“In My Hands,” from 1999, introduced jazz, Latin and other elements behind MacMaster’s fiddling. MacMaster’s sense of what’s appropriate stretches well beyond a purist’s vision. It’s all based on what’s appropriate for the tune.” I’ll play the Cape Breton style but get the band to play a funk groove, something rocky or jazzy. I have a strong desire to create music outside of that tradition. It’s the core of everything I do,” she said. So while she listened to all sorts of music, she made fiddle jigs and reels the foundation of her playing.”I still play that music. The family functions that served as MacMaster’s first stage were not given to head-banging or Duran Duran, nor was her instrument suited to metal or synth-pop. Her father taught her for the first six months, then passed her along to more advanced members of the MacMaster clan. “I’d tape all the videos off MTV and watch them.”MacMaster’s instrument, since the age of 9, has been fiddle. And Troy was not so distant that it was out of the reach of MTV.”I was a child of the ’80s and I loved ’80s pop music,” said MacMaster, who performs Saturday night at the Wheeler Opera House. (Among these were Buddy MacMaster, Natalie’s uncle and a well-known fiddler himself the two collaborated on last year’s “Traditional Music from Cape Breton Island.”) Her two brothers were metal-heads, who turned MacMaster on to Ozzie Osbourne and AC/CD. All along Route 19, where she grew up, were MacMaster uncles and cousins, many of them fiddlers or step-dancers steeped in the Cape Breton style. It’s a community, a village,” said the 34-year-old MacMaster by phone, from New Mexico.Despite the remoteness – Cape Breton is some 300 miles east of the coast of Maine – MacMaster had numerous musical influences. MacMaster grew up in tiny Troy, on the Canadian island of Cape Breton. (Richard Beland)Īlthough Natalie MacMaster fits comfortably in the category of Celtic fiddler, her music has been a balancing act between breaking new ground and hewing to a traditional approach. Canadian fiddler Natalie MacMaster makes her Aspen debut Saturday at the Wheeler Opera House.
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