The Globe and Mail

It’s a bit before 9 o’clock on a sunny Thursday morning, and a bright, chipper Natalie MacMaster is in the chapel of the Lakefield College School in Lakefield, Ont., leading an advanced fiddle class at the Leahy Music Camp. She’s standing by the altar, fiddle in hand, with 15 fellow fiddlers, from precocious grade schoolers to grey-haired seniors, sitting in a semi-circle around her.

For most of the last half hour, she’s been teaching them a strathspey, a Scottish style of dance tune that’s common in Cape Breton, N.S., where she grew up, but relatively rare elsewhere in Canadian fiddling circles. She leads them through the tune one bar at a time, playing a few notes, then listening as the students echo it. Although she promises to have sheet music available for them later in the day, the instruction is entirely by ear, and a couple phrases take several passes before the class gets both the notes and the rhythm right.

I’m always shocked when someone of a high calibre or quality of musicianship and ability is attracted to what I do.

Once they’ve learned all 16 bars, MacMaster teaches what, to her, is the heart of the music: the dance step. “We don’t get together to play tunes,” she says. She has everyone stand, and demonstrates the kick step used to dance a strathspey. Starting with the left foot, it’s hop, out, hop, back, and then switch to the right. It’s a simple step, and one the class seems to master quickly.

But they haven’t got it quite right. “Try and make it even,” says MacMaster, who points out that they’re syncopating the step, when it should be clockwork steady. She dances barefoot, so they can hear the rhythm, and once they do the step to her satisfaction, she has them sit, and takes them through the tune again.

The playing is notably improved, although how much of that can be owed to the dancing, and how much to MacMaster’s bubbly enthusiasm, is hard to say.

There aren’t many fiddle greats who would include a bit of dance instruction in a master class, but there aren’t many fiddlers whose gifts are as singular as MacMaster’s. Internationally acclaimed for her virtuoso performances of traditional Cape Breton fiddle tunes, MacMaster, 38, has performed and recorded with some of the best in the world – not just such Celtic music giants as the Chieftains and Eileen Ivers, but stars as diverse as rock guitarist Carlos Santana, country violinist Mark O’Connor, bluegrass ace Alison Krauss, jazz banjo player Béla Fleck, and classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

“I’m always shocked when someone of a high calibre or quality of musicianship and ability is attracted to what I do,” MacMaster says after the class. She isn’t a trained musician – “The only lessons I took were from [Cape Breton fiddler] Stan Chapman, when I was 10 and 11,” she says. “But it’s not structured teaching, like Suzuki or a classical method.” – yet she knows enough about string technique to recognize that the rough-edged Cape Breton sound is miles away from, say, O’Connor’s Paganini-inspired flights of fancy.

“I think what they’re attracted to is the fact that it’s got this great feel, and that it isn’t about the other, technical side,” she says. “People maybe aren’t used to hearing that so much.”

Her husband, fiddler Donnell Leahy, has a different take on what makes MacMaster’s playing so attractive. “Honesty,” he says. “Honesty in her music. It’s confident, honest and humble. And that’s her – that’s her playing, that’s her attitude.” She is, he adds, “one of the most musical people I’ve met.”

Unlike most virtuosos, however, MacMaster leads a life that is not defined by music. She and Leahy have three children, with a fourth on the way, and they consider that just a start. “The children are our No. 1 priority,” she says. “He comes from 11 siblings, surrounded by family, and we’re very focused in that direction. We’ve always wanted to have kids, and we’re so happy that we’re able to have more than one.”