Young fiddler already a veteran

Natalie MacMaster has been performing since she was 9

BILL COMPTON, FOR THE OLYMPIAN

Originally published Friday, April 5, 2002

You will see her striking image on nearly every other page of the official Nova Scotia tour guide. Across Canada, you will see her in television commercials for Tim Horton's donuts and General Motors Pontiac.

But Saturday night you can see Natalie MacMaster work her musical magic in Olympia. The vivacious Cape Breton native will bring her merging of traditional tunes with contemporary arrangements to the stage of the Washington Center for the first time since 1995.

At the age of 28, MacMaster is a near 20-year veteran of performance music. She began playing when she was 9 and was touring Canada at 13.

Legendary Cape Breton fiddler Buddy MacMaster, her great uncle, instructed her in the reels, hornpipes and strathspeys that grew out of the intertwining of Scottish, Irish, and French Canadian traditions on Cape Breton Island.

Like many traditional fiddlers, MacMaster grew up with tunes in her head. Home was the village of Troy, just down the road from Inverness, the epicenter of Cape Breton's "Ceilidh Trail" of music.

As she told the Intelligencer-Record (Doylestown, Penn.) last year, "I played by ear and took lessons for a few years, but I did a lot of my learning simply by listening to old recordings by myself and playing along. My mom would play recordings of traditional Cape Breton music as I went to sleep, and my dreams were musical."

With her movie star looks and athletic dancing, those dreams transform stages around the world into sheer entertainment for music lovers. But MacMaster shows an astuteness for the business side of music as well. Though she tells with enthusiasm stories of playing in schools and at dances in Cape Breton as a teen-ager, she has not shied away from making crossover music that merges 200-year-old traditional dance tunes with the electrified instrumentation of guitars, keyboards and percussion.

Her fourth album, 2000's "In My Hands," won a Juno Award (Canada's equivalent of the Grammy) for Best Instrumental Album.

The album followed the inclusionary model of the Chieftains' giant international hit "Long Black Veil" in 1994. Along with traditional tunes, "In My Hands" incorporated Latin rhythms and a radio friendly techno-pop title song featuring a whispery MacMaster. Guest artists included Nashville's Mark O'Connor, Irish accordionist Sharon Shannon and singer Allison Krauss.

MacMaster knows that a pure diet of Cape Breton tunes will not sell as many albums, nor will it fill the seats in larger venues.

Three year ago MacMaster turned down an opportunity to be featured fiddler with a Michael Flatley show; she preferred building a career the old-fashioned way. That meant MacMaster was playing more than 250 dates a year.

Her schedule has lightened with her continuing success and ability to fill larger venues. She performs about 100 dates a year.

Her shows are punctuated by her trademark simultaneous step dancing and fiddle playing later in the show. Audiences have come to expect that, and MacMaster is realistic about it.

"It's more for the sake of the show," she told the Los Angeles Times last May. "It's really hard to dance and fiddle at the same time. But it's not as comfortable as dancing without the fiddle, and I only put it in because I know the crowd loves it. Any time I haven't done it I've heard about it."

Bill Compton is a free-lance writer living in Lacey.

Natalie MacMaster

- When: 7:30 p.m. April 6.

- Where: The Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. S.E., Olympia.

- Tickets: $20.50-$28.50 adults; $18.50-$26.50 students, seniors and military; and $10.25-$14.25 youths.

- For information: Call The Washington Center box office at 360-753-8586.

- On the Web: www.washingtoncenter.org

The Olympian Copyright 2002

back to Feature of the Week index