Fiddler Anne Lederman, who was born and raised in Winnipeg and lived in Dauphin, but has resided in Toronto now for many years, will be here April 25 for Home Routes’ sixth and final “house concert” of its third season in the Thompson Public Library’s Basement Bijou venue. Ticket prices are $20 and doors will be open at 6:30 p.m. with the performance starting at 7 p.m.

Emilyn Stam, a pianist and fiddler originally from Smithers, British Columbia, who also lives in Toronto now, will be accompanying Lederman, whose 30-year recording career dates back to 1981 and work on the Muddy York album Scatter The Ashes: Music of Old Ontario. Stam worked closely with the late Oliver Schroer as a founding member of Twisted String.

Schroer, who died with leukemia at the age of 52 in July 2008, is also famous for walking more than 1,000 kilometres in 2004 along the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James), a large network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across France from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port and Spain and coming together at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain.

Stam has also worked with Pierre Schryer, Daniel Lapp, David Woodhead, Anne Lindsay, Bill Brennan, Casey Sokol, Soozi Schlanger and Jaron Freeman-Fox, among others. Her debut album Holding Time, a collection of solo piano improvisations, was recorded in the summer of 2008.

Besides Muddy York, Lederman has also performed with The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Chutzpah!, Siyakha, Njacko Backo, Harry Hibbs, Don Freed, Holly Cole, Theresa Tova and Garnet Roger and Kalimba Kalimba, LOKA, Eh?!, as well as her own bands, Fiddlesong and Come From Every Way.

She is particularly well known for her Celtic, Balkan, Klezmer, African and Manitoba Métis fiddle music.

Lederman also composes and writes for theatre: her play, Spirit of the Narrows, about the Métis fiddle tradition, was featured at the Blyth Theatre Festival in Southern Ontario 2004 and 2005. As well, she teaches fiddle at the World Music Centre of the Royal Conservatory in Toronto.

Home Routes kicked off in Thompson on Sept. 22, 2009 with a show by Corin Raymond and Sean Cotton, who make up The Undesirables. They were followed during season one by Rodney Brown, Thunder Bay, Ont.’s award-winning singer and songwriter; Rob Lutes, a singer-songwriter from Montreal, whose work has sometimes been compared to John Hiatt and Fred Eaglesmith; Toronto’s Hotcha!, with Beverly Kreller on vocals, bodhrán, accordion, guitar, kazoo, mouth trumpet, spoons, and Howard Druckman, also on vocals, guitar, slide and harmonica; followed by John Wort Hannam and Matt and Shannon Heaton, a Boston-based husband-and-wife duo offering traditional – and non-traditional – Irish music on Irish wood flute, guitar, bouzouki and accordion.

Rhythm and blues/folk performer Treasa Levasseur, who was born in Winnipeg, raised in North Bay and who now lives in Toronto, kicked off season two.

Arthur O'Brien, from Bay Bulls on the Southern Shore, near St. John’s, and Fred Jorgensen, from Bull’s Cove on the south coast of the remote Burin Peninsula, both baritones and half of the four-member Newfoundland band The Navigators, closed out season two with their acoustic and electric guitars, whistles, mandolins, bazookas, bodhráns and fiddles. Also giving concerts last year were Hunter River, Prince Edward Island folk artist Meaghan Blanchard; bluesman Lester Quitzau, originally from Edmonton and now from the Gulf Islands of British Columbia; and singer-songwriter Katherine Wheatley, originally from Parry Sound, Ont., who graduated from university with a geology degree and spent five seasons roughing it in the bush, including four seasons working north of Flin Flon.

Other performers besides Lederman and Stam this season have included Montana folksinger, songwriter and ranch hand Martha Scanlan; Phil Churchill, Geraldine Hollett and Andrew Dale, making up the Newfoundland trio The Once; John Showman and Chris Coole from Toronto’s five-member Foggy Hogtown Boys; Conjunto Roque Moreira, a rock n' roll, reggae, funk, and soul fusion outfit from Teresina, Brazil, with world and Brazilian rhythms such as samba, forró, baião and bossa nova; and guitar-playing songstress Carolyn Mark, the long-time host of the Hootenanny in Victoria every Sunday and founder of The Vinaigrettes, an all-girl surfy twang popster band. After The Vinaigrettes, Mark did brief stints in such bands as The Metronome Cowboys and The Fixin’s.

Thompson is part of the “Borealis Trail” circuit of Home Routes in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Other circuits on Home Routes include the Yukon Trail; Salmon-Berry in British Columbia; Cherry Bomb and Blue Moon in British Columbia and Alberta; Chautauqua Trail in Saskatchewan and Alberta; CCN SK in Saskatchewan; Central Plains in Saskatchewan and Manitoba; Jeanne Bernardin in Manitoba, Agassiz in Manitoba and Ontario; Estelle-Klein in Ontario and Québec and the Maritimes in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.