Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've been hearing fiddle music since I was in the womb, I'm sure.
I basically say I'm on tour all the time, because one tour goes into the next.
Celtic music will always be around, even if with the mainstream crowds it dies out.
It's quite a job, so to speak, when you can really be with your child for 21 out of 24 hours.
I am a very musical person. I love music, and I don't just love Cape Breton fiddling, although it's my favorite.
When I appear onstage, that's my departure from Momhood - and I transform into Natalie MacMaster: the entertainer, the fiddler, the performer.
There's some places where, I don't know if they're fiddle fans, or Natalie fans or if they just love Celtic music, but there's some places where there's just awesome crowds.
I’m very proud to say that Buddy MacMaster is my uncle. He gives credibility to what I do and I’m glad I can carry that MacMaster name because he has created such a good name.
When you return to the same area a few times, you get that frequent rapport with the public and the fans of the music along with having a certain warmth when you walk onstage.
There are people that appreciate the music for its musical value and there are people that will always think that it should be reserved as an expression for people who grew up with it.
I love jazz and pop rock and country. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Anne Murray - if I hear something really great I want to be a part of it.
I love jazz and pop rock and country. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Anne Murray - if I hear something really great... I want to be a part of it.
Sometimes when I teach a student something that I think is really simple, I realize I'm teaching them something they can do 90 percent of really easily and the last 10 percent is going to take them 10 years.
I've kind of codified certain things for myself, rhythmic patterns and mechanical ways of using the bow to create layers of rhythm. What I'm trying to do is to create a complete piece of music on one instrument.
Living in Cape Breton, it's really all about fiddle music, so it's not like there were other instruments out there that tempted me and it was like I had to decide which one. It was automatically fiddle, because it's the predominant instrument in Cape Breton Island.
My grandfather and my dad's brothers and my dad all worked in construction. It's the whole cultural thing, you know, your parents want you to go to the next level of whatever, and I decided that I ought to be an architect. I can't tell you why. And I tried, and I had no aptitude for it.
To propel our Louisiana culture into the future seems to be quite a task, but if one lives for the music as Cedric does, the path seems effortless. These songs may well be early brushstrokes of a life's worth of possibilities, not only for himself, but also for the identity survival of a culture.
'In My Hands,' the title track, is my very first vocal attempt, and I'm not a singer as such. But I've always wanted to express myself vocally on my albums, and I don't really have much of a capability for singing. The strength is in, I think, the lyrics and just speaking. It just comes from inside.
My uncle Buddy MacMaster is one of the greatest fiddlers Cape Breton has ever produced, and we've produced a lot of them! His fellow fiddlers owe him a huge debt, for he has greatly influenced and inspired all of us. He makes you want to dance; he can bring tears to your eyes. Anyone who likes Cape Breton fiddle - no, anyone who likes fiddling - needs to own this album
The way you hold the bow, the way that violinists are trained to produce a note, is really different. I'm not an expert in classical music. I don't want to say something that ends up in print and somebody comes running after me with a shovel, but they're taught for each note to stand alone in a very deliberate kind of way, which is really different than how notes are strung together in old-time music to create rhythm.
There are things about how a note sounds on a violin that are really analogous to the human voice - you have a frequency and the air, and then you have a timbre which really is overtones - and making those things work together is one thing. The other thing is mechanical: If you can use your hands and arms to create sound on a fiddle, then learning to sing with it is like adding a third body part. And it's all training.