1/2/2024 0 Comments Natilie macmaster“Through his storytelling and his delivery, he commands the stage. “He plays a couple of characters in the show,” MacMaster says. Leahy had watched the actor play more than 20 roles in the theatre production of Billy Bishop Goes to War and was impressed. As an added twist this year, the couple enlisted the talents of actor William Colgate. What are they going to do? Sit and just watch the show or just hang out all day? What a waste of their potential.”Īs the name suggests, A Celtic Family Christmas will mix the foot-stomping traditional fare both MacMaster and Leahy have become known for with holiday music. They are here practising stuff and then we go tour. “The next little guy comes along and he’s three and wants to play the fiddle and do something on stage because she’s out there,” MacMaster says. Photo submittedīut as Mary Frances grew, she began developing more of a set routine. Article content Natalie MacMaster, Donnell Leahy and their children. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. I remember one time I thought it would be cute, I forget where we were, but I said ‘OK, she’s been begging to come out … Mary Frances Leahy.’ She’d come out and jump around a little bit and it was really cute.” We’d be going on stage and she’d be seeing me dance and be seeing some of the band dance and she wanted to be part of that. She was playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She got it and she started playing fiddle around that time, too. By the time she was three, she was trying little steps to imitate us so I thought I’d teach her a real step. “I remember playing shows as a new mother and all the new things that come with that, learning how to change diapers and feed a baby. “Mary Frances was our first-born I was 33 years old,” MacMaster says. It just sort of turned out that way because MacMaster and Leahy wanted to ensure their children were with them as they toured. Still, the couple certainly did not set out to produce an army of precocious Von Trapp-like kids playing Celtic music across the country. MacMaster was nine years old herself when she began playing the fiddle and only 16 when she recorded her first album. The children play fiddle, accordion and piano. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.Saturday, August 25, 7 PM, Pavilion, Ravinia Festival, Green Bay and Lake Cook Rds., Highland Park 84.Īrt accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Andrew MacNaughton. MacMaster’s current tour is technically in support of In My Hands, but she tends to cover a lot of ground in her performances though the show will doubtless emphasize her recent crossover-friendly material, there should also be a fair amount of traditional music, and even a bit of step dancing. On the goosebump-inducing title tune, based on the traditional Irish reel “The Drunken Landlady,” she coos breathily over a double-tracked recording of her own narration, while her fiddle weaves a bright filigree above a panoramic programmed soundscape. “Blue Bonnets Over the Border” features throbbing electric bass and swirling strings–and a pounding drum program that, ironically enough, suggests a bodhran. It intersperses pristine folk recitals with dense, contemporary-sounding pieces that juxtapose her ageless fiddle with rock percussion, electric guitar, or undulating layers of synthesizer. Her discography (on Rounder in the States) includes traditional material like 1997’s Fit as a Fiddle and My Roots Are Showing–recorded in ’98 but unreleased here until last year–but she’s also pushed the envelope with albums like In My Hands, recorded in ’99 and still her most recent work. Natalie MacMaster, niece of legendary Cape Breton fiddler Buddy MacMaster, took up her instrument at age nine, and by her teens she was a leading practitioner of the style. Performances are traditionally given solo or in a small group, with the fiddler’s own feet providing percussion. The Cape Breton style evolved at community functions like parties and weddings, and the island’s fiddlers still prefer a driving, danceable, strongly rhythmic approach–stuttering grace notes, punchy double-stops, and piercing, unorthodox tunings–over the showstopping high-velocity displays currently popular among Celtic folk revivalists. The fiddle music of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island gets its character from the Scottish immigrants who settled the area in the late 18th and early 19th centuries–in fact, many traditions that have all but disappeared in Scotland are still vital there. Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |