POULSBO — Kitsap Maritime Heritage Foundation has commissioned Jane Landstra, a local music teacher and fiddler, to write an original song for the schooner, Fiddler’s Dream.
Landstra began teaching in 1975. She has K-12 teaching credentials and an education major, music minor from University of California, Berkeley. She is an active professional violin and piano teacher and composer, and teaches at Island Music Guild (aka Rolling Bay Music Cooperative) on Bainbridge Island as well as Dancing Bow in Poulsbo. Her unique specialty is Celtic and Nordic music, instructing youth and adults individually and in groups.
Her musical mentors include Buddy MacMaster, Jerry Holland, Pal Olle Dyrsmed, Tom Anderson, Paul Cranford, and many others. She offers her students learning opportunities with visiting master players, workshops, and group performances at dances, festivals, and sessions primarily in the West Sound area. She also plays for special events with her husband, Ken Embrey, in the band Country Capers.
A fundraiser is under way in honor of the commission and Landstra’s 40 years of teaching; proceeds will help support the foundation’s education programs. Fiddler’s Dream will be a floating classroom for STEM education.
The fundraiser is spearheaded by JoAnne Pramhus, Landstra’s friend and a foundation volunteer. Pramhus said donations are encouraged as as a happy birthday to Landstra. Donations are tax deductible. Write Kitsap Maritime Heritage Foundation, 245 4th St., Suite 204, Bremerton, WA 98337.
Fiddler’s Dream is a two-masted, gaff-rigged schooner which resembles the cod schooners that plied local waterways between the late 1800s and the mid-1940s. Fiddler’s Dream is a 66½-foot (spar length) John Alden schooner with 49½ feet of deck. This versatile vessel has a steel hull, with all other structures of the vessel built of wood.
Steven Dundas built Fiddler’s Dream in 2006 at Dundas’ Loom Manufacturing in Sawmill Gulch, Montana, to replicate the schooners of yesteryear. Skilled craftsperson volunteers are now refurbishing Fiddler’s Dream at its new home, the Brownsville Marina, in preparation for its life as a sailing educational classroom.
