He says, ‘you spend hours on a set list!’ I don’t actually spend the hours, but I spend a lot of time making set lists because I’m really into the art of placement for your pieces in a show. My husband digs on me all the time for all my set lists. How is it different? … I love making set lists. So, there is lots of things about my music that have changed, for example when I play now, my style and how I’m playing, the types of tunes and what I like or arrangements on stage, and how I carry a show is a little different. You know, the music is like a good old friend.Ĭertain things about it as you get older blossom and grow and evolve and other things about it never change. How has your relationship with your music changed since then?Ī. Anyway, that’s a whole other can of worms. If I can’t control this, its ruining my fiddling, its making it sound bad. So to play a slow air – I remember playing a slow air! – on that stage for that performance and my hand was just shaking and my slow air was terrible and I thought this was awful. And I remember it being a real issue for a couple of years and my hand would shake before going on stage.

I remember being on the stage and being nervous… I probably would have been 14 or 15, and I was entering into a time where I started getting nervous.

I can remember coming to the Rebecca Cohn, which was a big deal, and playing this one show… A fundraiser for the Amnesty Highland Dancers. (I) know that before I did my own shows I was always part of a show. I don’t know if I can ever pick one that was my first.

Tell me about your first show in Halifax.Ī. The Signal caught up with her in a Halifax restaurant as she finished lunch with two of her six children and her husband, Donnell Lahey. But when speaking about her art and a lifetime of making music, she gets down to business. MacMaster has a wispiness about her: her blond curls bounce about her head, and she turns to her daughters to make a funny face when a camera comes out.

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