Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

Fit as a Fiddle

Natalie MacMaster has fiddled to flamenco rhythms, to Texas swing and to bluegrass roots music. But, as the title of her November album asserts, she’s a Cape Breton Girl at heart. Steeped in Scottish traditions that traveled over the ocean — her remote Nova Scotia region is a well-preserved pocket of musical genealogy — the jigs and reels on MacMaster’s latest release eschew “any bells and whistles,” she’s said. (Straightforward song names such as “Jimmy MacKinnon of Smelt Brook” make us inclined to believe her.) But fiddle fans can expect more than a few flourishes in “Christmas in Cape Breton,” an energetic explosion of carols and snappy step dancing.