Beth Hoven Rotto is fiddler with the band Foot-Notes and has provided music for hundreds of private and community events for over three decades. These range from Decorah’s Nordic Fest street dances and popular dances at the Highlandville Schoolhouse to a performance at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.
Beth apprenticed with renowned traditional fiddler Bill Sherburne (1903-1991) and has collected tunes from descendants of northeast Iowa’s early Norwegian American fiddlers. She has worked extensively with field recordings of regional fiddlers as Musician-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2022 and is eager to spread the area’s rich musical tradition.
She is guest curator of Vesterheim’s exhibition Hand Me Down the Fiddle: Norwegian Fiddlers, Fiddles and Fiddle Tunes in the Upper Midwest, which runs from August 15, 2024- May 18, 2025.