“Tying together geology, culture and place, Iain’s music makes vivid the passing on of tradition and the nature of change, elements so central to Fèis Rois.”

FIONA DALGETTY, FÈIS ROIS

***Album Launch***

Kōterana

Released April 2023.

Listen below to an excerpt from the album.

Physical copies and downloads of the CD are available to buy from Iain’s Bandcamp page.

Iain Fraser is a fiddle player and teacher. He’s fascinated by the instrument's rhythmic and emotional capabilities and draws his material from 18th Century Scottish tunes through to new self-penned compositions and from the multiple regional music styles of the British Isles to those of North America and Europe.

I perform and teach tradition-based music on the fiddle. I have always been fascinated by the fiddle’s rhythmic and emotional capabilities and I try to draw upon the extensive repertoire of traditional music ranging from 18th Century Scottish tunes to new self- penned compositions and from the multiple regional music styles of the British Isles to those of North America and Europe. I released the album 'Touchwood' in 2002 which features 18th and 19th Century Scottish fiddle music on fiddle and cello. I was asked to edit and compile ‘Scottish Fiddle Tunes – 60 Traditional Pieces for Violin” for the Schott World Music Series in 2006 and subsequently ‘Canadian Fiddle Tunes – 60 Traditional Pieces’ by the same publisher in 2015.

More recently I have composed a small number of ensemble pieces which aim to extend traditional Scottish music motifs and present them in new ways. In 2022 I recorded ‘Kōterana’, a piece in four sections celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Rev Norman McLeod as he and his congregation underwent a double emigration – first from Assynt to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and then after a period of 33 years, to a new settlement named Waipu in New Zealand. An earlier version of this piece was performed in New Zealand in a collaboration with the Auckland Scottish Fiddle Club in December 2016 and again as part of the North Atlantic Fiddle Festival in Aberdeen in 2018. This piece is now available as a CD and Digital download from my Bandcamp page.

In November 2021 a new commissioned piece ‘Gneiss’, was premiered at the Adult Fèis in Ullapool to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this annual teaching festival and an album of this work was released in May 2022. My teaching practice has included both group workshops and individual lessons. I aim to help people young and old pursue their musical dreams while making music a fun social experience available to all.

Between 1990-1995 I took on and developed the Glasgow Folk Workshop from a small group meeting in my house to a broad range of classes operating in central Glasgow. I've been actively involved and supportive of the Feisean movement for almost 30 years – primarily with Fèis Rois and I was principal fiddle teacher in the Scottish Music Department of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland between 1995-2005 before being appointed Head of Instrumental Music for the Scottish Borders Education Authority until 2011. I was a founding director of Merlin Music Ltd., a small private music school in the Scottish Borders and taught fiddle and group-work there until December 2020. In 2021, I gained an MLitt with Distinction in Folklore from the University of Aberdeen’s Elphinstone Institute.