Student Success

CSU Pueblo Music Student wins National Fiddle Competition

19-year-old Eavia Ryan from Rye, Colorado entered the Old-time Fiddle Contest at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas for the first time September 16th. The local teen fiddler walked away with the championship after competing with top fiddlers of various ages from around the nation. Eavia received the prize of a beautiful five-string carbon fiber violin from Luis & Clark.

Festival attendance was about 15,000 from around the world. Many who attend the festival play an instrument of some kind, and jam sessions abounded. There were national competitions for flat-picking and finger-picking guitar, banjo, mandolin, autoharp, and dulcimer.

Eavia is a student of Chris Daring of Pueblo, Colorado, the 1996 National Adult Fiddle Champion. A sophomore at CSU Pueblo, the versatile young musician also plays viola for the Pueblo Symphony Orchestra. Eavia fiddles with cowboy singer/songwriter Kurt Corsair, Westrock, and is the lead fiddler for her family's band, the Apache Creek Fiddlers. For those who want to hear this champion, she will be performing with the Apache Creek Fiddlers at the Rialto Theater in Florence, CO Saturday, Oct. 8 at 7 pm.