Seton Hill University’s Office of Intercultural Student Services is proud to present a community workshop and concert featuring FiddleKicks and Simple Gifts on Monday, March 16, 2009. Both the workshop and concert are free and open to the public and will be held in the McKenna Center located on Seton Hill’s Greensburg, Pa. campus. To reserve a spot, RSVP to Margie Dominick at mdominick@setonhill.edu

The workshop will begin at 1 p.m. Attendees will learn more about the international music which influenced southwestern Pennsylvania’s diverse ethnic music genres and have the opportunity to participate in dancing and instrument demonstrations. The concert will begin at 5 p.m. and will feature performances by FiddleKicks and Simple Gifts.

FiddleKicks is an 18 member Appalachian clogging group. This unique American dance, clogging, emerged from the influences of the Celtics, Africans, and Cherokees from the southern Appalachian Mountains, who created a distinct new form of folk music and percussive dance, performed to the rhythms and driving beat of live banjo and fiddle. FiddleKicks was formed over a decade ago when cloggers, who had recently moved to Philadelphia from Boston, and a group of Philadelphia folk dancers met at a clogging workshop at the 1996 Heritage Dance Festival in Plymouth-Whitemarsh, Pa. For more information, visit www.fiddlekicks.com.

Simple Gifts is a group of three women who play twelve instruments and perform Romanian, Klezmer, Greek, Irish, Bulgarian, Scottish, Appalachian, and Swedish music. The group is comprised of Linda Littleton, Karen Hirshon and Rachel Hall. The three musicians switch with ease among two violins, concertina, mandolin, banjolin, recorders, bowed psaltery, hammered dulcimer, baritone fiddle, guitar, piano, and percussion. The award-winning trio plays everything from lively Irish jigs and down-home American reels to hard-driving Klezmer frailachs and haunting Gypsy melodies, spicing the mix with the distinctive rhythms of Balkan dance music, the lush sounds of Scandinavian twin fiddling, and original compositions written in a traditional style. For more information, visit www.simplegiftsmusic.com.

The Intercultural Student Services Office serves the special needs of, and provides additional services and support for, intercultural students at Seton Hill. The office is also a center for multicultural activities.