![]() ![]() That happened when an uncle in Boston, Mass., shipped up a three-quarter-sized instrument up for the MacMaster children to use. 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.” My ancestors came from the Isle of Eigg.” The music came over from Scotland in the mid-1700s. “All fiddlers will have a story to tell about why they are holding the instrument in their hands and where it came from. MacMaster’s own family landed in Cape Breton in the 1700s. The roots of fiddle music in Canada begins with the arrival of Europeans in this country. ![]() 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. But MacMaster and husband Donnell Leahy seem to manage a musical career and raising a family pretty darn well. “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. 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. ![]() “All the kids were nicely working on chores. But when ARTSFILE reached her recently, she wasn’t only thinking about music. She was also concerned with family matters. 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. More at MacMaster has been travelling across Canada for a couple of decades now and she knows how strongly connected the country is to the fiddle. Champion fiddlers MacMaster and Leahy invite you into their home for Celtic music, step-dancing, baking cookies and stories of raising their seven children, farming and Christmas traditions. The Edmonds Center of the Arts presents Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy’s “A Celtic Family Christmas” at 7:30 p.m. As long as you purchase a ticket, you can stream “A Celtic Family Christmas” as many times as you want through Dec. Watch the music video for “Please Please Snow!” on YouTube.Ĭan’t watch the show on Dec. The family of fiddlers recently recorded the single “Please Please Snow!” - Leahy’s new favorite Christmas song - which also is featured 2020’s “A Celtic Family Christmas” show and album. Most recently, Mary Frances, Michael, Clare, Julia and Alec performed with MacMaster and Leahy on the German TV variety show “Willkommen bei Carmen Nebel.” “It wasn’t intended, but then Mary Frances wanted to come on stage,” said Leahy, who performed in his youth with The Leahy Family. It helps that they’re all homeschooled by MacMaster, who has a teaching degree. MacMaster and Leahy didn’t plan to put their children on stage - they just knew it’d be harder to not take the kids on the road with them. McMaster has been playing Celtic music since she picked up the fiddle at 10 Leahy got his start at just 3 years old.Ĭhristmas is the only time their children get to perform live with Mom and Dad. ![]() The MacMaster-Leahy lineage can be traced back to Ireland, Scotland and Nova Scotia - which is “New Scotland” in Latin. The Christmas tour and TV special are both titled “A Celtic Family Christmas,” after their 2016 album of the same name.Ĭeltic music is in this family’s genes. In addition to their annual Christmas tour, MacMaster and Leahy have an accompanying TV special and are hosts of the Greenbridge Celtic Folk Fest. Husband and wife’s first collaboration album in 2015, “One,” sold over 1 million copies worldwide. They’ve shared the stage with Béla Fleck, Alison Krauss, Faith Hill, Carlos Santana, The Chieftains and Shania Twain. Together, they have a number of JUNO, East Coast Music, Canadian Country Music Association and Canadian Folk Music awards, as well as a Grammy. They dated for two years, broke up for 10, then got engaged after dating for two more months.) (Leahy asked MacMaster for a blind date after listening to one of her cassettes in 1991. When MacMaster and Leahy married in 2002, both were already stars in their own right. MacMaster and Leahy toured at Christmastime for decades before establishing “A Celtic Family Christmas.” This is the first time Canada’s King and Queen of Celtic has had to cancel a tour. “I have to laugh because all Donnell and I do is play the fiddle.” “Our children play, dance and sing,” MacMaster said. ![]()
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