![]() Where: Monomoy Regional High School, 75 Oak St., Harwich Presented by: the Harwich Cranberry Arts & Music Festival What: “Visions of Cape Breton and Beyond: A Celtic Family Celebration” We wrestle with the best way to hang on to the good.” We all have the same struggles, poor, rich, hermit or famous. Asked how she keeps mind, body, soul, family, marriage and career together, she answers, “I don’t do it,” instead giving credit to practicing her Catholic faith. MacMaster has four honorary doctorates, including a doctorate of divinity from the Atlantic School of Theology in Nova Scotia. “Something exciting came up today which made me throw the kids’ schedule out the window: The cows got out at a nearby farm, and they need to be chased in by horse.” The MacMaster-Leahy family now lives on a farm with 100 head of beef cattle, and four horses. Music was also a family tradition for Leahy: He is the son of a fiddle-playing father from Ontario and a step-dancing mother from Cape Breton. She took some formal lessons, but mostly picked up the fiddling from her renowned uncle, musician Buddy MacMaster by listening to cassettes of traditional music and from her dad "who doesn’t play, but is a great influence." In her early years, she says, local farmers and miners would hold “ceilidh” social gatherings, where people would “tell stories, sing, dance, eat and play music.” ![]() I immediately learned ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’ and I’ve been playing ever since." “The full-sized violin was too big for me. MacMaster started playing fiddle at age 9 when a relative from the U.S. The tunes, she says, are “tonal, atonal, danceable.” We’re not mushing the styles together but creating a new sound, which has its own life, different than what we play separately. The two will play, individually and together, instrumental versions of traditional and new compositions, including music off their new CD “One.” The duets composed by Leahy, MacMaster says, “are evolving into an amalgam of what we do. She and Leahy are backed by a band of piano, bagpipes, drums, bass and guitar. “We don’t bring our kids all the time, so this should be a special surprise for the audience,” MacMaster says. When she and Leahy call this a “family” concert, they mean it: For their three-week tour that stops in Harwich, the couple will bring their six children: two boys and four girls ranging in age from 18 months to 9 years. With the up and down, each note is emphasized. The bowing is more up and down as opposed to slurring, where you can play two or more notes up, up, up smoothly. “What sets apart our music is the rhythm, driving rhythm. “Those who are not versed in fiddling, to them it sounds all the same, but there are big differences in the bowing and fingering,” she says. The fiddling is unique, she says, compared to other folk styles. “Mine is mostly derived from Scottish music of the mid-1700s." Cape Breton is an island that is part of Nova Scotia in Canada, and what’s called the Cape Breton tradition has Scottish, Irish, English, Micmac and Basque roots, with some French influence, too. "I am proud of the Cape Breton tradition,” MacMaster says by phone. ![]() Their tour shows how the two have blended their styles. In 2002, she married Donnell Leahy, who has been the front-man for more than 15 years of the family-based group Leahy. “No single artist has done more for popularizing Cape Breton fiddle music than Natalie MacMaster,” says the Harwich organization in a press release, describing the performer and composer who has been recording and touring for more than three decades. “But when I heard these two, they floored me.” “Not much makes my jaw drop,” says Bob Weiser, a WOMR radio host and producer of this and many concerts. Award-winning folk-fiddle royalty Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy will perform a Celtic concert in Harwich Monday, and it was an easy decision to have their “Visions of Cape Breton and Beyond: A Celtic Family Celebration” as the second show in a community series by Harwich Cranberry Arts & Music Festival.
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