Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas first met when Haas was an 11-year-old attending Fraser's fiddle camp.

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Sometimes playing music is more than just performing a song. Fiddler Alasdair Fraser knows that well.

"I think the fiddle, for me, was a way to find a voice," says Fraser, calling from a festival in Glasgow, Scotland. "I was very shy and introverted and I didn't want to speak very much. I think the fiddle gave me a way of expressing myself in a deep way that I didn't want to get into with words."

It's still much the same. When Fraser and his musical partner, cellist Natalie Haas, play music together they shoot for something more than just a performance.

"If it's going well, if everything is as it should be, you're cruising," says Fraser. "It becomes a frictionless existence. You can get to a higher state where you sort of dissolve into something bigger. At that point you can occasionally get to a point where it's like you're not playing - you're watching. At that point you can do no wrong. ... It's like dancing with the muse."

He says it's like a bubble that can occasionally burst and fall apart, but, generally, it's a wonderful experience.

Born in Clackmannan, Scotland, and now living with his wife and children in Northern California, Fraser says he was a reclusive youngster who escaped into music - Tchaikovsky violin concertos, French gypsy jazz master Stephane Grappelli and Scottish violinist Hector MacAndrew.

"I listened to everything from incredibly emotionally powerful classical music works to Highland fiddlers who had idiosyncratic stylings that were reeking with Scottishness in a way that appealed to me. It's something that stuck with me - using the fiddle or whatever instrument to go deep into some kind of way of being that's influenced by the land and the country where you grew up."

Fraser had long been recognized as a master fiddler by the time he encountered Haas at a fiddle camp he had established near Nevada City, Calif. Haas, then 11, arrived with a cello. Fraser had been long interested in working with a cellist and restoring the cello to the prominence it had held in pre-20th century Celtic music.

"Here comes this young lass, just burning hot and bright-eyed and strong and I could say, 'Let's try this' or, 'Let's try that' and she'd say, 'OK!' She never asked, 'Is there music for that?' She would just play!"

Haas later attended the Juilliard School and developed a reputation on her own, touring with Mark O'Connor's Appalachia Trio and other artists. She began touring with Fraser when she was still in her teens.

"I never wanted an accompanist," says Fraser. "I want someone who will soar with me and dive and take the journey with me. Someone who will push back and have a great dialogue. ... A strong dance partner."

It's the sense of adventure that is sometimes discouraged in young players, says Fraser.

"There are a lot of forces of standardization that says, 'Let's all play the same.' Or even worse, 'Let's all play correctly or properly.' There is no 'proper.' There is only bringing yourself to the repertoire and reacting to it. When someone says, 'Here is the correct way to play the tune, what they mean is, 'Here is the most popular or standardized way to play it.' But we have the freedom to make variations or even make flying leaps on our own and invent things."

Whether the song is new or old, says Fraser, a good player puts himself or herself into it.

"When I play I'm not trying to say, 'Look at me! I'm a great fiddler' or, 'Here I have a great tune!' I'm trying to say, 'I love this piece of music. What do you think?' I want to invest myself in this piece of music. There are ways of playing that are utterly me - the way I hear it. Once you get fluency in the idiom you can't help but be yourself and endow that tune with your own feelings."

© 2010, Knoxville News Sentinel
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