The day she found out she had won NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest, musician Gaelynn Lea played her fiddle for a crowd in her hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. But until NPR released the news, she couldn’t tell anyone.

“It was sort of surreal,” she said.

Her song “Someday We’ll Linger in the Sun,” an unforgettable fiddle melody accompanied by poetic lyrics, was chosen from 6,100 submissions to win the contest. Lea, 32, is based in Duluth and plays there often as a solo artist and as part of the band Murder of Crows. She was born with brittle bone disease, a rare congenital condition, so the most comfortable way for her to play the violin is upright, like a cello. Lea developed the method with her teachers in elementary school, and since then she has become an accomplished musician along with an outspoken advocate for accessibility in the music industry for people with disabilities.

As she prepared to travel to Washington, D.C., to give her own Tiny Desk Concert at NPR, we talked about her first music teacher, the origins of her unique style and why she wants to see more musical festivals that are accessible for all artists.

How have things been going since you won?

I knew it might be a little bit more intense than I was expecting. The day of [the announcement], I woke up and Facebook was all full, and Twitter was all full, and my emails were all full, but it was exciting. And then I’ve been doing quite a few interviews this week and I had a show the day I found out, but I couldn’t tell anyone until the next week. And then I had a show the day after it was announced as well in Duluth, and so that was a super fun show to play because everybody there was super supportive.