Exciting News for January Meeting
Special Guest at the January 10 Workshop: Cape Breton Fiddler DOUGIE MacDONALD

Dougie MacDonald is a great traditional fiddle player. Several of this year's Fiddle Club tunes were taken from his albums, including a tune that he wrote, "Francis the Miller," one of some 80 or 90 compositions by Dougie. His earlier tapes are out of print, but he's just come out with a new one, which, hopefully, he will bring along. At this meeting's workshop, we'll get to hear Dougie play tunes including the ones in our music that were taken from his albums. We'll get a sense of both how he plays and how he approaches the music. He's been back in Cape Breton for a few years now, after having been off in Ontario working in the coal mines. Dougie is a cousin of fiddler Howie MacDonald (a great solo fiddler and member of the Rankin Family band).

- Ed Pearlman

Play With the Fiddle Club at CMAC Reception on January 17

The Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center is sponsoring a reception at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, January 17, at CMAC and has invited the Fiddle Club to perform a few sets of tunes, along with two other groups performing at CMAC this spring. This will give those who run and support CMAC an idea of what we are about. There may be a mix of general playing, a youth group and dancing. Everyone who would like to play is welcome to sign up at the next Fiddle Club meeting (Sunday, January 10). All levels and ages are invited. At the meeting on January 10, we'll run through a few ideas for music sets at the end of the afternoon workshop and in the evening - not a real rehearsal, but enough so people know what to expect.

- Ed Pearlman

December 13 meeting, and the start of Hanukkah

I think one of the great things about the workshops so far this year is that we have heard recordings of nearly every tune we've learned. One of the new tunes at December's workshop was "Mrs. Norman MacKeigan's Reel." Ed Pearlman played a recording of that tune right after a recording of "Norman MacKeigan's Strathspey" - a husband-and-wife team, in a way.

We learned by ear "Cameron's Got His Wife Again," a tune that's popular in the western isles of Scotland. We also learned two tunes in D minor: the air "Archibald MacDonald of Keppoch" and "The Sailor's Wife," a jig (with an unmarked B natural in the fourth measure!).

Last, we learned "Currie's Rambles," a slow strathspey, and "Blaydon Flats," a Shetland reel. The recording of "Currie's Rambles" was somewhat unusual in that it featured Dave MacIsaac playing not fiddle or pipes or anything you'd expect, but rather a Fender Telecaster. Maybe it's about time we had an electric guitar in our group!

Before all that, though, we ran through some of the tunes from October and November. When it came to playing the pipe tune "Pipe Major John Stewart," Ed asked us to focus on the beat - and not on all the little black notes - in order to play it in the steady, unrushed manner in which pipers play marches.

To reassure newcomers and those who haven't heard some of the tunes, Ed suggested listening, and not playing, the first time through each tune.

As we typically do at the end of a workshop, we had a session limited to the 16 tunes we have learned so far this year. The point of these sessions, Ed said, is simply to keep the music going. So try not to be shy about starting a tune: Everyone will be glad you did!

Toward the end of dinner, Neil and Lilly Pearlman lit a menorah and several of us sang to celebrate the start of Hanukkah. Speaking of dinner...

A Footnote About Food
Just another reminder about the potluck supper: In order to make it as enjoyable as possible for everyone, let's all make an effort to bring more main dishes and salads and such so we all can get in a good meal after a busy afternoon of music-making. Chips and appetizers, by the way, are not as useful as main dishes since there isn't really an appetizer "course" at our dinners and since most of us want something more substantial for dinner. Thanks!

Laura Scott kept several dancers busy throughout most of the evening session. From where I sat in the circle of musicians, I had to turn all the way around in my chair in order to watch them, but it was worth doing because it looked like they were having a lot of fun: Even when the musicians were at a loss for a moment as to what to play next, those dancers kept right on dancing.

- Phyllis Lindsay

Special Seating at Rally for Members

Now is the time to mark Saturday, May 8, on your calendar. That's the date of the 15th annual Scottish Fiddle Rally at the Somerville Theatre. Current Fiddle Club members buying tickets for friends and family (and themselves) may request seating in the members' sections: the front center of the main floor and the front of the balcony. These sections can sell out quickly, so when you get your Rally flier (forthcoming), you'll want to order your tickets right away so you won't be disappointed.

Music - and a Queen

Mary, Queen of Scots, was raised and educated in France. She came to Scotland in 1561, at age 19, to claim the throne after the death of her mother, who had ruled since 1542, the year Mary's father, King James V of Scotland, died.

Among the throng that gathered to greet Mary on her arrival were several musicians. According to historian N. Brysson Morrison, in Mary Queen of Scots (which I read last summer), a Frenchman in her train "waxed heated" about the "vile fiddles" and reportedly said, "What music and what repose for her first night!" But Mary listened politely and later sent a message thanking and praising the musicians. They took her words so much to heart, Morrison reports, that they returned on several nights to serenade her.

I enjoyed the book but was disappointed that it did not name the tunes the musicians played. As I read, I couldn't help wondering whether they might have been tunes I'm familiar with. I think it's exciting to imagine that some of the music we play in Fiddle Club these days has been pleasing people - perhaps even Mary, Queen of Scots - for centuries. And I see no reason to think it won't continue to do so for many centuries to come.

- Phyllis Lindsay

'The merry love the fiddle and the merry love to dance' (Comments on a recent CD)

This past summer, my daughter and I made two very pleasant discoveries when, within a few days' time, fiddler Bonnie Rideout's latest CD, Gi'me Elbow Room, and Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses came into our household.

Rideout - three-time U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion - is known primarily as a fiddler and not as a children's performer. (Her other albums include Celtic Circles and Soft May Morn.) But I feel she has produced a really fun introduction to Scottish music for kids. She is aided on the album by the artistry of Rod Cameron (vocals and narration), Chris Caswell (celtic harp, Highland bagpipe, penny whistle, recorder and bodhran), Al Petteway (guitar), Betty Rideout (piano), Douglas Rideout (ocarina) and Maggie Sansone (hammered dulcimer).

On Gi'me Elbow Room you'll find several common Scottish songs and nursery rhymes, including "Bobbie Shafto," "Wee Willie Winkie," "Corn Riggs," "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" and "Have You Ever Seen a Lassie?" But Rideout is a parent as well as a musician, so she made the album interesting for grown-ups too, in part through Stevenson's poetry.

She obviously admires Stevenson: Five tracks out of 20 are his poems either recited or set to music. To the tune of "Scotland the Brave," she sings "Marching Song," a poem about children marching exuberantly 'round the village. Rideout also gives an exciting rendition of Stevenson's "From a Railway Carriage." She starts out with train whistle sounds on the fiddle, then sings the poem to a tune she wrote, singing faster and faster, just as a train races along "faster than fairies, faster than witches," past "bridges and houses, hedges and ditches."

In addition to singing and playing fiddle and viola, Rideout wrote much of the music and poetry on Gi'me Elbow Room. She wrote poems for several of the tunes and tunes for several of the poems - including W.B. Yeats' "Fiddler From Dooney," from which I drew the headline for this article.

Some of the cuts are quite pensive, especially the narrated poems set to quiet music. While they might end up being of more interest to grown-ups than kids, I don't think there's anything wrong with a wide range of moods in children's music. All in all, though, Gi'me Elbow Room is upbeat, creative and fun.

But you're better off taking the recommendation of a real expert: My daughter asks to hear it over and over. Gi'me Elbow Room is available from Maggie's Music at 410-268-3394.

- Phyllis Lindsay