Caitlin Hearn is a fiddle player who currently lives in Regensburg, Germany, where she is an English teacher. She got her musical feet wet at age 9, when she began studying classical violin in her hometown of Silver Spring, Maryland. As a teenager, she enjoyed playing chamber music with her string quartet and playing for musicals with her high school pit orchestra. Around this time she also began to venture into the folk music scene via Washington, D.C.’s Irish music sessions. She was an early member of the Bog Band, a group of young Irish musicians who performed around the greater D.C. metro area. In 2013, Caitlin and her brothers formed TriHearn, a trio performing Irish, Scottish, and American folk music. In April 2014 they released their debut album, Activate, produced by Genticorum’s Yann Falquet. The trio also organized and performed in six annual benefit concerts from 2010 to 2015, known as the Music Makes a Difference concert series in Silver Spring, to raise money for the Skin Cancer Foundation.

While she was studying psychology in Cleveland, Ohio, Caitlin continued to perform with TriHearn and joined Small Batch, a Cleveland-based bluegrass band. Caitlin first encountered old-time music several years ago at Alasdair Fraser’s Valley of the Moon Scottish fiddle school in California, which she attends each August with her family. Since then, she has attended a number of old-time festivals and joined an old-time band, The Raintown Ramblers, with whom she performs across Bavaria. She plays fiddle in two additional bands in Regensburg: Different Skies, a folk trio blending Irish, American, and Arabic music, and Monsieur Dejardins und Das Affenorchester, a 9-piece Quebecquois/jazz/swing band playing all original music. Caitlin is moving to Charlotte, North Carolina in January 2019, where she plans to pursue her master’s degree in Social Work. She will very much miss the rich musical experiences she’s enjoyed in Germany, but looks forward to the opportunities ahead in North Carolina.