Canada's Music: Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy: One

There’s a tune in the first set on One called So I’m Off with the Good Saint Nicolas. It’s a Scott Skinner tune, bringing in connection to Scotland that lives in the fiddle playing of Cape Breton and Ontario in Canada, and rightfully so, as Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy are two of the best to play this sort of music. It also invites a sense of humor and an idea of journey, two things which are borne out through all the music they have chosen for the recording.

It is the first album they have done together. When they married, twelve years ago now, that was an idea they had in mind, but they each had well booked solo careers and commitments, and then there was the matter of children coming along. They kept the idea, though, and began working how to do it. What has emerged is on the one hand not surprising to anyone who knows their musicianship, but on the other hand a creation of music that is an immediate joy and likely to prove a lasting one as well.

That comes from a conversation in music between two of the world’s top class fiddle players. Both grew up in families where music was a part of daily life. MacMaster comes from in a community on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia where music was part of day to day life in the surrounding area; Leahy, on the other hand, was raised on a family farm in rural Ontario, an area, he recalls, where the interest was more likely to run to sport that music. “The area we come from isn’t a musical area, so I grew up not hearing fiddlers that much and was able to develop my own style,” Donnell recalls. With parents who both played music and ten siblings to join in, it became a family adventure to create music, and eventually, a family band.

Over in Atlantic Canada, MacMaster's mother began teaching her daughter to step dance, and she started learning the chords of Cape Breton style piano playing too. It was the fiddle, though, that captured her heart. "I had a very unique childhood," she she says, "in that I was surrounded by a culture that was rich with fiddle tradition, and that is why I am a fiddler. That is why I do what I do. If you saw where I grew up, and the environment I grew up in... there was really no other instrument of that magnitude. The fiddle was, and is, the most popular instrument in Cape Breton. It was very natural for me to start playing.” When a relative sent a small size fiddle over for whoever of the kids in the extended family wanted it, Natalie was drawn to it. “I remember Dad taking me to see the fiddle and I just fell in love with it. I'm like -- can I have it?" she continues, her voice warming at the memory. "Nobody else wanted it, so I took it, and that night, I started playing." She was nine.

They each grew in music, MacMaster in the strongly Scottish based yet uniquely Atlantic Canada shaped style of Cape Breton music, Leahy in the mix of Scottish, French, Nordic, and Irish influences that make up the music of Ontario, with in Donnell’s case, a touch of the Maritimes, as his mother is from Cape Breton. Along the way, they each earned awards and award nominations including Junos and Grammys, and collaborated with artists ranging from Edgar Meyer to to Alison Krauss to Mark O’Connor to Shania Twain.

So, when they married a dozen years ago, they had in mind to do a recording together. Though it took a time to work it out. the result has clarity and grace that brings in their varied and similar understandings of music.

The Saint Nick’s set offers that connection to Scotland and the landscape of Cape Breton, and a sense of joy in the journey and a call to dance, ideas which continue through the music MacMaster and Leahy offer. Fiddles drive the journey and draw you in to The Chase, a tune they wrote together and one which seems to echo with a call to dance.

Through the music on One MacMaster and Leahy are supported by musicians who tour with them often as well as musical friends sitting in for these sessions. Among them are the Cape Breton fiddle contingent of Kinnon Beaton, Brenda Stubbert, and Dawn Beaton, Betty Beaton, Rachel Aucoin, and Mac Morin on piano, Tim Edey on guitar and accordion, and Kenneth MacKenzie on fiddle and Highland pipes. There are two other collaborators you might not expect, as well: producer Bob Ezrin and producer and recording engineer Justin Cortelyou, who have between them worked with musicians including Pink Floyd, Alan Jackson, and Taylor Swift, among others.

The producer connection came about after Natalie was invited to sit in as a guest on a track fellow Canadian artist Johnny Reid was recording in Nashville, produced by Ezrin. MacMaster got to talking with Reid about the duo album she and Leahy were planning. Reid asked if he could share the information with Ezrin, and “Five minutes after I got home from Nashville, Bob called to say he enjoyed working with me and that maybe we could do it again, “ MaMaster says. “After Donnell and I met Bob and, through him, Justin Cortelyou, we all very quickly realized this project was meant to be a collective effort, a passion shared by all."

Natalie and Donnell had already chosen the music for the project by the time Ezrin and Cortelyou came on board, but it was in fact Ezrin’s idea to record the project in Cape Breton. The respect and encouragement among musicians and producers came through in the recording process. "There is very little that is as exciting as working with people who are masters at their craft," Ezrin says. Donnell points out that in working with Ezrin “You feel challenged to give your best, and so “There is a real intense vibe and a live feeling on the record, with everyone just going for it."

That holds through out the music, including places where several of the tunes have unusual touches. On the Pastiche for Anne set, for example, there is a distinct piano presence, which is common in Cape Breton music -- but in this case, it was created by having two players working on one piano at the same time. Percussion is a part of Cape Breton style as well, often created by tapping feet or the beat of a bodhran. For the Joyous Waltz set -- which does include that waltz time tune and then moves into the faster beat of a polka -- the drum kit included paint cans and other recycled materials. There are touches of electric guitar on a track or two as well. Equally ideas suggested by the artists as by the producers, these flavors are all in service of the tradition from which the tunes arise; they just add a shading now and then.

None of which you have to know to appreciate the music, creativity, and connection Natalie and Donnell share through out the album. There is a set in tribute to Natalie’s uncle, late fiddle music great Buddy MacMaster, a Clog Medley set which brings in the flavors of Donnell’s Ontario background, and Wedding Day Jig, which the couple wrote together as a gift to give to guests at their wedding. After the spice and fast paced high energy of most of the sets, Ezrin suggested they end the album with a lullabye, and that Natalie sing it. At first reluctant as she doesn’t consider herself that much of a singer -- she’s been known to sing occasional harmony on stage but little more -- she got into the spirit of the idea. The result is the lovely traditional song Cagaran Gaolach, which Natalie sings in Scottish Gaelic.

...and that’s not quite the end, after all. There is a bonus track, The Balkan Hills set, which makes a lively and engaging full circle to the music of One and which begins with a bit of banter among the musicians, suggesting the idea of music shared, as is common in Cape Breton and in Ontario, at an informal party in the kitchen.

There is a joy, a connection to land, heritage, to family, and the spirit of sharing music that comes through clearly in these tracks. Several years back, I had the opportunity to ask Natalie to reflect on playing the music of Atlantic Canada.

"It's just in me strong, it's my favorite music. Nothing makes me feel the way I feel when I hear Cape Breton music, and I'm not talking about my own music, I'm talking about all those who have come before me and those who are my peers," Natalie MacMaster said. "When I go home and I hear a good fiddle tune, there is no music that makes me feel like that. It does many things at the same time. It makes me feel just wild, like I want to get up and dance, and at the same time it soothes me. It has a crazy effect on me. It just fills me with pure peace."

Flying notes, fast paced jigs and reels and polkas, paint can percussion and Gaelic lyrics, original music and tunes from Scotland, Ireland, the Maritimes, and elsewhere, piano, bagpipes, guitar, accordion, and of course fiddles: all those, in the hands and spirits of gifted musicians, will likely have a similar effect on the listeners of One.

Photographs courtesy of Cambridge Artist Management and Paquin Entertainment. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Sounds of Cape Breton: Mary Jane Lamond & Wendy MacIsaac
Celebrating Canada and Newfoundland: The Once
Coffee and the Mojo Hat: Neil Pearlman

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Best Music 2014

Music is about story, told through words and notes, rhythm and harmony and tone and timbre and all these things together. It is about journeys real and spiritual and imaginary. It is about connection, conversation, exploration, discovery, and trust. Take a listen to this music, the best music of 2014.

Music is conversation: conversation between artist and audience, between musicians, between those who listen and think and create music all along the way from early idea to performance to recording. Matt and Shannon Heaton decided to focus on conversation as dialogue in the songs they chose and created for the album Tell You in Earnest You will find songs from the Celtic tradition adjusted a bit, contemporary covers, a very funny original piece with an ideas from the tradition as its spark. There’s a song with a motorbike in it and a song from Thailand. Murder ballads to love songs, stories told in, well, conversation, it’s a fine project well worth your listening for the stories alone. You’ll also enjoy fine singing and great harmony work, as well as Matt’s skill on guitar and Shannon’s on flute.

Nicola Benedetti is a classical violinist, a musician in demand by concert halls across the world for her art. A musician who loves challenging herself, she is known for her mastery of music from Shostakovich to Taverner to film composer Korngold. Benendetti is also a Scot. While her musical path took her in a different direction than the jigs and reels and ballads and Burns songs of her native country, she’s always loved them.Homecoming, A Scottish Fantasy finds Benedetti pairing the Scottish Fantasy of Max Bruch -- a classical piece which draws on tunes of Scotland’s tradition and which gives the subtitle to the album -- with sets of music from Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns and tunes by iconic fiddle player James Scott Skinner along with a set of Gaelic puirt a beul and tunes, music by contemporary Scottish folk musician Phil Cunningham, a ballad from the Gaelic tradition, and to close things out, the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond. Benedetti is not alone in her journey: for the Bruch and other sections she is joined by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. The folk music finds her joining up with talented players including Phil Cunningham on accordion, Aly Bain on fiddle, Eamon Doorley on bouzouki, Duncan Chisholm on fiddle, Tony Byrne on guitar, James Macintosh on percussion, Michael McGoldrick on flute, Ewan Vernal on double bass, and Julie Fowlis on vocals and whistles. Every bit of it is brilliantly done, a true exploration of the music and of musicians joining together to add colors and ideas in service of tradition and collaboration. “This album comes from a very deep. personal place,” Benedetti has said, and that passion shows through clearly in service to the music.

The idea of being present to what moves you and calls your attention -- those things that led Benedetti to choose that sort of project -- are very present in Carrie Newcomer’s most recent recording A Permeable Life as well. Newcomer is a poet of the American heartland, drawing on the landscapes and stories of her native Indiana as well as what she brings of those to her world wide travels with her music. “Finding the sacred in the every day, that is one of the themes that draws me,” Newcomer says, “that, and being present, really present in each moment. On this album, too, there’s the idea of thresholds.” You will find those ideas spun out in the moment of bringing a cup of water to a friend, in the many meanings left by an empty chair, in thoughts on a rainy afternoon spent putting up dill beans and spiced peach jam, in a promise made on shifting light of an autumn morning, in connections and hope found in a night drive home through along a snowy road. Newcomer knows what she’s talking about; she knows how to ask good questions; she has a poet’s sense of image, and a thoughtful, beautiful way of singing as well.

Julie Fowlis also has the gift of telling story and making connection through the tools of music. I her case there’s an added element: she sings most often in Scottish Gaelic, a language that’s not widely spoken even in Scotland. Fowlis grew up with it the Outer Hebrides, and found herself increasingly drawn to learning the stories people who spoke this language told. Her interest and her passion, and her understanding come through on Gach Sgeul / Every Story. There are tunes for dance, stories of legend, work songs, traveling songs, songs of connection and kinship and place. You’ll understand, even if you do not understand the words. Fowlis is joined on the album by members of her regular touring band Eamon Doorley, Tony Byrne, and Duncan Chisholm, as well as guests including Donald Shaw and Sarah-Jane Summers.

Cara Dillon also knows well how to express story in song. Her album A Thousand Hearts includes a range of songs in English and Irish that consider aspects of love and connection. from sadness to laughter to romance to questions to trust. There are songs from the tradition -- Dillon is from Northern Ireland -- as well as contemporary pieces. Her voice anchors and guides a team of talented backing musicians to illuminate stories including The Shores of Lough Bran, My Donald, and Bright Morning Star.

Rosanne Cash has a story of journeys to tell on her recording The River & The Thread. A family connection -- the restoration of her father’s house by Arkansas State University -- drew Cash, long resident in New York, back to the south, to travels through Alabama, Mississippi, and back to Memphis where she was born. In her songs onThe River & The Thread there are people and places, stories and melodies, as haunting and as true, as real and as imagined as you may find along the deep back roads of the American south, in the past and yet today. The Long Way Home, Tell Heaven, Money Road: with titles like that, you know you have to listen. Along the way, Cash will take you on travels through words and through music, paying respect to the sources while adding her own visions. Listen...

It’s a hard road, but it fits your shoes
Son of rhythm, brother of the blues...

Lizzy Hoyt draws on landscape and family in her music, as well. In her case that’s the landscape of Alberta, in western Canada, and of Ireland, from whence her family came. An award winning songwriter, step dancer, and player of fiddle, harp, and mandolin, Hoyt focuses these talents in New Lady On the Prairie with a title song which honors the journey of emigration her great aunt made. There’s the fast paced song from French Canada, V’la l’bon vent, and from the Celtic tradition The , and original pieces which stand up alongside these. Hoyt is a singer of clarity and precision who brings these tunes to vibrant life, as she does with fiddle tunes including the original piece Jubilee Reel as well. She also takes on the often overworked song Danny Boy, giving it an understated treatment that well serves the song and adds her own stamp to it. Joining Hoyt are several musicians whose names will be familiar if you have walked the music road here before including John Reischman, Christine Hanson, and Jeremiah McDade.

The stories Christine Albert has to tell on Everything's Beautiful Now are ones of loss, change, hope, and resilience. The title track takes its words and them from things Christine’s mother in law spoke of to her in her last hours. Reflecting on this, and on other losses of friends and family in recent years. Albert has written and chosen a group of songs that recognizes pain in such changes as well as the joy and hope that come along the way through them. Austin, Texas based Albert has a a warm, inviting way with singing as well as writing: all these together make the recording one that reveals more to reflect on and enjoy with each listening.

Tony Duncan and Darrin Yazzie come from the west, too -- the southwest, of the United States. They are of the First Peoples, Apache and Navajo respectively. Tony plays flutes and Darrin is a guitarist. Drawing on Native stories and legends, the landscapes of the southwest, the rhythms and moves Tony experiences as a traditional hoop dancer, and the lives of their families for inspiration, for Singing Lights they have created a dozen pieces of instrumental music which invites both engagement and contemplation. Coyote, Dances, Singing Lights, Together We Danced, Sedona Sunrise, Nakai (Whippoorwill), Where the Wind Blows: the title themselves offer an invitation to enter this dialogue among flute, guitar, landscape, and spirit.

Engagement and contemplation are two aspects of what Hanneke Cassel offers on her album Dot the Dragons Eyes as well. Her instrument is the fiddle, and her style is that of Scotland with touches of Cape Breton and Americana now and then -- a thoroughly respectful and focused and original take on Scottish tradition, you might say. Time in China with her music led her to compose and name the title track; there’s a set of tunes from the tradition, a tunes dedicated to young people she met in Kenya, and all manner of other creative takes on the traditions of Scotland’s fiddle heritage, including The Captain, Jig for Christina, The Marathon (for Boston), and Lissa and Corey/The Sunrise.

You might guess from title of Claire Lynch’s album Holiday! that is has a seasonal winter theme. That is so, but odds are you’ll want to keep it playing at other times of year too. Lynch’s graceful, gentle yet strong soprano is a natural fit to give holiday chestnuts including Home for the Holidays, White Christmas, and Scarlet Ribbons a fresh sparkle, and this time out her band members step forward to sing lead on two songs as well, to good effect --check out Snow Day and the Hanukah song In the Window. Lynch is a gifted songwriter as well, and that talent plays in to Holiday! also. Rooted in bluegrass but equally at home in folk, swing, and country, Claire Lynch and her band offer a gathering of songs which may well become a seasonal classic.

Jerry Douglas delved deep into the roots of Americana, country, and folk with his project called Earls of Leicester. It is a tribute of sorts to bluegrass icons Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, done by a dream team band of American roots musicians comprising Tim O’Brien, Charlie Cushman, Shawn Camp, Barry Bales, and Douglas. “Flatt and Scruggs were the major influence on me when I was growing up,” Douglas says. “I was around seven year old when I first saw them... It had a huge impact on me. I remember the warmth of the auditorium, I remember the smell of the popcorn, I remember the outfits they were wearing. It’s all very vivid to me, and it’s still influencing me fifty years later.” The band takes on fourteen classics from the Flatt and Scruggs songbag, some well known, some a bit less well remembered, and infuse each of them with new energy and timeless respect for tradition. They also make a showcase as do Benedetti and friends, above, for the varied ways top notch musicians with their own careers can collaborate to brilliant effect.

Kyle Carey names the music she does Gaelic Americana. On her album North Star she draws on the American folk songbag for style with her song Casey Jones Whistle Blow, a song of dreams for a better day, and a slightly eerie song connecting Ireland and the American west and immigration called Wind Through Casper. Northern Lights, North Star, Winter Fever, June Day -- many of Carey’s original songs have to do with change, and coming to terms with that. She holds a storyteller’s line and gift in the singing of these as well as the writing, leaving space of the listener to make his or her own way into the stories. There’s also a fine cover of Across the Great Divide, and a lovely take on Sios Dhan an Abhainn/ Down to the River to Pray which Carey sings in Scottish Gaelic. Musicians who support Carey on the project include many whose names will be know if you walked along the music road before, among them Seamus Eagan, Katie McNally, and Natalie Haas.

Emily Smith is a musician who connects present day and tradition in her work as well. She is from the southwest of Scotland, and often chooses and writes songs with a connection to her home ground. Smith finds that this deep connection to landscape and history sparks ideas as she follows her career as an internationally touring musician, as well. For her album Echoes she has chosen songs ranging from the traditional ballads My Darling Boy and The Twa Sisters to the contemporary song John o’ Dreams. Jamie McClennan, Kris Drever, and Jerry Dougals are among those who sit in with Smith, whose warm, inviting voice and gift for phrasing draw the listener in to the journey.

The Alt is a project of John Doyle, Eamon O’Leary, and Nuala Kennedy each have more than enough to do with other musical involvements, but the three decided they really liked what they came up with when played together, too, and this recording is a result. It is quite a bit like sitting in on a session of an evening with three very talented and creative friends. Each of them sings, Doyle plays guitar, mandola, and bouzouki, O’Leary plays guitar and bouzouki, and Kennedy plays whistles and flutes. It’s an inviting combination of talents, well matched and met as they move among murder ballads, love songs, quiet tunes and lively ones, fine trading of lead voicing and graceful support on harmonies, through track including. The Geese in the Bog/Covering the Ground, One Morning in May, and Lovely Nancy.

Song and story, connection and conversation through music, have been part of Mary Black’s life since she was growing up in Dublin, long before she became internationally respected for her fine voice and fine song selection. You’ll find out more about that background should you read her memoir, for whichDown the Crooked Road (The Soundtrack) is, as it says a soundtrack -- of sorts. It’s a generous eighteen tracks, including many songs you may know well and several you may not have thought of for a time. As Black herself mentions it would not have been possible to include all the songs she mentioned in the book in one album, so if you know her work well, it is interesting to see what she did choose. If you are not familiar with Mary Black, this could be an excellent starting point, and certainly it makes a fine companion to reading the book. Among the songs included are Faith in Fate, Past the Point of Rescue, Colcannon (with the Black Family), Carolina Rua, I Live Not Where I Love, and Who Knows Where the Time Goes.

You could consider Chris Smither’s two disc set Still on the Levee a soundtrack of sorts, too: the twenty four track project is issued to celebrate Smither’s five decades of a life in music as a songwriters and touring musician. Long resident in New England, he returned to his native New Orleans to record new versions of some of his favorite songs. Fifty years on the road or not, Smither is in fine voice and guitar (and his trademark tapping foot) as he travels through Leave the Light On, Song About Rosalie, Another Way to Find You, and other selections that weave blues, folk, American, and country into stories that show why artists including Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris have chosen to cover his songs and sing them nightly on the road. Smither does too: fifty years on, he can still be found playing his music from Portland to Boston, from Amsterdam to London. It’s a story well told, and still in the telling.

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