Natalie MacMaster, Tuesday, April 2 at 8 p.m. at North Vancouver's Centennial Theatre. Tickets, $48.50, visit centennialtheatre.com.
REFLECTING on her 30 years as a fiddler, Natalie MacMaster says it feels as if she's "lived 10 lives just through music."
"I'm in a different age of life now," she says. "For the first 20 years of that, playing, it was really about me and my music. And then I got married 10 years ago and life changed. You're no longer living for yourself, you're living for your husband. And then seven years ago we had our first child and now we have five of them and now it's all about the kids."
While MacMaster's family life may keep her closer to home these days as her role as a wife and mother comes first, that's not to say she's had to put her passion for traditional music on the backburner. Lucky for MacMaster, music continues to play an important role in her home. Her husband, Donnell Leahy (a member of the acclaimed Canadian family folk act Leahy), is also a fiddler and their children are exuding both a natural talent and voracious appetite for their parents' music, learning to play and step dance themselves. Their two eldest, Mary Frances, 7, and Michael, 5, have even started joining MacMaster on stage.
"Nothing, nothing, nothing delights my heart more than to see them playing music," she says.
MacMaster's three decades of music-making was recently honoured at the East Coast Music Awards, held in Halifax, N.S., March 10, where she received a 25th Anniversary Award. MacMaster and 12 other artists - including her cousin Ashley MacIsaac, Great Big Sea, Rita McNeil and The Rankin Family - received the anniversary award, which paid tribute to their respective extensive ECMA wins over the years.
MacMaster also won an award for Traditional Instrumental Recording of the Year for her latest release, Cape Breton Girl, bringing her to 11 albums and 11 ECMAs, after winning her first as a teenager.
"My first East Coast Music Award, to me, meant more than the Order of Canada, meant more than Junos, Grammy nominations, anything, because I was so young and it was my first award of any kind and it was a big, big, huge deal," she says, reached last week, the morning after a performance in Logan, Utah.
MacMaster was grateful for the nod, as well as the opportunity to perform, her first time being involved in the ECMAs in a number of years, giving her a chance to reconnect with her peers.
"(I was) proud to go back and proud to play and proud to be a Cape Breton fiddler," she says.
MacMaster and Leahy currently make their home in his hometown of Lakefield, Ont., raising their children on a cattle farm. While music is a constant in their home, their children take precedence over their careers, she says.
"It really doesn't matter to me if I ever play another show again provided that my kids' needs are met, provided that they're thriving," says MacMaster. "As long as they're thriving and happy, mommy's good to go. But if there's anything hindering them or holding them back, or if me playing causes any interruption in their lives in a negative way, then it's no good. So your priorities definitely shift.
"For my husband and I, we really feel like this lifestyle of travelling with the kids and them performing in the shows and a very heavy music-based lifestyle, and home schooling and all those things that we do, we really feel that it's beneficial for our family so that's why we do it," she says.
Growing up in a musical home, MacMaster is pleased to be able to offer the same creative and culturally stimulating environment to her own children.
"Understanding music that intimately, it's such a treasure to hold for your whole life," she says.
Being a musician teaches lessons about hard work, discipline and patience, she says, adding, "You can't just snap your fingers and (you're) a fiddler."
In addition, playing music together is helping MacMaster and Leahy instill a sense of family, community and tradition in their offspring.
"Those are very important values, especially this day and age, and they get that from celebrating the music in a home with family.
We carry on those traditions. I want them to receive all that. There's great value in that just for their own sense of who they are (and) their own sense of worth."
Despite their shared passion and decade of marriage, MacMaster and Leahy have yet to collaborate officially.
"Terrible, terrible, shame, shame. We have to record together," she says.
They plan to enter the studio, potentially as early as May, to begin work on a joint record.
They've done some minor projects together, like Leahy has done some producing on her records, but nothing of this magnitude.
MacMaster anticipates it will be smooth sailing.
"Donnell and I, we work really, really well together. We've got very similar opinions on everything, including music, so it's going to be just a joy. . . . to be in the studio with my husband," she says.
They plan to record some original songs, with a strong focus on traditional repertoire.
On whether they'll ask any of their musically inclined extended family members to guest, for instance: MacIsaac; her uncle, fiddler Buddy MacMaster; Leahy's siblings; or, maybe a longshot, Jack White, who MacMaster has never met, though recently discovered was her fourth cousin, only time will tell, she says.
One thing's for sure, based on MacMaster's loyal international fanbase, it should come as no surprise that the resulting music will be well-received.
"I've been going for 30 years," she says. "We've travelled all over this continent and all across the ocean over to Europe. We've played in Japan, we've played in Antarctica, we've played in New Zealand. It doesn't matter where you go they all receive it the same. They all receive it the same. It's easily translatable. It's easily understandable. The crowd, they're always delighted, they're always very appreciative and very responsive. It's just been great."
