Grand Master Fiddler Championship 2025 venue and date move information

 

Some of the challenges in running events such as the Grand Master Fiddler Championship  event are funding, venue, and participation. All three are necessary for a successful event and to grow. With only a few volunteers (who receive no compensation whatsoever) the challenge becomes even greater.

 

Some background on venues and contest dates

 

When we restarted this contest in 2005, we had a wonderful event during the IBMA World of Bluegrass in Nashville. When the IBMA moved to NC in 2014, we moved to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (CMHOFM), a beautiful venue, also in Nashville. At that time, we moved the contest date from the October IBMA event dates to September on Labor Day weekend as it was the only date the CMHOFM had for us that year.

 

The CMHOFM stage in the Ford Theater is an incredible space. The sound and sound engineers are top notch. Many famous musicians have performed there, and playing on that stage is an experience of a lifetime. However, the site did present some challenges as far as the increasing cost of downtown Nashville, parking, a jamming space, a warm-up space, etc. After the first year we were given Labor Day weekend as our yearly date so that's why the contest moved to that weekend permanently. Along with other downtown Nashville challenges, the COVID restrictions in place were hard on the competitors. Due to all those factors, our contestants and crowd asked us to consider other potential venues.

 

In 2023, we explored a partnership with Belmont University. It is a fantastic venue for orchestras but was rather large for the contest and there were some logistics challenges.

 

In 2024, we were able to find a fantastic venue at the Factory in Franklin (https://factoryatfranklin.com/), a converted former factory with shops for top retail brands, local artisanal goods, food, and live entertainment. We had the event in the Turner Theater,  (https://factoryatfranklin.com/venues/turner-theater/), the home of the Studio Tenn theatre company. This space was a HUGE hit with all the contestants, and we had a large crowd all day long. The venue staff was easy to work with, there was a lot of food, drinks, shops, free and plentiful parking, and safe areas for kids to play. Franklin, only 22 miles south of downtown Nashville,  is a great place for restaurants, hotels and shopping and has less of the expense and crowding of downtown Nashville. We had many people tell us how great the venue was and hoped we would stay there. But due to cost and schedule, we could only do a one-day contest.

 

Venue for 2025

 

Over the past year we have continued our search for a longer-term home for the contest. As we coordinators grow older, we are concerned about continuity of the contest when we eventually decide to turn things over to a younger set of music enthusiasts. With the IBMA moving to the new venue in Chattanooga there is a lot of work to be done in their area and it didn't make sense for us to approach them this year (perhaps in the future we will if they are interested). We also met with another local music program and have some long-term potential to partner with them for our event and for continuity of the competition reasons. But for this year we decided our best bet with our limited time was to return to the Turner Theater.

 

We found since last year the Turner Theater is no longer booked for outside use between mid-May and mid-September. That meant we could not have the contest for Labor Day. In fact, the only remaining open date for this year was Sunday, November 9th. After making a lot of calls and inquiries to other contest coordinators and doing quite a bit of research we found that there was no other fiddle competition events scheduled for that weekend. We do have an indoor venue with plenty of inside practice rooms, so the weather is not as big an issue as it could be. The lack of a Saturday venue is a bit of a concern, but as we have lost funding for the Traditional Championship, we can fit the Youth and Open contest into one day (we hope the Traditional contest can return soon).

 

As always we welcome anyone who is interested in volunteering with the Grand Master Fiddler Championship and offering their aid and sharing expertise and resources to help us perpetuate this historic and important competition.


We hope to see you on SUNDAY NOVEMBER 9, 2025, in the Turner Theater at the Factory in Franklin, in Franklin TN for the 53rd Annual Grand Master Fiddler Championship!

 

 

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