A less than obvious duo — a Scottish fiddler with a 30-year career and a 25-year-old cellist from California — that has toured throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe is bringing their gentle singing and dancing melodies to the Chocolate Church Arts Center.
Fiddler Alasdair Fraser and cellist Natalie Haas will perform a concert at the center at 7:30 p.m. Sunday.
Fraser, acclaimed by the San Francisco Examiner as “the Michael Jordan of Scottish fiddling,” has a concert and recording career spanning 30 years, with a long list of awards, accolades, television credits, and feature performances on top movie soundtracks (including Last of the Mohicans and Titanic). Fraser has been sponsored by the British Council to represent
Scotland’s music internationally, and received the Scottish Heritage Center Service Award for outstanding contributions to Scottish culture and traditions.
Haas, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, wasn’t even born when Alasdair was winning national fiddle competitions on the other side of the Atlantic. She was just 11 when she first attended Fraser’s Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling School in California. Four years later, when Natalie was just 15, Fraser and Haas played their first gig together. Now regularly touring with Fraser and creating a buzz at festivals and in concert halls, she is in the vanguard of young cellists who are redefining the role of the cello in traditional music.
“Cellists are coming out of the woodwork to study with Natalie, to learn how she creates a groove and a whole chunky rhythm section,” said Fraser. “It’s inspiring to hear the cello unleashed from its orchestral shackles.”
The pair has been featured on NPR’s Performance Today, the Thistle & Shamrock, and Mountain Stage, and represented Scotland at the Smithsonian Museum’s Folklife Festival.
Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door, and may be purchased by calling the Chocolate Church box office at (207) 442-8455 or online at ChocolateChurchArts.org. The Chocolate Church Arts Center is located at 804 Washington St. in Bath.
Comments are not available on this story. Read more about why we allow commenting on some stories and not on others.
We believe it's important to offer commenting on certain stories as a benefit to our readers. At its best, our comments sections can be a productive platform for readers to engage with our journalism, offer thoughts on coverage and issues, and drive conversation in a respectful, solutions-based way. It's a form of open discourse that can be useful to our community, public officials, journalists and others.
We do not enable comments on everything — exceptions include most crime stories, and coverage involving personal tragedy or sensitive issues that invite personal attacks instead of thoughtful discussion.
You can read more here about our commenting policy and terms of use. More information is also found on our FAQs.
Show less