Scottish Fiddles: Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas

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Scottish fiddle? Yes! Scottish fiddle with cello? Hell yeah! Okay, so maybe this is a musical thing you're not actually familiar with, so let's start at the beginning. Scottish fiddle – both Highland and Lowland – is a style of Celtic traditional music, very old, yet very much alive and contemporary, all at the same time. It ranges from the most haunting slow airs that you can imagine floating over the Highlands, to raucus strathspeys (reels) that exist for the main purpose of dancing, to tunes composed for the most Scottish of all instruments: the bagpipes.

Enter Alasdair Fraser, a Scottish fiddler since he was a wee lad, transplanted to California for a science career that didn't pan out because, well, the pipes, the pipes were calling. He had been an award-winning fiddler in Scotland since his youth, and collected a vast repertoire of tunes by Scottish fiddle legends (yes, there are Scottish fiddle legends) like Niel Gow and James Scott Skinner, and applying his own insights of the subtleties of different playing styles into his own.

The result, that he will no doubt one day take his place among those Scottish fiddle legends, comes from his seemingly effortless ability to take these ancient melodies and rhythms and forge a new perspective on them and make them sound as fresh as they were written yesterday (which in some cases, of course, they were).

His partner in all this, for many years, is the American cellist Natalie Haas, who adds a layer of depth to the music quite unlike anything that's ever been heard before they got together. The synergy of these two on fiddle and cello weaves a tapestry of competing rhythms, harmony and counterpoint. Is it traditional? Is it classical? Safe to say it probably needs a name of its own. One thing is certain though – this is a living, breathing tradition when these guys play it.

Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas will be appearing at the Irish and Cultural Heritage Center of Wisconsin (ICHC) in Milwaukee on Sunday, April 23. For ticket info visit irishculturalandheritagecenter.ticketspice.com/fraser-haas-230423, and for more info on the artists, visit alasdairfraser.com and alasdairandnatalie.com.