Jan Tappan, Musical Director

Jan Tappan is an internationally known Scottish fiddler, fiddle teacher, competition judge and performer.  She has been playing the fiddle since 1981, and teaching fiddle since 1986.  Ms. Tappan became the director of the Scottish Fiddlers of Los Angeles in 1989.

Ms. Tappan has performed and toured all over the world.  She has toured Scotland twice, with the New Hampshire Strathspey and Reel Society, and with the Scottish Fiddlers of San Francisco.  She has also performed in Germany, Italy, and at Niji No Sato in Japan.  In the U.S., she has performed at various Highland Games, the Asilomar Dance Camp, the Pinewoods Dance Camp, and Scottish Country Dance weekends and Robert Burns’ suppers all over Southern California.  Locally, she has also given performances at the Canadian Embassy in Beverly Hills, Cal Tech, the Queen Mary, Marineland, and the Wiltern.  With the Scottish Fiddlers of Los Angeles, Ms. Tappan performed with the Waterboys and Sharon Shannon when they were on tour in Los Angeles.

Fiddling competitions throughout the U.S. have relied on Ms. Tappan’s abilities as a competition judge.  She has judged countless U.S. National Scottish Fiddling championships, as well as competitions at the Virginia Scottish Games and Festival, the New Hampshire Highland Games, the Skagit Valley Games, the Houston Highland Games, the Portland Highland Games and the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games.

In addition to the private students Ms. Tappan teaches, she has also taught Scottish fiddle workshops across the U.S. in Virginia, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Washington, Oregon, and North Carolina.  Locally, Ms. Tappan has taught at Camp Kiya in Tehachapi, and at the California Traditional Music Society’s Summer Solstice Festivals.  She is also a co-founder, along with Alasdair Fraser, Sally Ashcraft and Bonnie Thompson of the prestigious Valley of the Moon Fiddle Camp in Northern California.

Ms. Tappan’s primary teachers include fiddlers John Turner, Alasdair Fraser and Alastair Hardie.  She has also studied at the Boston Harbor Fiddle School, the University of Stirling Fiddle School in Scotland, and Valley of the Moon.