![]() ![]() MacMaster knows she is on the cusp of something big. Not without some steely will to go with the sweet demeanour. But a lot of things have just fallen into place." "We've tried to approach things step-by-step. "There's always been a strategy, but not as much of a strategy as it appears," MacMaster says of her career path. ![]() The doubts disappeared in 1996 when Warner Music Canada signed a distribution deal and produced No Boundaries, her first recording for a major label. Four years later, she had two more recordings under her belt, but was unsure enough about her future that she enrolled in the Nova Scotia Teacher's College in Truro in case music failed to pan out (she graduated in 1997). ![]() By 16, she was a seasoned performer who used part of her concert earnings to make her first album. She was just 9 when she received her first fiddle from another uncle living in the United States and began serving her apprenticeship in kitchens and church halls around the island. The third child of a retired pulp-mill worker and a Sears outlet clerk, she has the right lineage - her uncle, Buddy MacMaster, is the acknowledged dean of traditional Cape Breton fiddlers. MacMaster's ascent could not have come at a better time. 16 and the bizarre behaviour of Ashley MacIsaac, the punk fiddler from Creignish, N.S., with the penchant for dyed hair and crack cocaine. Lately, there's been a spate of even worse news - the freak death of John Morris Rankin in a car accident on Jan. Last November, the Rankins, who had sold two million records, split up. "We're no longer the flavour of the month," says Sherry Jones, who manages a number of Halifax-based Celtic and alternative acts. But commercial tastes have shifted, causing the musical wave that made groups like The Rankin Family of Mabou, N.S., rich and famous throughout the 1990s to subside. The talent pool is as deep as ever - a fact underscored by the roster of artists appearing on the Nova Scotia Kitchen Party, CBC-Radio's new national Saturday afternoon musical variety show broadcast from Halifax). The East Coast music scene needs a new champion. ![]() "She has the potential to become the world's next big Celtic star." "In crass commercial terms, she has the whole package," says Martin Melhuish, a Toronto-based music journalist and author. Not only is she a prodigiously talented fiddler, but onstage she manages to combine fashion-runway flash with an endearing down-home style that appeals to all kinds of audiences. "I don't even like to look at my itinerary," MacMaster says over a breakfast of eggs, bacon and home fries in Halifax. Recently, she was invited to open for the chart-topping Dixie Chicks on their North American tour. MacMaster's latest album, In My Hands, which has sold a respectable 40,000 copies south of the border since its release there in October, is getting airplay on some 50 American radio stations. If she is big in Canada, MacMaster is even bigger in other countries, where the critics are entranced and her tours sell out. These days, she's everywhere - touring Canada, flogging Tim Hortons doughnuts, performing at the Juno Awards in Toronto on March 12, and co-hosting the recent East Coast Music Awards in Sydney, N.S., where she won the prizes for female artist of the year and roots/traditional artist of the year. But MacMaster is doing just fine as the embodiment of sweetness and light. It may have seemed, with the headline-grabbing antics of Ashley MacIsaac, that gifted Cape Breton fiddlers had to have a dark side. "It was so gross - I'd be signing autographs and my frigging thumb would be bleeding. "But I stopped that at Christmas," she says. MacMaster, who, up close, has a flawless complexion to go with her cascading blond curls, even used to pick the skin around her cuticles until her fingers bled. Occasionally, she gets a little weary of having to do her trademark step dancing while playing the fiddle. Sometimes, she says things she doesn't really mean to people she cares about. The 27-year-old gets impatient when driving behind someone slow. When pressed by an interviewer for details, Canada's Celtic darling hems and haws, then comes right out with the awful truth. Sure, she goes to mass every week and calls her mom back in tiny Troy, N.S., every couple of days - no matter whether she's touring in Europe or cutting an album in Toronto. MacMaster, NatalieĬape Breton fiddling virtuoso Natalie MacMaster wants it known that she's no goody two-shoes. Natalie MacMaster's traditional Cape Breton fiddling style is based on a rich Highland Scotland repertoire from the 17th to 19th centuries (photo by Richard Beland, courtesy Natalie MacMaster). ![]()
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