Fiddlesong

To hear samples, use OS player to the right of album artwork.

Track List

1. Tamerack'er Down
2. African Suite: The Call
3. African Suite: The Libation
4. African Suite: Crooked Waltzing
5. African Suite: Crin Crin
6. J'ai mis les cordes à mon violon
7. Carl's Waltz
8. Smothered in Smoke
9. Cactus and Cranky Cats
10. An t'alltan dubh
11. The Fiddler's Alphabet/Carl Grexton/Will's Reel

About the CD

CBC Radio 3 Press Kit Review
Anne’s latest release, Fiddlesong, is both a bold new undertaking and, in some ways, the perfect culmination of what we might expect from a musician long known as a champion of Canadian traditions, old and new. Though few know her as composer and songwriter, Fiddlesong may change all that. Fiddlesong is full of tapestries inspired by the Celtic and French music we have come to think of as Canadian fiddling, as well as by African, Middle Eastern and other immigrant traditions. But this is no pastiche of djembes and fiddles. It is a truly new music where fiddle brings its voice to world sensibilities as much as the other way around – a truly Canadian world music. The recording features Fiddlesong bandmates and a host of special guests, including African musicians Kwazi Dunjo and Njacko Backo, accordion master Sasha Luminski and Colleen Allen on soprano sax.

Brent Hagerman for Exclaim! (exclaim.ca)
To call Anne Lederman a Celtic fiddler would do her a great disservice. She's practically the living epitome of The Red Violin - an ethnomusicologist and important resource for the history of the violin and its uses. Recording since 1983, Lederman's projects have been culturally diverse: from Metis fiddling and a stint with the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band to playing with Cameroon's Njack Backo. It is no surprise then that with Fiddlesong we find Lederman composing, interpreting and generally cross-pollinating a multicultural violin extravaganza. Taking listeners from the Canadian back woods ("Tamarack'er Down") to African coming of age ceremonies ("African Suite") and everything in between, Lederman brings African drummers along for the ride and manages to expand the already vast violin repertoire. Fiddlesong is interspersed with decidedly unfiddle songs, ones where Lederman puts down the cat guts and takes to singing. These less inspired excursions (e.g. "Cactus and Cranky Cats") often seem out of place on an album whose main focus is the violin. At least with one song, "The Fiddler's Alphabet," the subject of the lyric itself is actually the fiddle.