Fiddler Maggie embarks on a new stage of her career
iar to audiences at home: Shetland fiddler.
So impressed was American old-time singer and multi-instrumentalist Bruce Molsky when he heard Adamson in Shetland recently that he has invited her to open his Edinburgh concert this weekend with her duo partner, guitarist Brian Nicholson. The duo will also be appearing at the inaugural Edinburgh Guitar and Music Festival, supporting Donnie Munro.
There’s Adamson family history in neither sailing nor fiddling, although Maggie’s grandfather used to go out fishing in his boat. She just liked the look of what she saw and went for it in both instances, and she has the distinction of winning the Glenfiddich Fiddle Championships, the championship of champions, two years in succession.
“You can hardly miss the fiddle in Shetland,” she says. “And when I was eight I saw all these people playing. I liked the sound and I liked the tunes and I just thought, I want to be one of these people. So my mum bought me a fiddle and I just seemed to take to it.”
Within a few months she was playing onstage with
Jamie Cullum’s Momentum
another 40 fiddlers. “You couldn’t hear me but it got me comfortable with the idea of playing in front of
Review
READERS of these pages will be familiar with the artistic roll call of honour that has helped make A Play, A Pie and A Pint, so popular. It’s fitting then, that to celebrate its landmark 300th production this week’s PPP should feature a “new” play from the Makar, Liz Lochhead, first broadcast as part of the Stanley Baxter Playhouse, and now brought to the stage under director Marilyn Imrie.
The piece is a bittersweet comedy dealing with themes of ageing, love and, loss, set on Burns Night in a sheltered housing complex. Here, two chalk-and-cheese elderly residents, recently widowed, staunch socialist, John (Dave Anderson), and borderline dementia case, Nettie (Ann Scott Jones), are brought into each other’s orbit, with Robert Pettigrew’s silent, piano playing, resident offering his own musical narrative accompaniment.
When John and Nettie argue over Burns – for John the Bard was a man of the people and libertine, for Nettie a skirt-chasing romantic – they come across as equals. But the hot-water bottle in Nettie’s fridge suggest a far more fragile soul, caught in a hinterland of confusion.
John is clearly devoted to the memory of his dead wife, but as the play progresses to its Ae Fond Kiss finale, you get the sense that forming another strong emotional studying for her classical grades while learning the Shetland style with Alan Gifford, whose son Andrew plays with leading Shetland band Fiddlers’ Bid.
“I’ve always enjoyed different kinds of music,” she says, “and I find that the traditional and classical styles complement each other. If you listen to Scott Skinner, there was a lot of classical technique in his playing as well as the strathspey style.”
In her early teens Adamson joined the Swing Fiddles, playing jazz.When the other girls in the group, attachment might not be beyond him.
Ann Scott Jones is a joy as Nettie, bringing a real touching warmth to the part. And while Lochhead’s writing here may not have the poetic force of some of her other work, her merry muse manages to touch base with Burn’s main preoccupations, from religion to love, with both wit and humanity. all a bit older, went off to university, she and guitarist Brian Nicholson were all that was left. It’s been a rewarding partnership. They made their first disc when Adamson was 15 and there have been a further three releases. When Adamson moved to Glasgow from the former crofting village of Fladdabister to study, she found it not so much a culture shock as a relief to be able to play and get home the same night.
Taking the RCS’s classical music course rather than Scottish music has allowed her to keep her options open for the future. She enjoys orchestral work as her gigs with Nicholson.
“I just want to play,” she says. “I don’t want to tie myself down to any particular style. That’s why the duo with Brian works so well: we don’t always agree about a tune’s merits but when we find something we both enjoy we work on it until we find a way of playing it that suits us.”