Highland Soles and a Celtic Colours video
Note: Posts about Scottish-related music, travel and events will appear on Mondays, featuring mostly stories and photos from our music & walking tours in Scotland, and updated articles about all aspects of Scottish music (“MusicScapes”).
Sporadically, a post such as this one will appear from the Events section. Here we’ll tell about events or items accessible from anywhere, such as online happenings, podcasts, recordings and publications, as well as some live events, especially those featuring members of Highland Soles (shout-out to those who signed up for the Highland Soles email list over the past 20 years!). This band includes fiddler Ed Pearlman, dancer Laura Scott, and their family of musicians and dancers (Neil, Lillie, Jesse). You can see many older videos of music and dance, as well as special performances by top Scottish musicians at the Fiddle Rally held in Boston, and some performances of the great Scottish singer Tony Cuffe. Recordings involving Highland Soles musicians can be found at Paddledoo Music.
Neil Pearlman is now an internationally known pianist, stepdancer, mandolinist, and podcaster; he’ll provide a few guest posts here about his fascinating doings. In fact, he’s the main reason for the timing of this particular post…
For one more week, until October 31, you can view videos of many of the livestreamed concerts from the Celtic Colours International Festival this year. You’ll hear great music as well as sights and sounds of beautiful Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. (Note that even though some livestreamed videos may be taken down, lots of others from this and previous years will remain for all to view.)
One of Neil’s new projects is the Pine Tree Flyers, a band bringing old traditional New England contradance tunes to the concert stage. In addition to Neil on piano, the band includes fiddler Katie McNally, guitarist Owen Marshall, and accordionist Emily Troll. They got lots of standing O’s in Cape Breton, and one of their concerts was livestreamed — you’ll enjoy the whole show; their part starts at 1hr:27min. (You may need to click “Watch on YouTube” at lower left, as Google is trying to get people to sign in before watching YouTubes.)
Neil has hosted an amazing podcast called Trad Cafe available online and on a number of podcast apps. It currently features nearly 70 interviews of great traditional musicians. At the beginning and end of each hourlong conversation is a musical set between the guest and Neil. TradCafe is also sponsoring recordings, as Neil goes increasingly into the studio to create great audio and video of his unique piano style, often with a guest musician.
Last week, Neil taught and performed at Katie McNally’s Massachusetts fiddle camp, “The Boston States,” and just this weekend they hosted a concert sponsored by WGBH’s Brian O’Donovan, the long time radio host of A Celtic Sojourn and its associated concerts. Brian was not well enough, due to a recent chemo treatement, to emcee the concert, so Neil and Katie were asked to fill in there as well as perform. One of the duos in the show was Neil with the great Shetland fiddler Kevin Henderson, whose masterful album, Burden Lake, can be streamed on Bandcamp.
