the Organization
Festival of Texas Fiddling, Inc. is a Texas nonprofit corporation founded in 2017 by Dan Margolies and Patrick Sparks and is based in San Antonio, Texas. It is tax exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The organization is dedicated to the preservation, presentation, performance, and education about all styles of fiddling and fiddle associated music played historically and currently in the State of Texas.
The organization hosts the Festival the 1st week in December at a historic Texas dance hall. Previous festivals were held in 2014 and 2015, and every year without a pause between 2017- 2021. A number of smaller events are sponsored by the organization throughout the year, including house concerts, special showcases, and workshops. Our support comes from private donations, sponsorships, and grant funding from partners like Texas Folklife, Humanities Texas, and the Center for Popular Music in Nashville. We further our mission by making audio and video recordings of fiddling masters from all genres of Texas music.
LEADERSHIP
★ Dan Margolies ★
Dan Margolies is the Artistic Director of the Festival of Texas Fiddling and President of the nonprofit board. Dan was one of the founders of the festival in 2013 along with Patrick Sparks. Dan is a writer, musician, and arts consultant involved in programming, event management, and grant writing for music and arts festivals, archives, and non-profits focused on arts and culture, history, traditional music, and cultural sustainability. He has expertise in applying cultural sustainability theory to Texas regional music and especially in Texas-Mexican borderlands music. Dan has also received grants and fellowships for his work on music and cultural sustainability from the Association of Recorded Music Collections, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Center for Mongolian Studies in Ulaanbaatar, and the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges and Universities, among others. He has published numerous articles on cultural sustainability, fiddling, and other varieties of Texas and Texas-Mexican traditional music in the Old Time Herald, Fiddler Magazine, and other popular media. A musician himself, Dan has produced multiple recordings of archival and current Texas fiddling as well as several CDs of Texas-Mexican conjunto music for Spring Fed Records at the Center for Popular Music and for Zarza Records. He has written or edited five books and a wide variety of articles in academic journals on historical and musical topics. His book is titled ¡Maldito Coronavirus! Mapping Latin American Musical Responses to the Pandemic Moment (written with J.A. Strub ) forthcoming in March 2024 from by Equinox Publishing Ltd. For 22 years, Dan was Professor and Chair of the History Department at Virginia Wesleyan University. He is currently Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. More info at DanMargolies.com
★. Patrick Sparks, P.E. ★
Patrick Sparks is a founder and director of the Festival of Texas Fiddling. In his day-job, he is president of Sparks Engineering, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in the investigation and repair of historic structures. From 2003 to 2007 he led the Historic Bridge Foundation, and in 2007, he co-founded the nonprofit Texas Dance Hall Preservation, Inc., serving as its board president until 2014. He was instrumental in developing a web database of over 500 historic halls, and has assisted in the preservation of a number of important halls, including Hruska Hall, Sengelmann Hall, Turner Hall in Schulenburg, and Twin Sisters Hall. At Twin Sisters, Patrick helped guide the hall association toward a more sustainable business model, reaching back to their roots as a community organization. Also his firm put on a window-restoration workshop, designed the new historically-appropriate roof, and wrote a successful grant application for the new roof. In 2016, he worked with the National Park Service to develop the first nationwide dance hall symposium: Dance Halls, Juke Joints, and Honky Tonks: Place Making and Cultural Sustainability.
★ Ana Lisa Portillo ★
Born and raised on the Texas-Mexico border, Ana Lisa Portillo is an award-winning world music performer with classical violin training via the Columbia-Juilliard exchange program. She has performed with the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston, Ciudad Juárez Symphony (Mexico), Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra, Ceiba (Latin American folk), Guaraché (salsa), Ben Bogart y Los Gatos Azules (tango), and La Tuza (Mexican roots). She’s been performing mariachi music since 1990.
Her Mexican roots trio was nominated for Boston’s Best World Music in 2010, and her mariachi was named Boston’s Best Mariachi in 2011. Upon moving back to her hometown, she co-founded Mariachi Estrella, winner of the 2014 El Paso Times Best of the Border award. In 2015, her essay on her experiences as a professional mariachi was published in the program for the annual Festival of Texas Fiddling. In 2017, 2020, and 2021, Ana Lisa participated in the festival as a performer.
Besides maintaining an active performance schedule, Ana Lisa has been teaching strings for twenty years. Her middle school orchestras consistently earned the two highest ratings at Texas UIL Concert and Sight-reading Contest. Additionally, she independently developed and implemented a Music Technology course for 100 middle school students. She currently teaches 130 elementary orchestra students and coteaches a middle school mariachi class in El Paso.
Ana Lisa holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University, a Two-Year Certificate from the Berklee College of Music, Texas K-12 Music Teacher Certification, and Suzuki Violin Teacher Certification.
★ Derek Larimer ★
Bio coming soon!