Austin Scelzo

One of Bluegrass’s New Generation Written by Dale and Darcy Cahill It is difficult to write about Austin Scelzo without listing the many ways he has contributed to the bluegrass community. He plays the fiddle and sings for bands On The Trail and the Rock Hearts. He teaches on his own bluegrass, country and roots online school, at Ashokan music camps, kids’ academies and he hosts Wernick Method group jam classes. He launched the Connecticut Bluegrass Association web site in 2021 and was most recently chosen as the recipient of the 2023 Connecticut Art Hero award. The list goes on. This article will take you back to a young Austin, a distracted middle school student whose first violin teacher told his parents that they were wasting their money trying to get him interested in the instrument. Boy was that teacher wrong! Despite that discouraging advice, Austin was introduced to other instruments, learned to read music, and solidified his commitment to playing the violin in the