Welcome to Dave Wiesler's home page. Dave is one of the nation's
premier pianists for English, Scottish, and American country dance
and various forms of couple dance and ballroom dance.
April, 2020
As I write, most of my recent gigs have been canceled and the rest are falling like dominoes, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since I have kids home from school, I am not swimming in free time like some, but I have enough time for a little organizing and composition, and that may be all I do for a while. It's a terrible time to be a dance musician, but I'm happy to do my part if it will help protect more vulnerable people.
Since my last update, I've issued a second tunebook, Two Dozen More: 24 Waltzes from the Potomac Village Collection 2006-2019. This is a companion book of waltzes to my recent recording with The Gigmeisters, Thirty-Three More: Anniversary Waltzes by Dave Wiesler. The book features the fifteen waltzes on the recording, as well as nine more, all commissioned by Jamie Platt over more than a decade. Thanks to everyone who's been buying the recording and the books and helping to support live folk music! At some point I presume I'll be able to start playing dances again, and I look forward immensely to that.
CD Baby, which I have used for digital distribution and physical sales, has recently closed their online store. I'll be migrating sales elsewhere, but I haven't figured it out yet. Much of my music is on streaming services, but if you want to get a physical copy, you can order recordings or books from me.
My tunes continue to get picked up by choreographers of English dance. I have sixteen in Volume 3 of the Barnes Book of English Country Dance Tunes, which came out last spring. Three more are in Gary Roodman's new book, Vol. 13 of his celebrated Calculated Figures series. Joseph Pimentel is working on a third book, The Green Jay Collection, and I have written a good number of the tunes for that. Goldcrest was planning for another recording to accompany Joseph's book, but this is all on hold for a while. Stay tuned.
Events on the upcoming calendar (all subject to change):
- My camps for this summer:
- JUST CANCELED. July 6-10: Pinewoods ESCape Session
- JUST CANCELED. July 10-13: Pinewoods Scottish Session 1
- August 10-16: CDSS Cascade Week at Camp Louise
- Balls, special events, and weekend events:
- Scottish dance: May 23: Memorial Day Weekend SCD party, Belfast, ME, with David Knight
- Scottish dance: Sept 25-27: Scottish Weekend at Camp Louise, MD
- English dance: Oct 2-4: Toronto ECD Weekend, with Goldcrest and Joanna Reiner Wilkinson
- Scottish dance: Nov 13-15: Argyle Weekend, Alexandria, VA, with Thistle House and Hanneke Cassel
- Teaching: Jan 8-10, 2021: Upper Potomac Fiddle Retreat, Shepherdstown, WV
- English dance: March 12-14: Set for Spring, Dallas, TX, with Susan Kevra and Rachel Bell
In addition to dates above, there's the usual mix of contra dances, waltzes, and similar events. See my calendar for a full listing.