Listening to Canvas, the average listener might not be able to discern the difference in their two styles - and it doesn’t matter, because either way you’re listening to two of the best fiddlers on the planet. “She’s a musical star but her commitment to her family and to me is a side nobody gets to see. The other 60 percent is arrangements where we each take turns or are playing alone.” “I think the thing I’m most proud of is Natalie,” says Leahy. Only about 40 percent of our show is us playing together. Having said that, I still play in my Cape Breton style. “I also had to try and roll with his rhythm. “With Donnell, I had to listen more deeply to subtleties in his music so that I wouldn’t muscle over them,” MacMaster says. Like any great marriage or artistic collaboration, MacMaster and Leahy have learned how to bring out the best in each other. And here I am now doing almost exactly the same thing. “I was so in awe of Donnell’s family,” says MacMaster, “of 11 siblings who could play and had a family band. They feel like a part of the tour and that provides amazing gratification.” Our kids are practicing and when they come out on stage and do their little number, it’s their reward. For me, the game was playing house parties. But you need to get into the game at some point. When I was a kid, I played the fiddle for my parents and my brothers and sisters. “But then one night we put Mary Frances on stage. We worried the expectations might be too much,” Leahy says. “Initially we were reluctant to let the kids perform. Guests include Rhiannon Giddens (“Woman of the House”), Yo-Yo Ma (“So You Love”) Brian Finnegan (“Colour Theory”)-and, on “Choo Choo,” their 17-year-old daughter Mary Frances Leahy.Īll seven of their children have become essential components of the live show, which sells out performing arts centres across North America-especially leading up to Christmas holidays. Rock, pop, Latin and classical influences come to the fore on the new material of mostly original melodies. With a few challenges along the way, it was a delight from beginning to end.” As Donnell often said, ‘Let the music decide.’ So, we indulged in full musical freedom, throwing patterns of the past aside. There were no restrictions, rules, agendas, considerations. Like an empty canvas, our minds were clear, open for the music that was about to flow. “One thing Donnell and I were given in 2020 was the space and time to be creative, to think and focus and find what was inside of us. “Creativity comes when there is space for it,” says MacMaster. They approached it not bound by easy patterns or habits, but as a blank canvas. A power couple was born.Ĭanvas is only their third album together. They were married in 2002, by which point their cumulative album sales topped one million. They are two of the world’s top Celtic fiddlers: she a renowned, award-winning solo artist from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia he from the legendary Leahy family of Ontario, an intergenerational musical act that toured the world. Natalie MacMaster was only in her mid-twenties when she made My Roots Are Showing, but it proved her sense of the music went back long before her birth.A blank canvas is full of possibility - much like the partnership of Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy, whose new album Canvas comes out March 17, 2023. Scott Skinner), "The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn," "Lord Kelly," and "Sir Harry's Welcome Home" (written by Peter Hardie), plus the reels "The Dismissal Reel" (written by Sandy MacLean), "Paddy on the Turnpike," and "The Yellow Tinker." The exceptions to these lively medleys are two slow, mournful airs, "The Shakin's o' the Pocky" and "A' Chuthag (The Cuckoo)." The best is saved for last, as "A Glencoe Dance Set," a performance live at Glencoe fades up, featuring MacMaster and her fiddler uncle Buddy MacMaster. For example, "Glad You Made It, Howie!," which probably owes its name to the arrival of pianist Howie MacDonald, who plays on the track, consists of the strathspeys "Mary Scott" (written by J. On most of the 13 cuts, MacMaster combines a series of either public domain pieces or originals by the old masters, including reels, marches, strathspeys, and jigs. by Rounder in April 2000 after having been released by Warner Bros. Since Natalie MacMaster is basically a traditional Cape Breton Island Celtic fiddler who sometimes adds more modern elements to her music, a traditional album is an ideal way to hear her in her most natural environment, and My Roots Are Showing, finally issued in the U.S.
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