The quintessentially Scottish. strathspey comes from the valley of the River Spey,” which flows northeast from the Grampian Mountains. Strathspeys are all about the ‘Scotch Snap’ - the Di dum.

2 Tunes with 2 #’s

A couple of months ago, Allan Chertok suggested to the Music Committee that we should introduce some of the toe-tapping Jimmy Shand marches and Harry Lauder songs as a concert set. Ever responsive to our members, we came up with a set of well-loved Scottish ‘marchy’ tunes.

This month Neil Pearlman is teaching us the Cape Breton reel John Morris Rankin by Dougie MacDonald. John Morris played keyboard and fiddle in his family’s band The Rankins, the hugely popular Celtic-folk-pop band who led pop music’s “Celtic wave” of the 1990s. Another fiddler in the band was Dougie’s first cousin, Howie MacDonald. Dougie made his living as a miner in the diamond mines of The Northwest Territories. The singers from the Rankins, Heather, Cookie, Genevieve & Raylene purchased the Red Shoe Pub in Mabou in 2004. Visit it at https://www.redshoepub.com/

Alan Wilson, our Tune Master, has two Cape Breton tunes by Brenda Stubbert for us this month. The other September tunes are all from New Jersey member Katie Hawn, who received support to attend the Ashokan Scottish String Fling with Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas in May 2023. Katie is circled in green in this photo. Katie will share her tunes with us at our September gathering.

June’s tunes include a march and three jigs - the June Jigs. Read on to find out more about these colorful bug beauties.

This month’s tunes come with references to the Black Isle, Aberdeenshire, and a stunning drone tour of Drummond Castle…

This month we feature a tune from our own Deb DellOrfano and three tunes from our February surprise visitor, Karen Stevens.

"Kilts are what Scots wear in America and Americans wear in Scotland"

While working on this blog post our Tune Master came across the above quote from the National Museum website https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/highland-style/

At the January 8th gathering workshop, Randy Miller will present a waltz (or slow air) that is in a different key than the versions in our repertoire, a new reel by a contemporary composer, and a classic Scottish jig.

This month our tune master, Alan Wilson, gives us three tunes from the Isle of Man, a self-governing British Crown Dependency (like the Channel Islands).

Mari Black will be leading us in learning a set of two strathspeys and a reel in our November workshop. We'll work on stylizing and orchestrating each tune so the whole set can sound really great with the whole group.