![]() “They have to do sound check and they have get ready to play,” he said. Leahy said the live performances are learning experiences as well. “So the audience feels they’re getting a bonus in the show, and this gives the kids a reason to improve their playing.” “We see that the kids have a lot to offer, and people want to hear them,” MacMaster said. “She began practicing more on the fiddle and on her dancing, and by then our second child, Michael, who was 2, saw what she was doing things grew from there.”Īlthough Leahy and MacMaster don’t feature their children in all of their shows, they do know how important it is for the youngsters to perform. “That was a good motivator for her,” MacMaster said. It was, we thought, a harmless minute or two, but the crowd loved it.”Īfter the performance, MacMaster and Leahy told Mary Frances that if she kept practicing she could do it again. “We saw she wanted to come up so bad, so we let her do it. “We were playing at a place that had a casual environment,” MacMaster said. One night, the couple caved to their daughter’s wishes. We wanted to teach her that she had to earn that spot on stage.” “We said no, because we were very confident that we didn’t want to have her on stage. “When she was three, she started learning step dancing and wanted to go on stage with us,” MacMaster said. ![]() It started with their first born, Mary Frances. In the past few years, MacMaster and Leahy have added a new dynamic - children - to some of their live performances. ![]() “In the arc of years of experience, you get to the point that you allow what you hear to influence your rhythms and how to blend everything.” “When you listen well, you focus on what the other person is doing, but also focus on what you’re doing yourself as well,” she said. MacMaster said part of the secret of blending the styles came through listening to each other. “When we wrote a piece together, our styles would come together in a better mix,” he said. The couple found writing songs together helped with playing together. The reason was we’d cover up and step on each other’s nuances.” “Natalie would play a traditional Cape Breton piece and then I’d play the same piece in my own style and we would clash. “When we first started playing together, we didn’t sound very good,” he said. “We are both challenged to ‘keep up,’ shall we say.”īlending their styles took some time, according to Leahy. “When I play with Natalie, it’s not two Cape Breton fiddlers playing,” Leahy said. She appears in concert with her husband in Sarnia April 1 and in Chatham May 12.Those different styles complement each other, he said. March 19, in London March 20, Toronto March 21, Peterborough March 22, Kingston March 24 and Ottawa March 26. I just love it.”įor tour dates visit and look for MacMaster and Leahy on a national Christmas tour with their kids in November and Dates It is still a thrill to perform or to sit down with my fiddle and have an idea about a tune to write. As an artist over the years making music and writing it just never stops. “Over the years I think we’ve gotten better mostly at listening to one another while we play but also creating arrangements so that it highlights one another’s music.”Ī: “Musically speaking it’s always a growth, which I love. “There was no pressure on us to do something together other than the pressure just created by the two of us wanting to record together.” With Natalie and Donnell as one entity there was nothing, it didn’t really exist,” she said. I have been doing about 100 shows a year for the last 10 years but as far as recording, with the Natalie McMaster brand and the Leahy brand, both of us had reasons to record, bands and tours booked and record companies and agents and all that. Q: Why did it take so long to get together on your first album One, released in April 2015?Ī: “I’ve just been either pregnant or nursing. They dated for two months, he proposed and they were married five months later when she was 30. He was in town and he called me and said ‘I’m back in town do you want to have dinner?'” “We dated for two years and then we broke up for 10 years,” MacMaster said referring to their young ages as the main reason for the decade-long pause.Ī: “Same thing. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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