Carley’s voice on the fiddle is forceful and bright, with her formidable technique and diverse musical vocabulary put to work in service to the piece. Years of study, natural ability, and the crucial component of finely-honed creative taste, make Carley’s approach to her instrument unique and uniquely powerful. Astute listeners will hear in her playing a masterful bluegrass fiddler from North Carolina, of course, but also the ancient tones of Celtic music, and the refinement of a symphonic and chamber musician. For every player there is a moment that ignited the fire in them to make music, and Carley’s happened at the age of 10 when she heard a friend from her 4-H group playing bluegrass fiddle. She soon began studies in the Suzuki method with Jan Daugherty of Saluda, North Carolina, traveling to the local library every week. Carley immediately took to the method’s emphasis on listening for musicality, and

Daugherty would show her simple fiddle tunes like “Boil Them Cabbage Down” and “Cripple Creek” along with the Suzuki pieces. Those formal studies helped her to reinforce a natural ear that her teacher had already identified as unusually strong, and to build a technique that allowed her to express her innate musicality.

In addition to her interest in classical music and bluegrass, Daugherty introduced Carley to Scots-Irish music, one of the stylistic ancestors of bluegrass. The razor sharp articulations and ornaments that are the hallmarks of Celtic fiddling informed her playing then and now. It’s rare to find a player who can play both Celtic music and bluegrass convincingly, but you needn’t look any farther than Carley’s recording, “The Ballad of Calvary”, to see that she’s a real double-threat, and that she understands what a Celtic song should sound like in the 2020’s.