For over 30 years I played an Augusta Grande Rizzetta Hammered Dulcimer hand finished for optimal resonance at A-440. It was light enough for me to easily carry and when I sang a cappella over it, the strings sang with me especially if I stayed in concert pitch. Whenever I attended hammered dulcimer workshops people always wanted to try playing my instrument. It had the most compelling sweetly clear resonant tones with the perfect amount of sustain and decay. Single note melodies developed natural harmonies and I didn’t get mud executing seven note arpeggiated chords. Every individual note was perfectly balanced as a set. I could express its most delicate sounds and wail to complement old time dancers’ foot falls.
Mine was built of California red cedar. This is a relatively soft wood, so as I was doing 150 to 200 gigs a year to fully support myself by performing, all of its outer edges became rounded with wear. I was worried what he would say the year he came to GWDF and saw it also was all the dust I didn’t have time to clean off the soundboard. Sam said, “Why you’ve gotten a lot of tunes out of it!“ and he smiled and I laughed with delight. When I used the pads of my fingertips plucking to accompany voice, it took on a harp like quality. I could easily reach between the treble strings to pluck lower level bass notes.
When I moved to Ventura near the ocean in 2010, my instrument was back in the state in which it literally grew up. The climate change made the sound fuller and once it was in tune, it held very well. My Rizzetta got stolen in September of 2016 about a year after I won third place with it in the “Other Instruments” category at the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest held at the Paramount Ranch located in Agoura Hills California. My insurance settlement was not enough to acquire another Rizzetta. My performance persona died with this great loss. The Ventura Breeze which is the local newspaper in Ventura ran an article complete with pictures which exposed the theft and attempted to help me find it. People still ask me to this day if I ever got it back. It took three years to adapt my repertoire to a different hammered dulcimer.
Sam accepted me by audition and resume as one of only 10 participants worldwide in the “Advanced Hammered Dulcimer Seminar” at the Augusta Heritage Center Workshops held at Davis and Elkins College, Elkins, West Virginia, when I had only been playing for a year and four months. Each of us taught a half day in the seminar. My topic was ”The elements and principles of music meet the elements and principles of design.”
Sam was the first person to record four Hammered Dulcimers in the same band, Trapezoid, having built the unique instruments himself. He inspired me to record three different Hammered Dulcimers on the same recording. I played the Rizzetta with Paul Goelz and Dale C. Evans playing on instruments they built themselves.
It was Sam’s partner Paul Reisler who said during my “Art of Performance and Business of Music” class at Augusta that, “The folk community is fragile and we all need to create performance opportunities for each other.” I went back to Illinois, started Hammers and Noters Dulcimer Society of Illinois as a monthly playing group and later convened the formative meetings for the Gebhard Woods Dulcimer Festival in October of 1987.
On behalf of all who have learned from you, listen to your recordings and play your instruments, with great respect and profound love from us all, we thank you.
