News
Debut Album Released by Aberdeen Music Graduate, Nicola Auchnie
The fiddle music of Scotland, with its roots in eighteenth-century dance music, has been in continuous transmission for centuries.
Bennachie, the debut album of Glenfiddich fiddle champion and University of Aberdeen Music graduate, Nicola Auchnie, pays homage to the 'Golden Age' of the 1700s while at the same demonstrating how alive the tradition remains, with well-known tunes by the master fiddler-composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries included alongside those more recently composed by our modern-day masters. In addition, the album features a Music Hall number performed solo by pianist, Maureen Rutherford, Scots songs by Burns and others, sung by baritone, Paul Tierney, and an exotic Hungarian dance for fiddle and piano, making for a refreshingly diverse programme of traditional and folk-inspired music. The very title of the album locates it in North-East Scotland, the crucible of an indefatigable fiddle style made popular worldwide around the turn of the twentieth century by James Scott Skinner, with later proponents including Hector MacAndrew, Bill Hardie, Douglas Lawrence, and Paul Anderson, whose 'Farewell to St Kilda' is included on the album. Nicola's powerful and fluent interpretations, ably and tastefully supported by Mo on the ivories, demonstrate her deep understanding of the repertoire and style, exhibited also by the self-penned tunes chosen to conclude the album. Copies are currently on sale at Morgan’s Music (Inverurie) and Scotch Corner (Turriff), or from Nicola directly via email (nicola@ceilidhmor.com).
Ronnie Gibson
07 January 2013