Athena Tergis

Folk and fiddle music have been longtime companions for Athena Tergis. Growing up in San Francisco, she began classical violin lessons in the Suzuki method at age four, but soon needed another challenge to keep her interest in music. “I was tricked into going to Alasdair Fraser’s Valley of the Moon fiddle camp,” Tergis recounts, laughing. “I was hired as a baby sitter by fiddler Cait Reid who was going there, and by the end of the first day, I was hooked. Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh of Altan was there that summer and I just fell in love with her music, followed her around and learned tons of tunes. I never looked back.” Over summers at the camp, Tergis studied with Ni Mhaonaigh, Alasdair Fraser, Cape Breton master fiddler Buddy MacMaster and won the Junior National Scottish Fiddling Championship three years in a row. Tergis and childhood friend and fellow fiddler Laura Risk (now also an accomplished fiddler and producer in her own right) often jammed together growing up, and when Tergis was sixteen, they recorded an album of original music, Journey Begun, on Culburnie Records.

Tergis was set to enter Berklee School of Music in Boston after high school but “I went to Ireland instead, and didn’t come home for three years,” she says. After an intense year sitting in on sessions almost every night, she began to branch out and earn money with her music, working as a backing musician with Irish language television and then being invited

to tour with renown accordion player Sharon Shannon. After living in Galway, Belfast and London, Tergis opened the production of Lord of the Dance in Las Vegas, and not long after was invited to become a principal fiddler for the Broadway run of Riverdance. “That was a wonderful experience,” she says. “The music was great as well as challenging, and most important, it allowed me to develop a stage presence -- the cast was excellent and I just learned so much about performing.”

After the run of that show ended, Tergis spent some time in New York developing a recording studio and record company. She’s now living in Italy, and has started a studio in Tuscany, Terra Linda Studios. She returns often to the Americas to perform, including upcoming plans to appear with Mick Moloney and the well-known group Green Fields of America, with whom she’s also working on a recording.