Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy with their children.
By Colleen Taylor
Nowadays Canadian fiddle superstar Natalie Macmaster is incomplete without her family—and I don’t just mean sentimentally. When I spoke to the fiddler about her new holiday album, “A Celtic Family Christmas,” she said that she and her husband decided they couldn’t produce their best work without their kids’ involvement. “Their contribution completes the picture for us,” she explained, “It’s not a full picture of our music without them. They’re such a huge part of our daily music patterns.” The album’s title, then, should be self-explanatory. MacMaster and husband Donnell Leahy are practicing what they preach: their album and their Christmas tour underscores the best part of the Christmas season, time spent with family.
Although her Cape Breton fiddling style often bends the parameters of traditional Celtic music, when it comes to Christmas jingles, MacMaster is a purist. She’s partial to the likes of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, rather than someone like Mariah Carey and the modern, pop Christmas singers. “I like the classic inflection in Christmas music,” she said, which is why “A Celtic Family Christmas” is full of old-time Christmas classics, from “White Christmas” to “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman,” and “Angels We Have Heard on High.”
But don’t get me wrong—“A Celtic Family Christmas” won’t bore you with the same old familiar versions of tried-and-true Christmas hits. On the contrary, this is Christmas with a Cape Breton twang. In “Angels We Have Heard On High,” for instance, MacMaster and Leahy, who hails from Ontario, sought to fill in the natural gaps in the melody with fiddle riffs and lilts. And then, MacMaster recalled, smiling, “at the end of the piece, we rip with a reel.” Likewise, the traditionally hymnal “Angels We Have Heard on High” gets very, in MacMaster’s words, “pithy” on this album, sounding like familiar Scottish airs. The holiday favorites on “A Celtic Family Christmas” are as much reimagined as they are preserved for their traditional value.
“A Celtic Family Christmas” brims with youthfulness—something for which MacMaster thanks her children. “Up on the Housetop” is her favorite track on the album, for both its youthful resonances and its youthful chorus. The song features MacMaster and Leahy’s children, chorusing and fiddling together through the upbeat lyrics. In fact, the song “Up on the Housetop” is something of a family legacy for the MacMaster-Leahy clan. Natalie remembers it as a favorite from her own childhood and one she continues to enjoy today. “It’s the kind of song I’m always in the mood for—an instant pick-me-up,” she said, “full of lightness.”
Personally, I like the track all the more now knowing the family story and maternal pride behind it. MacMaster’s voice instantly warmed when I asked her to speak about her children and their own musical endeavors. “The kids are getting older now, learning the craft,” she explained, “and they’re just so good.” It was obvious that involving them in the recording of this album and bringing them onstage for two songs every night of the Christmas tour, has been very meaningful for the fiddling mom and dad. MacMaster wanted to crate a space for the burgeoning musicians to “explore their own musicality.” I could hear a smile in her voice as she considered their own growing artistic individualities. “When they come out on stage for two moments in the show, those are my favorite moments of the night,” she said.
On top of being a touching example of musical family legacy in the making, “A Celtic Family Christmas” is simply a great album to have in your stock. It’s vibrant, jaunty, and full of Canadian cross-cultural Cape Breton and Ontarian personality. MacMaster’s contribution to Christmas fiddling is a great complement to albums like Eileen Ivers’s Christmas fiddle jam sesh, “An Nollaig,” or the more traditionally Irish “A Star in the East” from Cherish the Ladies.
Give “A Celtic Family Christmas” a listen, and preferably with your own clan there beside you.
For more about the music go to: www.nataliemacmaster.com.
