Adam Sutch is only 16, but you wonder how he manages to fit everything into his busy schedule. When he's not raising sheep, goats and pigs to show at the annual Washington County Fair, he's going to 4-H club meetings.

When he's not playing in the Mon Valley Dartball League he's playing on the California Area High School tennis team. When he's not playing trumpet with the school's marching and concert bands, he's studying hard enough to be an honor student and going to Leo Club meetings in California and Environthon and Students Against Destructive Driving meetings at school.

Lake Fong, Post-Gazette
Adam Sutch, 16, of Daisytown, has won the Midwestern Regional Dulcimer Competition in Ohio, and will be going to the national competition in Kansas.
Click photo for larger image.

Oh yes, and he helps his father, Jim, run his deer processing enterprise that ties them up at least two weeks in hunting season when they process as many as 1,200 deer.

With all this to occupy his young life, you wonder how he still managed to learn, mostly on his own, to play the hammered dulcimer well enough to win the 2007 Mid-Eastern Regional Hammered Dulcimer Competition in Roscoe Village, Ohio, on May 20.

For those unfamiliar, the hammered dulcimer is an oval wooden instrument that comes in various sizes. Adam's is an 85-string beauty that weighs in at more than 60 pounds.

"It's not to be confused with the mountain or lap dulcimer, which has only four strings," said Adam, a resident of Daisytown in West Pike Run Township.

The youngster discovered the hammered dulcimer five years ago when his family saw a demonstration of the instrument at Benner's Meadow Run Camp in Farmington, Fayette County. His grandfather, Ron Howes, of Fredericktown, was scheduled to take a workshop on the dulcimer, but when his grandson "fiddled around" with the instrument, he did so well he let him take the workshop instead. During the session, the novice learned five songs.

"Adam liked the dulcimer so much we bought him a small beginner's instrument," said his mother, Michelle. "He soon wanted to buy a bigger version, which he purchased for $3,000 with the money he earned by helping his father process deer and by winning livestock competitions at the county fair."

When Adam went back to the same workshop at Benner's the following summer, his instructor was amazed to see how much he had progressed and referred him to the competition in Ohio, which draws competitors from Maine to Florida. Too unsure of himself to compete, he took another workshop and looked around the vendors' stalls instead.

The next year, when he entered the 2005 competition, he came in third. Last year, he didn't place but this May he took home a first-place trophy.

Over the years, Adam said he's taken close to 10 workshops, but only one formal lesson from Mark Wade, an instructor from Columbus, Ohio, who is his favorite hammered dulcimer player.

"The instrument isn't too common in our area, which is why we had to go so far for him to take a lesson," said Adam's father, Jim.

To improve his technique, hone his style and add songs to his repertoire, Adam listens to CDs and scours sheet music he learned to read playing in the high school band. Currently, he performs a mixed repertoire of blues, folk, ragtime, hymns, Irish Gaelic, and classical music. He's equally proficient playing Tchaikovsky's "The Swan" as he is hammering out James Brown's "I Feel Good."

Since his very first public performance at Hugo's Restaurant in Centerville where he played for his dartball team's banquet, he's played solo and with a contingent of his family that includes his mother Michelle on back up dulcimer, brother Austin, 9, on mandolin, grandmother, Darlene, and grandfather, Ron, on guitar and brother Aaron, 13, on marimbula, a Caribbean xylophone that is plucked to produce a bass sound.

The young dulcimer master has played everywhere from the Washington Farmers' Market -- he'll perform there Thursday -- and the Sheep and Fiber Fest in Avella, to California's Center in the Woods and other retirement communities, before the Red Hat Society, the Robert Burns birthday banquet in Donora and numerous churches.

In the summer of 2005, he cut his first CD titled "Sutch Sounds" and released a second Christmas CD in 2006, titled "Hammering Through the Season."

Now that he's taken home first prize in the regional competition, he's eligible to compete in the national competition slated for Sept. 16 in Winfield, Kan.

For more information or to book a performance, call 724-938-8851 or e-mail Adam at sutch@zoominternet.net.

First Published: June 22, 2007, 10:30 a.m.