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Alasdair Fraser
Alasdair Fraser is one of the greatest carriers of the Scottish fiddle music tradition, a fiddler whose warmly expressive playing, mastery of his instrument and deep understanding of his native music as a venerable and continually evolving art is an inspiration to generations of musicians on both sides of the Atlantic. In recognition of his services to traditional music he was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame Inductee in 2011. Alasdair was born in Clackmannan on May 14, 1955 and began taking classical violin lessons at the age of eight, enduring much teasing and leg-pulling from fellow school pupils at a time when carrying a fiddle case around was considered far from cool. Undeterred, he persevered and found a love of and natural aptitude for the violin which he applied to the Scottish music that he heard at home – his late father, Bob, and his brother, Iain, both being musicians. In his teens Alasdair played with dance bands and began gathering the compositions of great fiddling forebears including Niel and Nathaniel Gow, William Marshall and James Scott Skinner into a repertoire that is now vast. Twice winner of the Scottish National Fiddle Championship, he also began to notice the connection between speech patterns and musical expression, especially among Gaels and the Doric speaking players in the north-east, and incorporated this into his fiddle style.Browse all performers