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Nov 25 2009
Scotsman Interview
Taken from the scotsman.com :
Interview: Fraser Fifield, musician
Published Date: 25 November 2009
FRASER FIFIELD'S music may have travelled a long way, both stylistically and geographically, from the Highland pipe tunes he learned in his Aberdeenshire boyhood to embrace jazz and classical elements, but traditional music, he insists, remains the touchstone of his creativity.
Equally fluent on pipes, saxophone, low whistle and, these days, the plangent Bulgarian kaval, Fifield, 33, is one of four nominees in the Instrumentalist of the Year category of the 2009 Scots Trad Music Awards, the annual award ceremony and gala concert which are being held at the DG One leisure complex in Dumfries this coming weekend. The other nominees in the instrumentalist category are the Skye-based saxophonist Nigel Hitchcock and fiddlers Patsy Reid and Lauren MacColl.
Fifield's jazz-inflected approach is distinctly eclectic, reflecting time spent in the ranks of folk-rockers Wolfstone and the North-east folk band Old Blind Dogs, as well as a continuing involvement with Scots-Latin fusionistas Salsa Celtica, maverick classicists McFall's Chamber and his recent fruitful collaboration with Bulgarian musicians in the album Traces of Thrace. All of it, however, "relates entirely" to his roots, he explains.
"I'm aware that my opinion may be completely different from other people's – that's the beauty of music, isn't it?" he says. "It unites and divides – but for me the music I started learning when I was nine years old remains at the core of everything I do.
"My passion is creating new music, in the moment, in improvising and reacting to other musicians, which are skills not normally associated with traditional music. But the feeling of that music is, for me, totally congruous with the traditional music I grew up learning. It's all the one path from the word go."
An ongoing musical continuum, then, and it's one that is currently keeping Fifield busy. He released his well-received current album, Stereocanto (Tanar Records), last month, based on his current quartet of long-term playing partner guitarist Graeme Stephen, bassist Mario Caribe and drummer Alyn Cosker, sax, pipes or breathy low whistle sounding out amid drifts of electronic sound and sampled beats (plus contributions from fiddler Peter Tickell and his violinist sister, Vickie Fifield).
He would have been at the awards ceremony in Dumfries anyway, in his role as jobbing musician, playing with the Donnie Munro Band. The following day, he's in Findhorn with Salsa Celtica, while last Saturday he was at Edinburgh's Broughton High School to see students from Scotland's four centres of excellence in music – City of Edinburgh Music School at Broughton, Douglas Academy, Aberdeen City Music School and Plockton High School – premiere a composition of his.
Based on traditional forms, it's called The Black Ship and is based a tune of his recorded by Chris Stout and Catriona MacKay. Would the composition, for large ensemble incorporating bagpipes, strings, clarsach and piano, tax the young players? "I very much hope not," laughs Fifield, talking before the Broughton concert. He lives in the picturesque Fife village of Ceres, and, as we talked, was about to head north-west to the Plockton school, home of the centre of excellence for traditional music, for a rehearsal with some of the students. Fifield is due to undergo what should prove a stimulating learning experience of his own early next year, when he joins seven other young musicians for a week in Kent in a career development initiative for young jazz musicians, Take Five, run by the Serious Music agency and led by the renowned English saxophonist John Surman. It's a safe bet that none of the other young musos selected for the course will be toting bagpipes.
There's fusion of a different sort elsewhere in the Trad Awards, which are sponsored by MG Alba, the Gaelic media agency. In the Album of the Year category, this year's recordings by such seasoned names as Fiddler's Bid, Julie Fowlis and Tony McManus are being challenged by a fourth nominee, Pur, the duo of young Gaelic singer and harpist Katie Mackenzie and North-east singer and fiddler Shona Donaldson, with a novel offering – a collection of Burns songs rendered in Scots and Gaelic.
The Lassies' Reply, on the MacDug label, sees these particular lassies forsaking their instruments to concentrate on the singing, with settings by producer Irvin Duguid provided by members of McFall's Chamber and a clutch of traditional musicians such as Anna Massie on guitar, Hamish Napier on whistles and Mary Ann Kennedy on clarsach.
The arrangements may sometimes verge on the lush, but it's intriguing to hear the familiar strains of Ae Fond Kiss coming over in Gaelic (Aon Phòg Ghràidh) in what must be one of the more original musical responses to Homecoming Year. The ethos is perhaps encapsulated in the neatly alternating Gaelic and Scots lines of I'm O'er Young to Marry Yet – putting one in mind of the old "macaronic" songs which emerged from areas such as Highland Perthshire and along the drove roads, where Gaelic and Scots cultures met and mingled.
"I think maybe people have forgotten about that," says Mackenzie, "and they tend to keep Gaelic and Scots separate, whereas they can work together. MacDug (the Dingwall studio run by Duguid and Mackenzie's mother, the singer Fiona J Mackenzie] approached us because it was the Year of Homecoming and wanted to do something a wee bit different. Burns wrote songs about the Highlands, he used Gaelic melodies for his songs, so we thought, why not, and it worked out really well."
The duo's name, Pur, plays on the Gaelic for "sister" and the English "pure" as in young and fresh. The album came out only a couple of months ago and the pair are fairly gobsmacked at it being nominated, alongside such heavyweight folk names. With a Burns Night gig now guaranteed at Celtic Connections in January, Mackenzie and Donaldson, who met when they were both students at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, will be taking their respective roads south, from Glasgow and Aberdeenshire, for Burns country, Dumfries, and Saturday's awards ceremony.
• For further details and a full list of nominations, go to www.handsupfortrad.co.uk/tradmusicawards
Fifield's jazz-inflected approach is distinctly eclectic, reflecting time spent in the ranks of folk-rockers Wolfstone and the North-east folk band Old Blind Dogs, as well as a continuing involvement with Scots-Latin fusionistas Salsa Celtica, maverick classicists McFall's Chamber and his recent fruitful collaboration with Bulgarian musicians in the album Traces of Thrace. All of it, however, "relates entirely" to his roots, he explains.
"I'm aware that my opinion may be completely different from other people's – that's the beauty of music, isn't it?" he says. "It unites and divides – but for me the music I started learning when I was nine years old remains at the core of everything I do.
"My passion is creating new music, in the moment, in improvising and reacting to other musicians, which are skills not normally associated with traditional music. But the feeling of that music is, for me, totally congruous with the traditional music I grew up learning. It's all the one path from the word go."
An ongoing musical continuum, then, and it's one that is currently keeping Fifield busy. He released his well-received current album, Stereocanto (Tanar Records), last month, based on his current quartet of long-term playing partner guitarist Graeme Stephen, bassist Mario Caribe and drummer Alyn Cosker, sax, pipes or breathy low whistle sounding out amid drifts of electronic sound and sampled beats (plus contributions from fiddler Peter Tickell and his violinist sister, Vickie Fifield).
He would have been at the awards ceremony in Dumfries anyway, in his role as jobbing musician, playing with the Donnie Munro Band. The following day, he's in Findhorn with Salsa Celtica, while last Saturday he was at Edinburgh's Broughton High School to see students from Scotland's four centres of excellence in music – City of Edinburgh Music School at Broughton, Douglas Academy, Aberdeen City Music School and Plockton High School – premiere a composition of his.
Based on traditional forms, it's called The Black Ship and is based a tune of his recorded by Chris Stout and Catriona MacKay. Would the composition, for large ensemble incorporating bagpipes, strings, clarsach and piano, tax the young players? "I very much hope not," laughs Fifield, talking before the Broughton concert. He lives in the picturesque Fife village of Ceres, and, as we talked, was about to head north-west to the Plockton school, home of the centre of excellence for traditional music, for a rehearsal with some of the students. Fifield is due to undergo what should prove a stimulating learning experience of his own early next year, when he joins seven other young musicians for a week in Kent in a career development initiative for young jazz musicians, Take Five, run by the Serious Music agency and led by the renowned English saxophonist John Surman. It's a safe bet that none of the other young musos selected for the course will be toting bagpipes.
There's fusion of a different sort elsewhere in the Trad Awards, which are sponsored by MG Alba, the Gaelic media agency. In the Album of the Year category, this year's recordings by such seasoned names as Fiddler's Bid, Julie Fowlis and Tony McManus are being challenged by a fourth nominee, Pur, the duo of young Gaelic singer and harpist Katie Mackenzie and North-east singer and fiddler Shona Donaldson, with a novel offering – a collection of Burns songs rendered in Scots and Gaelic.
The Lassies' Reply, on the MacDug label, sees these particular lassies forsaking their instruments to concentrate on the singing, with settings by producer Irvin Duguid provided by members of McFall's Chamber and a clutch of traditional musicians such as Anna Massie on guitar, Hamish Napier on whistles and Mary Ann Kennedy on clarsach.
The arrangements may sometimes verge on the lush, but it's intriguing to hear the familiar strains of Ae Fond Kiss coming over in Gaelic (Aon Phòg Ghràidh) in what must be one of the more original musical responses to Homecoming Year. The ethos is perhaps encapsulated in the neatly alternating Gaelic and Scots lines of I'm O'er Young to Marry Yet – putting one in mind of the old "macaronic" songs which emerged from areas such as Highland Perthshire and along the drove roads, where Gaelic and Scots cultures met and mingled.
"I think maybe people have forgotten about that," says Mackenzie, "and they tend to keep Gaelic and Scots separate, whereas they can work together. MacDug (the Dingwall studio run by Duguid and Mackenzie's mother, the singer Fiona J Mackenzie] approached us because it was the Year of Homecoming and wanted to do something a wee bit different. Burns wrote songs about the Highlands, he used Gaelic melodies for his songs, so we thought, why not, and it worked out really well."
The duo's name, Pur, plays on the Gaelic for "sister" and the English "pure" as in young and fresh. The album came out only a couple of months ago and the pair are fairly gobsmacked at it being nominated, alongside such heavyweight folk names. With a Burns Night gig now guaranteed at Celtic Connections in January, Mackenzie and Donaldson, who met when they were both students at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, will be taking their respective roads south, from Glasgow and Aberdeenshire, for Burns country, Dumfries, and Saturday's awards ceremony.
• For further details and a full list of nominations, go to www.handsupfortrad.co.uk/tradmusicawards
Nov 18 2009
"an album that’s jazz, rock, a bit folk, a bit dance – and wholly amazing"
R2 (Rock and Reel) Magazine, Nov/Dec issue 2009
‘Stereocanto’ Reviewed by Dai Jeffries
4 stars
Wolfstone, Old Blind Dogs and Salsa Celtica: that’s quite a CV that Fraser Fifield has put together.His fourth solo album, Stereocanto, will allow him to tear it up and say, “You want to know what I can do? Listen to this.”
To his pipes, low whistle and soprano sax and kaval, Fraser has added synth programming. He’s aquired the services of a guitarist (Graeme Stephen) and drummer (Alyn Cosker) who can rock but also play with great subtlety, and recorded an album that’s jazz, rock, a bit folk, a bit dance – and wholly amazing. Strings from Vicky Fifield and Peter Tickell and bass from Mario Caribe add more shades and textures but at the heart of the record is Fraser having what sounds like the time of his life. Even ‘Wrath and Love’, which borrows from a piobaireachd by Donald MacCrimmon, barely contains the energy beneath its mournful beauty.
It won’t be to everyone’s taste, of course, and, in fairness, the strange synthesised burblings that kick off most of the tracks are probably unnecessary and are quickly submerged when the organic music starts. But if you would normally run screaming at the ‘jazz’ and ‘fusion’, relax and immerse yourself in the joy of music making that bursts out of this record.
