5/17/2023 0 Comments Natalie macmaster tour 2022Q: What is the joy you find in working together?Ī: The joy of being with the family and traveling and living together while on tour. It’s a way to get into the community and raise money, and a way for us to keep in touch with the theaters. They are selling the tickets and say they are presenting Natalie and me. Theaters are presenting the tour almost like we were coming to town. Natalie and I have been touring together for five to seven years.Ī: We recognized that theaters were struggling and decided to do a tour to help them out. I and my 10 siblings toured as the group Leahy and I still tour with my own groups. I grew up in Ontario, but my mother was from Cape Breton and my father was from Ireland. She comes from Cape Breton Island, off Nova Scotia, which has an unique culture in Scottish music that came from the 1600s, and grew up playing traditional music. Leahy took some time out his busy schedule to answer a few questions, which are lightly edited for clarity.Ī: Natalie has been playing fiddle since she was 9. The Case of the Mysterious Squabbyquash (ft.Speaking from their home in Ontario, Canada, Leahy said the virtual concert will include their children: Mary Frances, 15 Michael, 13 Clare, 11 Julia, 9 Alec 8 Sadie, 6 and Maria, 2, “causing a lot of mischief” in addition to showing off their talent on fiddle, accordion, piano, guitar, and song and dance. True-life stories in the entertainment world (or anywhere) don’t come more remarkable than that. MacMaster and Leahy are as dynamic working together as they were working apart, which is why they have fans like Shania Twain and The Chieftains, an audience that stretches from Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Sydney, Australia. 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 he from the legendary Leahy family of Ontario, an intergenerational musical act that toured the world. 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.
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