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ndeed, for Macdonald and Reid, Vamm is something of a joyous release after the inevitable restrictions resulting from the unremitting unison playing of their big band work. “It was great,” says Catriona of her twelve years with Blazing Fiddles, “but after a while you get to the point where you feel you want your own sound to be heard a bit more and also to play harmony, which has been a big part of my solo stuff.”
After seven years with Breabach, Patsy Reid, who also spread her wings as a member of the justly acclaimed Cecil Sharp Project, reached a similar conclusion around the same time. Both were seeking new challenges; both were tutoring on the traditional folk degree course in Newcastle; and both had similar ambitions about the horizons they wanted to explore. It somehow seemed logical that they should explore them together.
“Blazing Fiddles was brilliant but when you play in a band with four fiddles up front plus a guitar and piano, you end up in the final headlining slot,” says Catriona. “With that comes real energy and it’s really exciting. But it’s also hitting people head on – really fast unison playing, but like a juggernaut hurtling along. I wanted to be able to play with more light and shade and be more delicate, detailed and spontaneous.”
Patsy concurs. “The smaller the group you’re in the more opportunity there is to go off piste. With more people you have more structure and everything depends on you all playing your part. Playing in the same band with the same sets and the same line-up, you do end up playing the same thing every day for three years. In that sense I lost my confidence and felt I couldn’t make it up on the spot because I hadn’t done it for so long. But now I feel I’m back on top of my game and I’m playing like Patsy again.”
Marit Fält was one of the students on the Newcastle degree course when these discussions were taken place and jumped at the chance to join the new band. Patsy and Catriona had talked of adding other musicians, but once Marit was on board, talk of fur- ther band expansions evaporated.
For while the contrasting Shetland-Perthshire fiddle styles of Macdonald and Reid are striking enough (Catriona describes their interplay as a “frisson”) Marit’s evocative underlays give Vamm another edge entirely. Even by Scandinavian standards she is something of an anomaly. Born in Norway to a Swedish family with a passion for dance, she grew up close to the Swedish border in an area devoid of traditional music of any kind.
“At school I had the choice between guitar, piano and fiddle but all my siblings played piano and to my eight-year-old brain the fiddle was the most opposite instrument to the piano so I wanted to play that. Then at nine I decided I wanted to play traditional music. I don’t really know where that came from but my teacher was really good. He didn’t play it himself but he took an interest and found out about it so that he could teach me. I’d go to summer schools every year but I didn’t really find anyone to play with until I was 19.”
Growing disillusioned with fiddle – or more specifically the intensity of the classical music path one tutor was intent on taking her (“I stopped going to lessons and never told my parents”) – Marit turned instead to the Nordic mandola, a little-known instru- ment in Scandinavia, let alone Britain. When she arrived at the trad music degree course in Newcastle, there was some consterna- tion because none of the tutors were equipped to teach her. This has probably worked to her advantage, detaching her from the Nordic influences ordinarily associated with the instrument and she embraced instead a very different musical landscape which has helped shape her unique style.
“One of the great things about the Newcastle course is the guest tutors so you have the chance to learn from people like Karen Tweed. My thinking in coming to Newcastle was to draw on new influences which would make me a very different sort of play- er when I went back to Sweden. But now I live and work in Britain so it has become the other way around and here I sound different because of the Swedish influence. In Sweden they don’t think I sound much like a Swedish player, but over here they probably do.”
The cross-fertilisation of cultural influences stemming from her studies in Newcastle has taken not only her but the instrument itself on a very different journey to what would have transpired had she stayed in Scandinavia. Pioneering a sub-genre, Marit has become something of a cult hero in the process and Vamm gigs are often notable for the long line of people queuing up after- wards to talk to her about an instrument that is still very difficult to get hold of (though rumour has it that someone in Edinburgh is currently chipping away at the first British made Látmandola.)
The situation is compounded by that fact that while Marit now lives in Edinburgh, Catriona – now proud mother of baby Inga – is using her sabbatical year away from her duties as direc- tor of the Newcastle degree course to live temporarily in Norway. It all helps blur the lines in a Vamm philosophy that decrees their music be free-spirited.
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