Music has always been Anna Massie's passion. As a youngster
she used to stand in thewings of village hall stages in
the Scottish Highlands, watching her father's ceilidh
band, sensing the enthusiasm of musicians and dancers
alike, and wishing she could be part of it all.
By the time her chance came to join the band, she was, at thirteen, a
multi-instrumentalist and already showing the flair and feeling for the
tradition that would take her to the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional
Musician of Year 2003 title.
Brought up in a household where music was a constant soundtrack - her
father plays guitar, banjo and mandolin, Anna started playing guitar at
the age of seven when her father returned from Edinburgh Festival with
a guitar bought from a car boot sale. Kinlochbervie, in the north west
corner of Scotland, where the family lived at the time, had few distractions,
and Anna immediately showed dedication and aptitude.
When, a year later, the Massies moved down to Fortrose on the Black Isle,
near Inverness, Anna was given a violin and sent to classical music lessons.
At first she hated it. She refused to practise and recalls being "really
nasty" to her teacher.
By this time playing mandolin also, having taught herself by matching
the violin's left-hand fingering to the guitar's right-hand picking technique,
she changed her mind about the violin after seeing a young fiddler playing
in a ceilidh band at Lochinver Games. Taken backstage to meet him and
after quizzing him about how much he practised, Anna decided that she
could do that too.
The violin became fun rather than torture and with lessons in traditional
fiddling from Debbie Swanson, with whom she studied for four years, as
a well as continuing her formal music studies, Anna became thoroughly
versed in both the classical and Scots traditions.
She played violin with the National Children's Orchestra of Scotland
and as one of the Inverness centre for traditional music, Balnain House's
star fiddle assets, she was invited to play for the Princess of Thailand
during
her visit to the Highlands in 1995. She also appeared on the children's
television programme, The Riddlers, playing fiddle.
Throughout her teens Anna continued to play - and still does - classical
and traditional music. She joined her father's band, the Kerry Blues Ceilidh
Band, in 1996, and spent almost every weekend playing at dances around
the Highlands, gaining experience and developing her stagecraft and comfortable
way with an audience.
At the same time she became joint leader of the Highland Region Youth
Orchestra, touring Ireland and Poland, and was a regular with the National
Youth Orchestra of Scotland for four years. She subsequently became leader
of her school orchestra and worked for both Balnain House and the Highland
Council as a fiddle instructor, taking weekly classes of up to twelve
adults and children.
Between leaving school and beginning her studies on the BA(Hons) Applied
Music course at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow in October 2002,
Anna spent a year in Canada, living just outside Toronto, where she played
and absorbed Cape Breton and Irish fiddling styles. She also worked for
the summer in New York as a violin instructor and bunk counsellor at French
Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, the largest private summer camp
in the United States.
An avid listener to all kinds of music, from traditional to heavy rock,
Anna cites Eileen Ivers and Natalie MacMaster as her main fiddle influences
and Martin Hayes and Blazin' Fiddles among her other favourites. On guitar
she enjoys Tony McManus's playing and concedes that Dick Gaughan's classic
guitar instrumental album Coppers and Brass, a favourite of her dad's,
may well have filtered into her style as learning by osmosis plays a large
part in her playing.
In 2000, Anna took part in McDonald's 'Our Town Story' in the Millennium
Dome in London, as a member of the Highland cast portraying a highland
wedding under musical director, pianist Andy Thorburn. Later the same
year, she reached the semi-finals of BBC Radio 2's Young Tradition award
and in 2001 she was invited to take part in renowned accordionist Phil
Cunningham's celebrations for his 25th year as a professional musician
at Eden Court Theatre in Inverness.
The highlight of her career so far, however, has been the night of Sunday,
January 26, 2003, when she won the much coveted BBC Radio Scotland Young
Traditional Musician of Year award in a thrilling and entertaining final.
Many, many more accolades and achievements are sure to follow for this
hugely talented and very natural musician.
Read more about Anna Massie at Foot
Stompin' Celtic Music.
