robin Engelman of the percussion ensemble NEXUS conducted this group and opened her eyes to possibilities for the violin that weren’t always written on the page.
As she worked on her Master’s Degree at the University of Western Ontario, she found herself playing and singing in a classic rock band, much to her surprise (and pretty much everyone else’s surprise!!!!). She’d eagerly head to Kitchener on weekends to practice with the band, and come back to school during the week for her studies of classical music performance. During these drives, she listened many times through a Mark O’Connor recording called “Heroes”, and began to get a greater sense of the diversity of music being played by violinists and fiddlers.
She met her husband Jamie Steckly while playing in the band, and slowly moved into exploring how she could use her violin outside of the classical realm. A trip to the Mark O’Connor fiddle camp near Nashville opened her eyes further to the many possibilities available to the present-day fiddler. Her exposure to the bluegrass music of Aubrey Haney, the swing styles of Stuart Duncan and Buddy Spicher, and the absolute thrill of Mark Wood’s insane rock playing on his electric violins changed the course of her study. With Jamie’s strong encouragement, she has now acquired a 6-string, solid body electric violin called a Viper, custom-made by Mark Wood. The world has blown wide open for her, and she no longer has to wonder about playing every note according to protocol as is demanded by the music of Beethoven. Instead, she is learning how to recreate lead guitar sounds with distortion, or how the wah pedal affects the clean sound of the violin.
Continuing to surprise herself, she has become influenced by the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan and even Jimi Hendrix as she develops her new technique. The learning process never ends. Since no music is written for 6-string violin, she has to step outside of the expected boundaries and find her own sound. Andrea continues to freelance as a classical violinist playing in orchestras, musical theatre pit orchestras, and weddings, but she also plays in 300 Degrees (the rock band she first started playing with a dozen years ago), her newly formed Annie James Project with the Viper at the helm, Mystic Fyre which plays Celtic rock music, A New Journey which introduces a newly published songbook in the Mennonite church, and many other groups. She also plays piano for the Inter-Mennonite Children’s Choir out of gratitude for her early love affair with music and worshiping God through music.
A recent highlight for Andrea was being a member of the team that led worship music at the joint Convention for Mennonite Church U.S.A. and Mennonite Church Canada in Charlotte, North Carolina, under the leadership of Paul Dueck. What’s next? It’s anyone’s guess!
As a performer, Andrea Weber Steckly is an energetic performer known for playing diverse styles of music. Her studies began with “classical” training in the Kitchener-Waterloo area and included studies in Cincinnati and Vienna. With the completion of a Bachelor of Music in Performance degree from the University of Toronto and a Master of Music in Performance degree from the University of Western Ontario, Andrea has gone on to play with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony on occasion and in various freelance situations in the K-W community and in Toronto.
She is frequently heard playing in pit orchestras for stage shows with the K-W Musical Productions, the Fergus Grand Theatre, the Singer’s Theatre and others.
In the role of fiddler, Andrea can be found at coffee houses, outdoor festivals, fund raisers and square dances. She is equally enthusiastic as either the lead solo fiddler playing flashy tunes, or the back-up fiddler, keyboard player or singer in country, bluegrass, or rock bands.
She is the proud new owner of a 6-string Viper, a custom-made electric violin built in New York by Mark Wood. This exciting instrument is opening new possibilities in rock, jazz, and fiddle.
