Katie McNally and Brittany Haas: “Cape Breton Medley”

Fiddle duo plays “Lime Hill Strathspey” and “Tune for Carl.”

In her Fiddle Styles Workshop for Peghead Nation, Brittany Haas hosts some of the best fiddlers on the planet, as they teach some of their favorite tunes and techniques. One of her guests is Katie McNally, who grew up in Boston playing Scottish and Cape Breton fiddle, learning from Hanneke Cassel and attending Celtic music camps. She won the New England Scottish Fiddling Championship in 2009, has studied Scottish music and literature at the University of Glasgow, and released her first album, Flourish, in 2013. She tours with her own Katie McNally Trio and teaches private lessons and at fiddle camps around the US. (katiemcnally.com)

In this video, Katie and Brittany play a medley of tunes, the traditional “Lime Hill Strathspey” and “Tune for Carl,” by Jerry Holland. In her workshop with Brittany, Katie teaches an old Scottish strathspey, “The Fir Tree,” which is also often played in Cape Breton. She takes the tune apart phrase by phrase and shows you some of the ornaments she plays, including “flicks” and “warbles.” To see the entire workshop, along with more than 20 others, enroll in Brittany Haas’s Fiddle Styles Workshop today.

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