Macmaster Leahy
Natalie MacMaster has been travelling across Canada for a couple of decades now and she knows how strongly connected the country is to the fiddle.
That’s why, she says, she is excited to play in a Canada Scene concert with other proponents of fiddle music on Saturday July 8. But when ARTSFILE reached her recently, she wasn’t only thinking about music. She was also concerned with family matters.
The MacMaster Leahy Kids are Mary Frances, Michael, Clare and Julia. Their father is the extraordinarily gifted fiddler from Lakefield, Ontario, Donnell Leahy. And their mother is Natalie MacMaster, the award winning fiddler from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
“All the kids were nicely working on chores. One is cleaning the tub and the other is folding laundry and all of sudden my husband said supper is ready and I’m thinking there is no way those sausages are cooked and I had to go down and make sure and sure enough they weren’t cooked.
“It was just a little misunderstanding. Someone had turned the stove off.” It’s the kind of thing that can happen when you have six kids aged three to 11. But MacMaster and husband Donnell Leahy seem to manage a musical career and raising a family pretty darn well.
The Ottawa show features performers from across Canada including: Karrnnel Sawitsky and his band The Fretless, the Ottawa Valley’s April Verch, Métis fiddler John Arcand, the Northwest Territories’ Wesley Hardisty and Cynthia MacLeod from P.E.I.
I’m Natalie MacMaster and together with my husband Donnell Leahy and our seven children, we will be celebrating Christmas virtually this year!! For decades, we have toured extensively at Christmas, but this year marks our most unique one, taking the stage to our home! MacMaster and Donnell Leahy are no strangers to Traverse City. The Canadian Celtic super-duo — made up of two of the world’s deftest fiddle players — graced the City Opera House stage back in November 2013, and then again in November 2015. On Saturday, Feb. 10, they’ll be back by popular demand. THE MACMASTER LEAHY KIDS ARE MARY FRANCES, MICHAEL, CLARE AND JULIA. THEIR FATHER IS THE EXTRAORDINARILY GIFTED FIDDLER FROM LAKEFIELD, ONTARIO, DONNELL LEAHY, AND THEIR MOTHER IS NATALIE MACMASTER, THE AWARD WINNING FIDDLER FROM CAPE BRETON, NOVA SCOTIA. THE KIDS ALL STEP DANCE AND PLAY FIDDLE, AS WELL AS A VARIETY OF OTHER.
The roots of fiddle music in Canada begins with the arrival of Europeans in this country. MacMaster’s own family landed in Cape Breton in the 1700s.
“All fiddlers will have a story to tell about why they are holding the instrument in their hands and where it came from. My roots are Scottish. The music came over from Scotland in the mid-1700s. My ancestors came from the Isle of Eigg.”
She was nine and a half when she picked one up. In her family home there were fiddles but they were all full-sized instruments “so I wasn’t big enough to play one until then.”
That happened when an uncle in Boston, Mass., shipped up a three-quarter-sized instrument up for the MacMaster children to use.
“When I saw it I really took a liking to it. I just remember looking at it and it hit my heart. I thought it was really cool. I don’t remember having a profound thought. I started and when I look back now I can say that it was easy for me to pick it up.”
She, of course, was surrounded by musicians and music, especially her famous uncle Buddy MacMaster. But her own aptitude led to lessons and a career that blossomed in the 1990s.
Music lessons included learning to read music, something that she says she was impatient with.
“In my teens, my parents would bring me to another uncle of mine Kinnon Beaton. The purpose of that was to read music. I could not stand it. I didn’t have the patience for it. I was looking at those black dots on a page and I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head. But I learned and I’m grateful.
“I use it to write down music and to remember music. If I have to remember 2o tunes in a row. I’ll write the first few bars of each one down on a piece of paper. I have books and books where I have written down a few bars of tunes. I wrote them down in my early teens and I’ll never forget them.”
The instrument has been such a part of her life one wondered if there was ever a time when she has grown tired of it.
“In my 20s I was touring and doing too many shows. I was really travelling making three trips across the Atlantic in a week. I can remember being really worn out. That’s 20 years ago now and I haven’t felt that way since.
“Now I realize how precious it is. I realize I am on a time limit here. I want to cram in as much living and playing as I can.”
She is still doing about 100 shows a year either by herself or with Donnell, but she’s sticking to North America. “I am not interested in going to Europe any more.”
The couple have settled near Peterborough, Ontario. They have even found the time to start a Celtic music festival called the Greenbridge Celtic Folk Festival. The first edition will be Aug. 25 and 26 and they hope to make it an annual event.
Celtic music has slipped a bit in prominence, certainly from the days of Riverdance when the sounds of Irish and Scottish music was ringing worldwide.
But MacMaster isn’t worried about its demise.
“It’ll never go out of style, I can’t imagine it. It’s stood 1,000 years of testing.”
And if the Leahy-MacMaster children have anything to do with it, there’s another generation of players on the way.
MacMaster is teaching her children from three year old Sadie who plays a 16th-size fiddle.
Sadie, who has Down Syndrome, has broken three of them, because they are fragile and she’s three. However, “she has taken a liking to the fiddle. She cries when we try to take it away from her. One of the proudest discoveries in my life was to see how she loves the fiddle.”
Her four year old son Alec (named after her father Alexander) has started lessons. The six year old Julia is a firecracker, he mother says.
The eight year old, Claire, seems to have the ability to learn a tune and remember it. She also has a nice voice, MacMaster says. Ten year old Michael is playing the fiddle too as is Mary Francis the oldest at 11. They kids also play other instruments such as the piano and accordion. And they regularly appear in concerts with their parents.
“It’s a reflection of where we come from.”
The big family is … “Just hang on a second … the sausages may be burning…”
After checking, she picked up where we left off. “It’s just the way it worked out. I’ve got six kids.
“I didn’t want to close life off because of my career. When you are having a family no time is a good time so any time works.”
She had a few years when she and Donnell weren’t sure they would have children.
“Then all of sudden, the plan kicked in and then some.”
Natalie MacMaster: A Canadian Fiddle Celebration
Canada Scene
When: Saturday July 8 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Southam Hall
Tickets:nac-cna.ca
One is a number that can represent many things: a marriage joining two people together, a shared tradition, a blending of two unique talents.
For renowned Celtic fiddlers Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy, it’s all of the above. “One” is also, appropriately, the title of their CD, the first the couple has recorded together.
“We’ve been talking about (the recording) for years and (kept) just putting it in the background. We tried to make it happen three or four times and between family life and our own careers. it just never saw the light of day,” says MacMaster.
The duo will feature music from the CD when they perform their “Visions from Cape Breton and Beyond: A Celtic Celebration” concert Monday night at Monomoy High School in Harwich. The concert is presented by the Harwich Cranberry Arts & Music Festival.
Who: Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy
Macmaster Leahy Christmas
What: “Visions from Cape Breton and Beyond: A Celtic Celebration” concert
When: 7 p.m. Monday
Where: Monomoy Regional High School theater, 75 Oak St., Harwich
Tickets: $30, $40, $60 and $90; available at Brown Paper Tickets at natalie.brownpapertickets.com or 800-838-3006
For wheelchair-accessible seating: 508-432-1885 or cranfestproduction@hotmail.com.
Cape Breton fiddling is lively, even fiery music. Brought to Cape Breton by Scottish immigrants, it is said to be a purer form of traditional Scottish fiddling than found in Scotland today. But the fiddling is a living tradition, and as such has evolved over time.
MacMaster and Leahy are Celtic fiddling royalty, each a member of an illustrious musical family.
Leahy, born and raised in rural Ontario, is the son of a fiddle-playing father and a step-dancing mother from Cape Breton and was the lead fiddler for the famed Leahy family band.
MacMaster, who grew up in Cape Breton, is the niece of the legendary Cape Breton fiddler Buddy MacMaster, cousin to Ashley MacIsaac and related to the famed Beaton family of Cape Breton Fiddlers.
Leahy and MacMaster make their home on a farm in rural Ontario, where they are raising their six children. For the past four years, the two have merged their separate careers. They often include a special appearance by their children as a part of their shows, which will be the case when the two perform in Harwich.
“We’ll feature, at some point, some music from our little sweethearts,” MacMaster says. “They take piano lessons and dance lessons and, of course, we teach them fiddle. Michael’s getting a bit into the accordion now,” she says, speaking of their 10-year-old son, “and the kids are singing a bit, so it’s a natural progression that they would play music with us.”
Talking about their recording , MacMaster says it might never have come about were it not for the intervention of Johnny Reid, a popular Canadian singer. MacMaster was playing fiddle on a Reid recording, which was being produced by Bob Ezrin.
“Johnny knew I was working on my own CD with my husband and he mentioned something to Bob, and Bob gave us a call the day I got home. And he said, ‘Maybe this is an opportunity for us to work together,’” MacMaster recalls.
Macmaster Leahy Christmas Special
Ezrin – who has worked with Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Pink Floyd and Deep Purple, among others – would seem an unusual choice for an album of traditional Cape Breton fiddling. But MacMaster says on the contrary it was a satisfying partnership.
“With Bob Ezrin, people assume a certain thing with him because of the work he’s done with Alice Cooper and Pink Floyd and those bands, but he comes from the classical world. He’s a pianist himself. So he’s done a mix of everything in between. He’s just an honest listener,” MacMaster says. “I was in awe of having the opportunity to work with such a (renowned) producer.”
The CD, as befitting their initial recording partnership, includes a wedding song, “The Wedding Day Jig.”
“We wrote that for our wedding,” MacMaster says. “ It was never recorded on CD and I’m really pleased with how that turned out. It’s funny because there’s an electric guitar on it. It was Donnell’s idea, and I think at one point Bob looked at Donnell and said, ‘You know they’re gonna blame me for that.’”
Another personal piece, “Tribute to Buddy,” was written in honor of MacMaster’s uncle.
“He had passed away shortly before that recording, so I thought it was fitting that we get a bunch of fiddlers in and just do a bunch of tunes in honor of him,” MacMaster says.
“I listened to him more than any other single fiddler,” MacMaster adds. “I think that I have his style mostly imprinted inside of me because I listened to him so much and his music is just extra-special because I heard it so much, but also because he’s my uncle.”
MacMaster also contributes a lullaby, sung a cappella, in Gaelic – a first for her.
“It’s a sentiment at the end of the CD. It was Bob (who suggested it). He was hearing me sing fiddle tunes to Donnell. I’d say, ‘Diddley, diddley, diddley, dum,’ and Bob would say, ‘You have a nice voice. You should be singing on this.’ So I thought, ‘Sure, why not?'”
On the CD and in live performance, the duo’s music is a mix of the traditional and exploratory.
“Donnell has got a flair for playing more worldly-sounding music. There’s going to be a couple of fancier pieces, we’ll call them,” MacMaster says of the concert. “He’s like the stiletto heel and I’m like the comfy old slipper.”
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